Some articles just have a way of telling, as they say in Hawaii, "good story." This from friend Billy Bob Boyes does just that. Enjoy.

2 of 10. I guess we are so fast the only pictures of our boat we get are before the starts

Over the last few weekends there have been 2 races around Anacapa Island in Southern California. This beautiful little island lies just 11 miles off Oxnard/Ventura and for this area they are usually well attended races. Anacapa Island, the smallest of the Channel Islands, is about 4 miles long with 3 breaks between two lower lying and one mountainous portion of land and all are very narrow in length. What makes this race stand out is that it is a nice race length for an offshore race (34 miles) and is tactically challenging "on the back side" or the wind shadowed portion of the island. The deep blue water, sheer cliffs of the island and abundant sea life are so amazing in beauty that it is distractingly hard to pay attention to the racing. For that reason when we are not racing our boat we usually take friends out to the island on our boat and just float around in the lee.

I bring this particular race up because of the type of racing we have been treated to the last two times around. As some of you may or may not know I am a 35 year professional offshore racing veteran who in the last 5 years has turned, yes like Darth Vader, to "The Dark Side" which is multihull sailing. This particular race starts at the coast and is generally a tight reach out to appropriately named "windy lane" which begins about 3 miles offshore and stretches to Anacapa's famous Arch Rock. This is almost a perfect angle for a multihull, as speeds of well over warp ten are achieved when the wind is doing its thing. I just love looking back at the wake (every one that sails on the boat would say all you can do is look backwards) behind the boat when I am not totally focused on keeping the boat from getting up to that tipping point with the windward hull out of the water, it would put most power boats to shame! In fact we pass most of the power boats anyway. We certainly are not as dry as them but I guarantee our smiles are much broader.

The last two races have been rounding the island to starboard which represents a beat up the back side of the island. Up the back side or down the back side depending on which way the race goes produces a tactical or frustrating challenge depending on how you view such things. It is challenging in the fact that the wind is shadowed by the several hundred foot cliffs with deep water running right up to their edge. You may elect to give yourself some room off the cliffs thinking there is better pressure even a half mile away but you would be mistaken. We call this "no mans land" because of the unique way the island lays in the shadow of another bigger island four miles to weather of Anacapa named Santa Cruz Island. So what is left is to get as close as you dare to the cliffs and play the zephyrs that come down off the cliff sides. There can be 90 degree wind shifts and boats that are 100 feet away sailing in their own private Idaho of wind and leave you there watching them sail away over the horizon. NICE.

As you approach the west end or the windward end the pressure builds and you approach the area known as the potato patch, named for the stronger winds, currents and counter currents splitting the island. The chop can be horrendous and just to weather lies the lee of Santa Cruz which on a windy day produces plumes of spray from the wind off the water that can reach 100 feet high. This phenomenon is quite visually spectacular and very unique to this area. When the west end is reached there is a shallow rocky area that lies directly in a line off the mountainous section of island. The old timers in racing here refer to the rock outcropping as the Bambora Straits. It was named after my father whose nickname was Bambora Bill. So the story goes when I was just a young lad in my teens we had a Ranger 29 which I was lucky enough to be given the helm for most of the races with my brother and when rounding the west end really close my father shit his pants thinking we would surely hit the rocks. The rocks were missed, mess cleaned up and skeptical respect given. Some would think it morbid of me for telling this story but my father died about a year before we got our multihull. I saved some of his ashes and one of the first sails we did was a race around the island. When we got off the Bambora straits I reached in my pocket for the vile of ashes and noticed that the top had come off and he was spread around in my wet foully pocket as I turned the pocket inside out spray was washing over the boat with the voracity of a fire hose he was spread all over the tramp. 2 seconds later he was washed into the sea and off the rocks where he was intended to go. Good bye dad. This will always be a special place for me as well and a memory I will cherish for the rest of my life.

After rounding the island another perfect multihull point of sail is achieved; a broad reach. The last two times around we have had the kind of breeze that would make the most hard core monohull sailor think he has died and gone to sailing heaven. Flying a hull and hitting speeds in the mid 20's on the way home, awesome! What made our last race around even more spectacular was rounding with a boat named Afterburner. It is a 52 foot Tennant designed Kiwi built powerhouse of a cat. We were just leading them off the west end when we got into the pressure first and floated our hull up in the air. They were about 150 foot from us when we here the roar of their crew going nuts watching us as we go into ludicrous speed. A few minutes later they got the same pressure and like a coupla dolphins playing in the waves we were both flying hulls and a ball of spray all of the way home. I will never forget the visuals of the both of us maxing the multihull speed envelope to the finish 18 miles away. I can safely say this is the best sailing I have ever done on any boat over my entire sailing life. Stoked really!

Billy Bob