SEASON CHAMPIONS — W
henever we find our selves titling stories with food metaphors, it's time to check the clock. Yep, almost suppertime. Season Champions, as usual, will be a three-course meal. But no worries about overstuffing, as we'll spread this wellseasoned feast out over three separate months. For starters, we'll get a taste of the one-design fleets that wrapped up their championship series in time to make the November issue deadline.
LATITUDE / CHRIS
J/120 — Peregrine David Halliwill/Mike O'Callaghan, SFYC Peregrine's helmsman, Mike O'Callaghan says he seems to remember the problem regattas better than the good ones. "The SFYC Invitational was particularly memorable, for bad reasons," he says. The June regatta was sailed in medium air on the Berkeley Circle. Chance and Peregrine arrived at the first weather mark of the first race with Chance clear ahead by a few feet after Chance tacked to starboard in front of the starboard-tack Peregrine. "I foolishly did not head up rapidly and put up a flag. Instead I sailed between the mark and Chance, which went fine until the offset mark. I had established an overlap quickly after the weather mark, but Chance altered course hard to leeward at the offset, claiming I had no rights, and I narrowly avoided a very expensive collision. We spun circles, which let the rest of the fleet pass us. We finished in fifth, a bad Mike O'Callaghan way to start a series. I got a lot of well-deserved heat from crew about putting the boat in places that allowed the competition to manipulate us." They climbed back up the ranks to finish the regatta in second place. The next memorable regatta was SFYC's windy Summer Keelboat in August, also on the Circle. "In the second race our sail handling and my driving fell apart, and we ended up wrapping a jib Page 78 •
Latitude 38
• November, 2016
and wandering off the course at the leeward mark to finish fifth. Apprehensive about our chances for Big Boat Series, Greg Felton, our grinder, started working on the 'list'. He put in writing every missed opportunity and error made that day." On Sunday morning, the crew read and discussed the list. "We took two first places to finish third for the series — still concerned about our level of preparation for Big Boat Series." They were informed before the series that the race committee would include reaching legs as part of the possible course selections. "We are not fans of reaching legs. We are used to doing what one-design racers do: Beat upwind, run downwind. No reaches. No passing lanes in reaches, we have often thought. We were wrong. We were given one very hot starboard reach on the north side of Alcatraz in big breeze that allowed us to catch Chance and put them many boatlengths behind by the time the kite came down and we rounded the gate. It's very exciting getting heavy boats like the J/120 moving over 15 knots on the Bay." One bit of intrigue was a helicopter photo of Peregrine's leeward mark rounding on Day 2. The photo showed a spinnaker sheet dragging in the water close
to the buoy. "One of Peregrine's competitors showed it to O'Callaghan on Sunday morning. "We asked our crew if they saw the incident, and several said that from their vantage points they had no reason to believe the sheet hit the buoy. If it had, they would have said something at the time of the mark rounding. After an extended period of contemplation, we decided to request a scoring penalty from the RC, and it was granted. This did not change the results. It did raise the interesting question of the value of photos in such circumstances." Peregrine won Rolex Big Boat Series, but it went down to the last day. Regulars aboard Peregrine this year were Randy Smith, Tad Lacey, Greg Felton, E.J. Rowland, John Verdoia, Kristen McCulloch, Michael Thornton, Vic Piltch, Chris Davison, Don Jesberg, Bill Melbostad, Steve Fentress, Rhim Fleischman and Mark Maymar. A resident of New York City, Peregrine's owner David Halliwell was mostly absent this year. "I've been tending to business on the East Coast," he explained. 1) Peregrine, 47 points; 2) Chance, Barry Lewis, StFYC, 52 points; 3) Mr. Magoo, Steve Madeira, StFYC, 66. (5 boats)
