Congratulations to all IOM sailors who braved the weather to turn out for CC #1 in Steveston on March 8th.
A very special thankyou to our RC crew: Bud Fassnacht, Al Oliver and Bob Lewis who did a great job of running and scoring twelve races under difficult conditions. Difficult? Well, we started with 14 competitors and ended our last race with 8! Actually, before we even started, we lost 6 competitors who cleverly read the weather outlook.
The wind speed and direction were quite constant from the southeast and gusting to just above the top of A rig. The river was pretty much clear of weed but there was a substantial ebb current all day which made every beat super long. Our race management team did a very efficient job of keeping the races going with very few significant interruptions.
Did someone say there was rain? What a downpour! I’m not quite sure it made it into the atmospheric river status but there were some very heavy showers and there was virtually no let up all day long.
For the prize categories, the Best Sportsman went to the Vancouver Island team for showing up despite the horrendous weather forecast, and the Best Performance award went to the Race Committee for an outstanding job well done!!! And, there was even some racing: Peter Grimm sailing his K2 put on a clinic – 7 firsts in 12 races. 20 points behind Peter there was a very close battle for 2nd place. Brian Woodward won the battle for second, closely followed by Jim Fergusson and Rob Mulder. Art Prufer, Michael Kidd, Don Martin and Jerry Brower were the last few of the “all race finishers”. Finally there were 6 more sailors who retired with soggy boats, radios or bodies.
The courses were all windward leewards, starting at the leeward gate and finishing at the weather mark. This gave us 3 beats and 2 runs. With the huge ebb current against us on the beats there was a big premium on upwind performance. In spite of the long beats there were a large number of pileups at the windward marks as sailors battled the current to get around.
All and all an epic event but not one that all of us would be yearning to repeat.
See you all in Nanaimo in just over three weeks’ time (SUNDAY April 6th).
Registration for Nanaimo can be found at: https://westcoastradiosailing.ca/events/
Your 2025 Coastal Cup Committee