CORINTHIAN MIDWINTERS A
fter what seemed like a month's worth of cold and dreary, morning froston-the-docks weather, Bay Area racers finally got a break when a high pressure system settled in off the Northern California coast. Thankfully, that break coincided with the first weekend of the 60th anniversary edition of the Corinthian YC's Midwinters on January 15-16. Under sunny skies and temps that seemed to get up into at least the high 60s, 110 boats in 12 handicap divisions, and 26 boats in four one design divisions, made it to the starting line for what proved to be a primo weekend. After a brief postponement, racing got underway on Saturday with most of the larger-boat classes being sent on a Bay tour that started at Knox. After a short fetch to Yellow Bluff, they headed down the Bay toward Blossom. To their dismay, the Central Bay was the site of a battle royal between the northerly that had carried the first starters to Yellow Bluff, a weak southerly, and a weak westerly. The first few classes reached Alcatraz only to park up in a big transition zone. While many boats carried enough breeze to eventually draw even with the southern tip of the island on their first try, a combination of the breeze shutting off completely and the massive, runoff-fueled ebb meant that entire classes got flushed all the way back to the northern tip of the Rock en masse regardless of which side of Alcatraz they tried to pass. It took some boats multiple tries to get past the island and down to Blossom, and those who were able to successfully negotiate that part of the course ended up getting pretty launched. In PHRF 1, Gary Redelberger's Farr 36 Racer X was the only boat in the leading group to get past the north side of Alcatraz, only to be flushed back toward the Gate after squeaking around. Racer X was able to find relief on the Cityfront though, and rounded Blossom in front of Jonathan Hunt's turboed 1D35 Dark n' Stormy, which had taken the inside route to begin with. Next up was Steve Stroub's SC 37 Tiburon, which escaped the Alcatraz north-side wormhole to lead the remaining boats to the buoy. From Blossom, it was an easy fetch with few passing opportunities — unless you were in a later-starting division. Then you were probably passing everyone who had Page 102 •
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• February, 2011
started before you — up to Southampton Shoal in an 8- to 12-knot northerly, before a primarily starboard-tack beat to a race deck finish off Corinthian YC. Sunday's race — which saw the big boats get the same course as Saturday — started off much the same way, albeit minus the sun, which had a hard time penetrating a thin carpet of valley fog that accompanied the 8- to 15-knot northerly breeze. Sailing the same course as Saturday, the fleets found that getting past Alcatraz was a much easier task with the breeze holding pretty much the entire way around the race course. After a little over a half -an-hour, the bigger boats were already around Blossom; the day before, it had taken them
about two hours! Although there are more than a few class leaders who notched a 2-1, honors for the top performance for the weekend in one's division were split between Jim Gibbs' Express 27 Moonlight in PHRF 5, and Scott Easom's Farr 30 Easom Rigging (aka Eight Ball Ball) in PHRF 2. Moonlight scored a pair of bullets in a tough PHRF 5 that has Steve Carroll's Express 27
