THE RACING Foreigners invade California for the Congressional Cup and the Nations Cup;; singlehanders and doublehanders race Round the Rocks; the offshore season opens with BAMA's Doublehanded Farallones; BYC hosts the Wheeler Regatta, SYC hosts the Jaws Race, and IYC hosts the Sadie Hawkins; and the Trans-Folsom skips the forks. Box Scores and Race Notes cover many other early-spring events. Match Race Migration to California Hordes of Europeans and Antipodeans invaded California this April, seeking to take championships from American match racers. Euro stars succeeded, first in Long Beach, then San Francisco. Congressional Cup at LBYC Long Beach Yacht Club hosted the 55th Congressional Cup on April 3-7. Ten teams raced in matched Catalina 37s within view of spectators on Belmont Pier. Ian Williams and the British Team GAC Pindar captured their fourth win, over LBYC's Scotty Dickson in the finals. American Taylor Canfield defeated Swede Johnie Berntsson in the petit finals for third place.
2011; He'd won four; we'd only won three. So we wanted to catch up." See www.thecongressionalcup.com. Nations Cup at StFYC Some of the same teams migrated north to San Francisco Bay for the Nations Cup Grand Final on April 10-14. St. Francis YC hosted 20 teams from 13 countries in their fleet of J/22s. Two French skippers, Pauline Courtois and Maxime Mesnil took top honors respectively in the Women's and Open Divisions. Mesnil had raced in the Congo Cup the previous week. Courtois and her Match in Pink by Normandy Elite Team of Maelenn Lemaitre, Loise Acker and Sophie Faguet opened the final day with a 2-0 lead over
The French Nations Cup-winning teams. — photo by Gerard Sheridan
Swede Anna Östling. Östling scored a crucial point in their first match and kept the pressure on Courtois, but in their fourth and final race, Courtois was able to pour on enough speed to clear a penalty just before crossing the finish line a few boatlengths ahead of Östling. Meanwhile, defending women's champion Nicole Breault of the hosting club sailed two strong races with commanding leads against Brazilian Juliana Senfft earning her spot in the final. In the final round, Elite Team's Maxime Mesnil bested Brazilian Henrique Haddad 3-1. Breault tore a spinnaker in a very close first match, giving Courtois the opportunity to attack from leeward, luff her and offset a penalty she'd picked up earlier. Breault was never able to scratch ahead enough to score a point, and Courtois won it 3-0.
Williams admitted to a slow start at the Cup. "We were not really on our game on Day 1," he noted of his sixth place finish. "I haven't sailed in a monohull since this regatta last year. But, as long as you get through each round and build momentum, that's how match race regattas work. It's not how you start, it's how you finish." Their final 11-match winning streak included swiftly eliminating Congo Cup defender Taylor Canfield in the semis. Canfield co-founded Stars + Stripes Team USA, LBYC's challenger for the 36th America's Cup. Williams' victory over Canfield was particularly sweet. "Taylor and I have dominated the Congressional Cup since Page 92 •
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"It was a good fight," said Breault. "We didn't make it easy, but they owned us." Breault raced with the same Team Vela members, Molly Carapiet, Karen Loutzenheiser and Hannah Burroughs, from the previous Nations Cup in 2015. Courtois praised Breault, recalling that "four years ago we were in the Nations Cup Final in Vladivostok, against them, and we lost 3-1. So to win these three races today was incredible. It's an amazing place to sail," she added. Mesnil said the elevated wind conditions helped put his team on the podium, which he's delighted to be sharing with "the women's team, who are our training partners." See www.stfyc.com. — latitude/chris Rockin' Round the Rocks The Singlehanded Sailing Society season continues on like the ebb and flow of the tides. On April 13 the theme of the Round the Rocks Race was ebb. For the first start at 10:30 at Berkeley Circle buoy G, the current was already at a 4-knot max ebb and the wind was high, as 25 singlehanded and 63 doublehanded boats headed for the first 'rock' (mark) of the day, Alcatraz Island. The course sends the boats around the rocks — Alcatraz, Harding Rock, the Brothers and Red Rock, with a finish off the race platform at Richmond YC. After negotiating the current and waves around Alcatraz, the competitors found themselves reaching off, fighting the flow in order to not over-stand the Harding Rock buoy. From there the real battle began. In order to stay moving, you needed to find pockets of still water in Raccoon Strait while searching for wind. Some boats got caught in the Hell Hole in front of the Corinthian YC and died, while others stayed close to Angel Island out of the flow. Those who made it across to the Tiburon shore past Elephant Rock fared the best. Halfway into the race and with Raccoon done, the next challenge was to make it to the Brothers without stalling out or going backward. The wind was just barely strong enough to keep boats moving forward, and it looked like the best strategy was to head across the North Bay, then duck out of the ebb as best you could on the Richmond shore. From Richmond to the Brothers, the
