South Bay Yacht Racing Association Skippers & Delegates:
The (dismal) results are in for our first Winter Race on the Coyote Point YC race course on November 3, 2007:
In the Spinnaker Division, with 8 boats on the line but with only 4 finishers:
1. Wired/Choate 27/Larry Westland
2. Paradigm/J/32/Luther Izmirian
3. Mist/Beneteau 1st-38/Robert Hu & Keith Barker
There were no finishers in the Non-Spinnaker Division out of 5 boats entered.
We all experienced the lightest-possible wind on the race course (0-5 kts) plus a modest ebb that impacted all of the boats.
One of our new racers, Bob Leigh on his beautiful Santana 35 "Hollanass" all the way from Alameda YC, had a bit of a run-in with Channel Marker 6.
However, he lost only a bit of paint in this "encounter" in the fleet's traffic jam at the weather mark where most of the spinny fleet looked like rush-hour traffic on the Nimitz Freeway.
Then everyone, after a bit of good-natured shouting, had to fight the building ebb now that all were right on the edge of the South Bay shipping channel.
At least there wasn't a crowd on the south end of the course at channel market 8 near the Hayward-San Mateo Bridge as the two fleets were very spread-out over the lower bay as whatever wind there was continued to die.
So at the end of the race the bay was a mere "pond" as my light-displacement Choate 27 finished 45 minutes ahead of second-place finisher Paradigm in real time.
Afterwards many of us gathered at the CPYC club house where Jocelyn Swanson (Zingara) hosted us for the Summer Series award ceremony as we celebrated with the winners in both racing divisions plus new skippers Alan Orr (Spirit), Ron Brown (Black Sheep), Jack Verducci (Vita e Bella) and Bob Leigh (Hollanass).
Thanks for all of your work in this Jocelyn and we look forward to seeing those "trophy-blankets" in your photos.
Our thanks also go out to Vince Swerkes and Mike Finn who manned the CPYC RC boat for the beautiful afternoon on the Bay.
FYI SBYRA Winter #2 will be held on the Sierra Point YC race course just north of SFO on Saturday, December 1.
We'll start this next race at 1200/1205 hours in view of the passing of daylight saving time so most of the Coyote Point, Sequoia and Alameda boats should be back in their berths shortly after dark.
As such, check those nav lights which may not have seen much use over the summer.
Best...

Larry Westland