The 28th Annual Oceanside to Southwestern Yacht Race

Kyle and I have been racing regularly on Tuesday evenings on San Diego Bay with the Harbor Sailboats Club. Usually all 14 boats compete in three races and we have been fortunate enough to actually finish first in a couple of races. Kyle mostly steers and I do all the crew stuff. Kyle is learning fast and we are getting to be pretty competitive. Mistakes are made of course but we are learning from our mistakes. We did pretty well in May and finished the series second over all.

Last week Kyle and I were invited by a club member and major racing competitor, Steve McNally (an excellent sailor and fine gentleman), to sail in a 36 mile ocean race from Oceanside to Point Loma aboard a 47 foot sailboat (El Sueno) of which he is a regular crew member. We gladly accepted the invitation. So, on Sunday May 29 we became the ninth & tenth members of El Sueno's crew. Kyle, because he is young and perhaps an up & coming sailing star, got the royal treatment by Brad Alberts, the skipper & owner. Kyle got a special tour of the boat, an explanation of the instruments, the sails, he got to steer the boat in the race, sit along side Brad and discuss tactics and he got to trim the spinnaker. I got to grind winches and help haul in the spinnaker during a sail change and of course sit on the rail. Actually I enjoyed every minute of it to the max. It was like a dream come true. It was work but it was fun. And, neither Kyle nor I fell overboard which was my only fear. There were times that we got the boat moving at 9+ knots which is pretty fast. There were some 'yahoos' from the crew when we really got going!

One cool thing is that of the 50 or so boats in the regatta we were part of a class of 11 boats including a boat named Valhalla of which Dave was a crew member. Although we were the first boat to cross the finish line, because we were one of the biggest boats we were handicapped to a corrected time whereby we gave time to smaller boats to allow for the differences in sizes & speed ratios, and therefore we ended finishing in fifth place in our class. What a great day!

RESULTS FOR CLASS PHRF-3
START DATE: 05/29/2005 START TIME: 11:30:00 DISTANCE: 38.25
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PLC HCAP SAIL# BOAT SKIPPER TYPE CLUB FINISH ELAPSED CORRECTED MARGIN
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1 78.00 42733 MALEFICENT CHRIS BENNETT BEN425 CRA 29/16:29:30 4:59:30 4:09:47 LEAD
2 84.00 56266 VALHALLA A&C RASDAL BEN367 SWYC 29/16:50:39 5:20:39 4:27:06 0:17:19
3 72.00 67745 MASQUERADE TIM COKER CHOATE SGYC 29/16:46:16 5:16:16 4:30:22 0:20:35
4 36.00 69408 MISTRESS TOM LAFLEUR SWAN53 SDYC 29/16:23:22 4:53:22 4:30:25 0:20:38
5 18.00 46307 EL SUENO BRAD ALBERTS BEN477 CRA 29/16:13:07 4:43:07 4:31:39 0:21:52
6 96.00 52266 DELIVERANCE DAN SWETT HUNT41 MBYC 29/17:03:44 5:33:44 4:32:32 0:22:45
7 81.00 36764 ARIEL ASARO/SIMON/VORGE BEN367 SDYC 29/16:54:26 5:24:26 4:32:48 0:23:01
8 24.00 51477 COUP D'ETAT RON ELSASSER BEN477 SWYC 29/16:19:23 4:49:23 4:34:05 0:24:18
9 84.00 7085 SORDINO JEFF LASTOFKA BEN376 OYC 29/17:00:53 5:30:53 4:37:20 0:27:33
10 72.00 37133 SAUDADE STEVE LINK S&S47 OYC 29/17:04:11 5:34:11 4:48:17 0:38:30
11 66.00 56345 TE MATAU GREG RITTER BEN473 SWYC 29/17:15:26 5:45:26 5:03:22 0:53:35