These are some nice from the water shots taken by reader Charles Breed

2003 Coastal Cup

One of the more potentially interesting races here on the Left Coast is the Coastal Cup, a 360 mile "sprint" from Frisco to Catalina Island. I say potentially interesting because in theory it should blow nicely NoCal, and then as usual, suck once in SoCal. This year may have been one of realized potential, as it blew like a mother (high 30's) for a good first part of the race (and of course no breeze into Catalina). A fair amount of carnage resulted with the TP 52 Flash dropping out with rudder/steering problems, The SC 50 Entropy dismasted, another SC 50 lost it's rudder, an Olson-40 with rudder problems, an Elliott 45, (torn sails), Hobie 33, no mast, Beneteau 40.7 pulled into Santa Barbara after blowing up sails, etc.

No such problems for Philippe Kahn's R/P 77 Pegasus as they not only were first to finish, they broke the course record previously held by Larry Ellison's Sayonara and the Alan Andrews designed Magnitude by 6.5 hours. In the process they pounded Pyewackett, who dropped out after sitting in a hole for something like 6 hours - must be that good navigating. The brand new TP 52 Beau Geste was next to finish, about 6 hours after Pegasus, followed by Alta Vita and Yassou, also TP 52's. We are waiting for complete results and the stories, but for a good account of their race, see Kahn's log here. It's good reading.
Encinal Yacht Club should have results up shortly.

6/16/03

Surfin' to SoCal

Pyewacket	Pegasus
Dasher SC50	J-125

These are some nice from the water shots taken by reader Charles Breed from last weekend's Coastal Cup. Left to right: 1) Say, isn't that a UK Ultra main on Pyewacket, or is North just ripping them off? Just kidding, Robbie. 2) Pegasus as we all know, kicked some major ass, and here they are pre-start. 3) Maybe that sprit on Dasher, in what has got to be the ugliest Santa Cruz 50 ever, was too much: they later broke their rudder. 4) And that J-125 looks like it is just coming into it's own. Fun.

Jesus, I don't think we've ever spent so much time talking about one frigging race, but when there are stories....The best or worst one involves the Olson 30, Run Wild. They won the race overall, but somehow the journos covering the race reported the SC 50 GWTW as the winner. Wrong. These guys kicked supreme ass in the Olson, which simply reminds us all what great little boats they are. This was posted in the forum, but I thought some of you who missed it might enjoy hearing the perspective of the Ginat Killer. Congrats to all. Out.

Coastal Cup 2003 was excellent fun for Run Wild, Olson 30. With only three people aboard, there was little fighting over helm time or other action. The start was in light air at Baker Beach. We got a decent, but not great start, and short tacked with the others close to shore to avoid the strong flood. We got out in the lead by staying on starboard and laying Mile Rock much more closely than the rest of the fleet which tacked out to port to avoid the rollers in the South Bar.

As you can see from the Pegasus site, the breeze was light at the beginning of the race, and everyone we were sailing near at one point or another such as Golden Moon, Elan, Roller Coaster, and two Olson 40s aimed for 180 with genoas and later kites. We saw a couple of round ups and round downs in the first few hours on other boats with some recovering much faster than others.

True to Coastal Cup form, the breeze built as the evening approached, with heavy air really starting around 5 or 6 PM. The times and locations in the message won’t be perfect, because they are from memory. The breeze continued to build and we changed to the storm kite, and then a poled out jib after a nasty round down with a buried bow that saw me in the water outside the lifelines holding onto the tiller (and tethered in). No damage though. While we sail with no instruments on Run Wild, it seemed the gusts were more powerful this year than last year’s breezy run. But the lulls were still quite low.

Around 2 or 3 AM we reset the storm kite on port jibe because we were getting lifted. We jibed back to starboard off Piedras Blancas I think and had the oil rig Harvest ~10 miles off our beam around 10 AM. We were sailing about 110 and going really fast with the storm kite. The breeze was definitely very strong at this point with boat broad reaching, smashing waves, and seeing the spray come up and then blow down wind away from the cockpit. One of the most fun things in the Olson in this breeze is overtaking big waves and feeling the boat fall down the front and slam into the valley, still flying. We also experience a couple of really weird surfs where the boat laid over quite a bit on its leeward side and flew down a wave a little sideways. Got to the boat back straight up and down on those quickly. No wipe outs though. About 65 miles away San Miguel, we had decided to go inside the islands to save distance. The weather radio reported stronger than normal breeze down there, and we knew we had to take advantage of any short cuts because our fleet of longer waterlines would do much better than us in So Cal light air.

We went through the split between Santa Cruz and Santa Rosa around 5 or 6 PM I think. The winds in the SB Channel had been getting lighter, but going through the slot between these two islands created an SF Bay like funnel effect. Lots of whitecaps and heavy air. But this time we were all sailing in our fleeces with our soaked foulies down below. We weren’t expecting the breeze to be this heavy, so we sailed this last whole heavy passage with an old ¾ ounce kite. We stayed in the heavy conditions by jibing back out on Starboard as the breeze weakened. We passed a cruising boat, El Tiburon, and waved as we enjoyed the heavy running conditions. Hope to someday see the pictures they took.

The breeze totally died with 30 miles to go in the evening and ended our chance at finishing on Sunday. We made it through a light air night with the number 1 and onshore and offshore breezes that were fighting each other. We finished at Catalina at 7 AM with what looked to be Elan, and Express 37 finishing maybe an hour later. Great racing!