ABYC Turkey Day Regatta 11/2003

This year the ABYC Turkey Day regatta on November 22 and 23 was mostly a light air affair. Some marginal trapezing conditions presented themselves on Saturday, while the wind on Sunday varied from drifter to 15 knots and back. This was the last regatta of year, and the last one before the Midwinter regatta in February, that would attract major talent to compare with. World champions Howard Hamlin and Mike Martin sailed separately, getting ready for the next championship regatta in Santa Cruz.

Three teams from San Diego traveled to Long Beach to see how they measured up: Team KAOS (Mike and Marc), Team 7152 (Doug and Harry), and Team Agave/Phlegm/8411 (Dan and Bill). Doug arrived early Saturday morning when the wind was still blowing at 30kts from the northeast. Understandably a bit nervous, he was relieved to see the wind drop into a more manageable range. At the other end of the spectrum, Mike and Marc roared into the boat yard late, rigged up and made the time limit for the start of the first race. Dan and I fumbled around, tripping over the intense crowds queuing up for everything, measured a lot of things on a lot of boats, rigged up and sailed out ready to do battle.

Out on the race course, the wind was coming from the SW as usual, but with light velocity. Best wind of the day was probably 10-11 knots, with median breeze around 7-8. Dan and I sailed in the back of the front bunch for the most part. Best we could do was pull into the middle of it the whole day. We were able to make the boat go faster whenever we felt slow, but missed a couple of tactical opportunities while scanning all the systems.

Mike, Marc, Harry, and Doug duked it out all day in the second group, trading places with Hubert in his new Freemantle boat.

After racing, the highlight of the day was being a point ahead of Mike Martin over all. Dan and I got the boat stowed away as fast as possible, then high tailed it back to SD for the trophy dinner at MBYC. Tons of fun there. Maybe a bit too much fun because the next day was much more of a struggle.

On Sunday, the wind began light and from the N… not a good sign. Very unstable, with big gainers randomly appearing across the racecourse. After the first start, Dan and I led the charge to the left side, but on the return had to duck Howie (imagine that) and missed the next big gust by roughly 30 yds. Rounded the weather mark ahead of Mike M, but behind the rest of the top group. Stayed ahead of Mike on the long slow run, but lost them on the final beat by proving once again that a slam-dunk doesn’t work in a 505.

The next race started out similarly, but with worse results for team Weasel. After the leeward mark, the wind came in hard from the right. We had failed to anticipate this development and rounded the left side of the leeward gate. As a result, we dropped well behind the lead bunch at the weather mark. We rounded ahead of Kevin Taugher, who had been required to restart, and very close behind Brad Wheeler. This was the best run of the whole weekend. The wind had picked up to well over wire-running velocity, and had swung around to the right enough that the leg to the leeward mark was a full planing reach. Tons of fun. Unfortunately Mike finished several places ahead of us and was now ahead of us overall. Then the wind dropped to virtually nothing and very gradually swung around to the S. Before that could fully happen, the 505s sailed in and called it a day. We finished in 5^th place.

Bill Jenkins