The mighty Sierra 26 Dos just keep racking up the wins showing most of the fleet their stern boat for boat on a very regular basis. The conditions could not have been better for this annual rite of spring with almost 100 boats turning out for this great event. This year the STYC Blakely Rock Benefit Race raised over $8,000 for the beneficiary, Frog Prints e! A non-profit organization with programs designed to encourage and build within young women both leadership capabilities and a lifelong love of science, technology, engineering, math and sailing (STEMS). Very cool.
Jan Anderson, as usual, allowed us to tease you with just a few of her 100s of shots. Check the rest out here. Click on any image here to enlarge.
If that wasn’t cool enough, sailors were rewarded with yet another weekend of fairly steady breeze 8-12 knots, sunshine, flat water and minimal tidal influence. Eventually we are going to have to pay the piper for the incredible sailing we’ve had so far this spring. As usual the NFS boats started first with the slower boats in every class going first. That way the big boats started last and got to sail through the entire fleet. This causes a bit of compression in the fleet and gets everyone finishing in a relatively short period of time.
The weather was phenomenal, however a bit strange in that the forecast was for a south-southwesterly breeze with localized effects kicking in on each side of the Sound, southeasterly north of West Point and SW on the Bainbridge shore. Not even close. Instead, a prefrontal east-southeasterly stayed on the Sound for the entire race with the wind going from 110°m to 160°m in the starting area and then from West Point to Blakely Rock going from 100°m to 125°m. This held for the spinnaker reach back to West Point with the wind dropping and backing very slightly for the beat to the finish from Meadow Point. What was pretty interesting was that if you started on starboard and went into the breakwater, tacked and found a lane of clear air you could hold port tack and make Blakely Rock without having to tack again. On the run if you set with a starboard pole after gybing around the Rock you could run all the way to Meadow Point on the starboard gybe. This almost never happens. As we said above, the weather for racing this year has been almost too good to be true.
The first boat on elapsed time was the beautiful J-145 Jedi that averaged 6.95 knots around the 13.55 mile course. The only boats to beat Dos on elapsed time were the first four boats in the big boat class and two of the Farr 30’s in the next division and even then the Farr 30’s only beat Dos by just over a minute even though the Farr 30’s are supposedly 33 sec/mile faster. Dos averaged 6.27 knots around the course. Amazing!
Complete results here. Congratulations to the Sloop and their great Race Committee work!
