g.g.y.c. midwinters

Midwinter racing is generally low-key, tranquil stuff. The Big Weatherman upstairs usually sets the Wind Machine on the low end of the scale, somewhere between “fickle” and “non¬ existent”. And let’s be honest — the lighter conditions are a welcome change-up after getting your shorts blown off all summer. Even the most hardcore dyedin-the-kevlar racers secretly enjoy the switch from full foul weather gear and

'Glory’ tape-driving on a power reach. bullet-proof blades to shirtsleeves, light air sails, and the occa- x sional anchor drill.

Ahh, the mid¬ winters. We’ve always thought of them as a great excuse to get the gang together to drink beer and tell stories while slowly floating around the race course. The Bay is usually flat as a pan¬ cake and the racing — if there’s even enough wind to start — generally progresses at the speed of orthodontia.

So much for how it’s supposed to be. The first midwinter race of the season — hosted

by Golden Gate YC on Sunday, November 1 — was anything but a peaceful, relaxing affair. The guy upstairs who controls the weather was obviously totally confused, for he dialed up a full-on honest 30-knot, ebb¬ tide gearbuster. Maybe he thought it was

Splash! Wait a minute here — this wasn't in my contract!

Pounding upwind (L to R): 'Wiki Wiki', ‘Whimsical’ and 'Perezoso'.

funny, or maybe he was nostaglic for sum¬ mer. Then again, he might have been as fuzzy as the rest of us after the previous night’s Halloween party. Whatever the case, it was rough.

How rough was it? Let’s just spy that Rambo watched from the safety of his barstool at the St. Francis. The Road Warrior was too scared to even get out of his car. And Spuds MacKenzie — who just made People magazine’s best dressed list in his “classic yachting blazer and white flannels” — pee’d in his custom Line Sevens before his boat ever left the dock.

Seriously, conditions were bad enough that 17 out of 133 boats in the race dropped out, and many of the rest Race, but it was the windiest, choppiest midwinter race we can remember in a long time. The accompany¬ ing pictures tell the story. T 1 hings were breaking so fast on Des McCallum’s aptly named Nelson/Marek 66 Pandemonium you

'Punk Dolphin’ leaps to weather of ‘Aahs’ and ‘Yucca’.

needed the onboard Budweiser “yacht cam” to capture all the action. In the 1 hour and 56 minutes it took Pando to complete the 15.6 mile course, the jumbo surfboard blew out her #4 and #3 jibs, tore the #2, and broke the boom at the vang. Ouch! Just guessing, but that’s probably well over $1,000 an hour for an afternoon of fun. First-time owner McCallum must have new appreciation for the old analogy com¬ paring sailboat racing to standing in a cold shower, wearing your best suit and ripping up the Ben Franklin’s.

Pando almost didn’t finish the race. The boom had broken behind Alcatraz, about a mile from the finish, and they were ap¬ proaching the finish line under #3 jib alone. About 100 yards from the finish, that headsail blew out. Pando drifted backwards in winds gusting to 35 knots while the crew did a “no-sail sail-change” to about the only white sail they had left —sthe. #5. Unable to point with such a tiny sail, Pando sailed back and forth, more or less paralleling the finish line. Aided by the last of the ebb, she finally

ALL PHOTOS LATITUDE/RICHARD finished, getting the gun but correcting out 18 minutes after the class winner, Skedaddle.

They weren’t the only ones with prob¬ lems. Even the pros shank one from time to time, as Blade Run¬ ner — driven by Tom Blackaller in Bill Twist’s absence — proved. Running down to the leeward mark and go¬ ing for an early drop, they let the spinnaker halyard go completely, with the predictable result. Blade Runner was hoisted by her own petard, wrapping the “indestructible” 1.7 ounce Mylar kite ignominiously around her

keel, prop, and rud¬ der. It took half an hour to remove the pieces from the under¬ body, afterwhich the flagship of the Bay headed for the barn.

Alot of boats didn’t even bother to set spinnakers, and a lot of the ones that did probably wish they hadn’t. Our nomina¬ tion for the Crash n’

Blasting downwind with hoods up and life jackets Burn du Jour — and there were many to choose from — goes to Ted Hall and his TransPac veteran Ex¬

press 37 Frequent

Unidentified Islander cracking off at Crissy. Flyer. They set the kite with a knot in one of the strings and, in a spectacular sequence, hit the ditch. Imagine an Indy car blowing a tire and running into the wall at full speed and you’ve got the general idea. Flyer, with her rig and keel nearly horizontal to the water, lay pinned on her side for several minutes before pop¬ ping up and going on to take fourth in class.

Sails were shredded, bodies bruised, and at least one serious colli-

Bob Klein’s ‘Leading Lady’ won IOR II.

sion — the parties concerned asked us not to write about it — occured. At stake were class honors in 14 dif¬ ferent divisions as well as the overall pickle dish, the so-called Seaweed Soup Perpetual Trophy. Results can be found in The Racing Sheet.

Both the regatta and the trophy are dedicated to the memory of Manny V. Fagundes, the Golden Gate YC’s longtime Port Captain until his death in 1975. The Seaweed Soup award goes to the yacht that turns in the best per¬ formance in their class. In the event of a tie, as happened in 1982 when two boats turned whoever has the larger Hobby-horsing to windin straight bullets in division wins. The late ward. ‘Toots . a Thundertheir divisions, Bruce Easom ended bird> in the foreground.

'Punk Dolphin' sending it off the breeze. up winning the 1982 regatta with his Cal 29 Champagne. His brother Hank won last year on Yucca. Other

Dast winners inrluHe some of the Bay Area’s best and

hrinh+oef* Qunn sen, Eric Warner, Tom Caylor, Rick Lowrey, Lou Kruk, Bob Mar¬ shall, and Bren Meyer.

T,he four-race Golden Gate mid¬ winters continue through February. Rumor has it that the Big Weatherman feels a little guilty about the November 1 blow-out and intends to make it up to everyone at the next race on December 6. According to his press releases, we can expect a beautiful sunny day with a gen¬ tle 10 knot westerly beginning to fill in around 1:15 p.m. There’ll be about an hour postponement, so bring plenty of beer and a Frisbee or a football to throw around before the start. Or, if you believe everything you read, just come over an hour late. — latitude — rkm