Nothing is better than a light boat with fast shape with plenty of sail area and a sprit to shove the big asso out there, otherwise known as Sportboats. The Kiwis and Aussies have had this figured out for years, but we're a bit slow over here. One of the best US examples of the genre was the Melges 30, and there is a really trick one with a tall rig, no inboard and non overlapping jibs called Emotional Rescue. It just won it's class on a little SoCal race here from Santa Barbara to King Harbor, and one of the crew filed this mini-reprt. Good times, indeed. The Ed.

I....We started with the Santa Cruz 50's and Shock 40's and the Farr 36. Within 10 minutes of Jib reaching/beating we were the lead boat in our fleet. When the wind opened up a bit the 50's started to roll by. We hooked a tow with the 50 Baywolf. They shook us off because we were 10 feet behind them for 10 minutes and we were in their class. We then set the code zero and fucking took off. We started planning on the 70 dergree apparent reach to the islands and by the time the wind opened up to 100 apparent we were full on planning. We could not see the 50's by Anacapa. We caught the Shock 40's that started 5 minutes in front of us and hung with them around the island.

At the east end we were pacing with the Shocks until the wind started to pick up above 20. We friggin BLEW them away. Full plane 15-17 knots STEADY and then it got windy near Point Dume. Lower and much faster than the shocks. Maybe 5 knots faster. Within 45 minutes thet were 4-5 miles behind us. We passed Sorcery, Locomotion and were catching Alchemy when our first spinnaker halyard blew. We recovered and conyinued to catch Alchemy in 25 -27 knots of wind.

No shit my GPS watch showed that we Averaged 14.6 knots for a 90 minute run that I had it on and our top speed was 18.6. There were almost no waves, it was very flat for the ocean and this little fucker really hauls ass.

We were the 4 th. Monohull to finish. It went Victoria @ 7:40, Alchemy at 7:50, Sorcery at 7:55 and us at 8 pm! We beat more than half the multihulls and beat the winning multi hull, Eric Mayols boat in boat for boat!!!

I am telling you Scott, that was a insane fast ride. I have never finished while the sun was still up and 8 pm is my personal fastest. The next 10-20 boats were all 50's, Catana etc... We planned for hours and hours. Imagine catching a Sled in 20-25. Even when it dropped to 16-18 they were not pulling us.

So much for the boats PHRF rating! The complete results can be found at www.sbyc.org

Later,
Max