THE EVOLUTION OF MIDWINTERS
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t's not really a 'Circle' anymore, but the racing venue west of Berkeley Marina, known as the 'Olympic Circle' or 'Berkeley Circle' serves up windy-tonukin' conditions in the Slot for serious summer racing and casual beer cans. During the winter, the Slot goes into hibernation, the conditions are (usually) pretty mild, and Berkeley Yacht Club and RegattaPRO run winter races there. "The original design of the Circle centered on XOC," explains BYC's Bob Gray. "One mile due north was A; one mile east of X was C; one mile south of X was E; one mile west of X was G. B, D, F and H were at 45° off the preceding letter's line. Each letter was set one mile from X. The original metal ball buoys were anchored in place with really heavy railroad wheels and big chains. The metal balls had to be removed when power boats kept running into them and we were told to get 'soft'
buoys." The vast, shallow shelf of the Circle has silted in. AOC and HOC's locations are now too shallow for keelboats to navigate. The circular mark arrangement was used in the 1960 Rome Olympics. Picking the mark that was most directly into the wind as the first mark made the start upwind. Triangle courses were popular in those days; now windward/leewards are de rigueur. Over the past few years, BYC has transitioned to using inflatable dropmarks. This was made possible by 2011's acquisition of a 19-ft runabout, which was christened the Bobbi Tosse in honor of the longtime race chair of that name. "I'm guessing it had something to do with the fact that, for many, many years, I kept urging anyone who asked that we not acquire such a boat," said the human
Bobbi Tosse. "I worried that we wouldn't have the money and people to properly maintain it. Until last year, we only used it to set missing marks. Since the Circle marks have been disappearing regularly, this kept the launch quite busy. This season becomes only the second year we've played with drop-marks only. I confess to being royally spoiled by the ease of working with a mark-set boat." On the morning of January 10, the Bobbi Tosse refused to start. "After dillydallying trying unsuccessfully to get the darn thing started, we stacked the three blown-up marks on Windance and went off to set the course and ourselves," recounts Tosse. Windance is the Gulfstar 41 used for race committee. "As the appointed hour of the first gun neared and we still had ourselves, our start-finish line buoy, and L to set, we announced the problem on the VHF, along with the
