THE RACING A highly successful SSS Three Bridge Fiasco leads this edition before we turn to weather-affected midwinter races hosted by Golden Gate YC, Encinal YC, Sequoia YC, Monterey Peninsula YC, Berkeley YC and Corinthian YC. Like the weather when winter transitions to spring, Race Notes runs the gamut. fiasco of 2018!) Will Benedict and his 18-year-old son Jayden sailed their family's J/105 Advantage3 across the finish line before any other monohulls. Jayden, a senior at San Ramon Valley High School, intends to go to the Maritime Academy in the fall. "He has grown up on boats and has been involved with the Richmond Yacht Club Junior Program for the past six years, currently in the Laser program,"
LATITUDE / CHRIS
Three Bridge Fiasco a Success If you're an aspiring racer dreaming of winning the Three Bridge Fiasco and you don't have kids yet, it's time to get busy. In 2017, a father-and-son team won the Doublehanded Monohull Division of the crazy pursuit race. That was Caleb and Sonny Everett in the Moore 24 Tortuga. Now 2019 rolls around and another father-and-son team has won that division. (We won't even talk about the true
Above, left to right: Greg Nelsen, Singlehanded Monohulls, and Randy Miller and Colin Dunphy, Doublehanded Multihulls. Below: Jayden and Will Benedict, Doublehanded Monohulls.
says Will. Based on the wind forecast and the excess runoff of rain water from upriver, the Benedicts' plan on the morning of January 26 was to go counterclockwise. "I started to deviate from the plan, and Jayden got us back on track," said Will. "He drove the whole way around. He kept me on a straight course. The best was going for a sail with my son. The bonus was to do it quickly." In case you're not familiar with it, the Three Bridge Fiasco starts and finishes in front of the Golden Gate YC in San Francisco and visits three bridges for
a Bay Tour course. The marks are the Blackaller Buoy near the S.F. side of the Golden Gate Bridge, Treasure Island/Yerba Buena, intersecting the Bay Bridge, and Red Rock, just south of the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge. The kicker is that racers choose which direction to start and finish, which direction to round the marks, and which order to take the marks. Run by the Singlehanded Sailing Society, the race is offered to doublehanded and singlehanded monohulls and multihulls. The J/105 is the third boat named Advantage (a tennis term) owned by Patrick Benedict, Will's dad. She's been in the family for more than 20 years. The Benedicts weren't the only family team; we spotted many such duos among the doublehanders, and even more couples. "And we're still speaking to each other," joked one such female skipper. In handing out the award for first Doublehanded Multihull, the SSS commodore, Don Martin, quipped, "Randy Miller, you're the only one to blame 'cause Mama Tried." "We went counterclockwise and had some really fast reaches," said Randy, who, with crew Colin Dunphy, finished first with his Open 8.5. "This is my first time finishing a Fiasco. A highlight was going around Red Rock with what seemed like 100 boats coming at us the other way. It's a trimaran; it's wide; it maneuvers like a tennis court, and I've got no visibility from the helm. We had the chute up, going 18-20 knots. Fortunately Colin was there to tell me up, down, there's a boat, don't hit them. We managed not to foul anybody and got around and had a nice run all the way to Blackaller." The first singlehanded boat to finish, the Azzura 310 Outsider, belonged to Greg Nelsen, whose name is already on the perpetual trophy. "I did a modified counterclockwise. I thought I was doing a clockwise, so I went to Blackaller first. I know I wasn't the only one, because there was a little crowd, a handful-plus going back to the Bay Bridge with me. It was the right way to go, at least for my starting time and my boat." The race did not go so smoothly for everyone. The weather conditions and currents were mostly mild to moderate, but no one notified a whale that more than 300 boats would be racing east of
