Home	Westpoint Regatta 7/12/25

Three islanders, Kapai, Luna Sea and Windwalker represented the I-36 fleet for the Westpoint Regatta. A nice breeze upwind to Harding Rock in the "fog", then a warming run and light air into the South Bay to Westpoint Harbor in Redwood city. 1st to Lun Sea, then Kapai, and unfortunately, a becalmed Windwalker in the shipping channel had to retire to get out of they way of a big commercial ship in the San Bruno Channel. Here are the stories from Kapai and Luna Sea. (Plus a fun video link to pretty much the whole race on Luna Sea.)

From Kapai
The West Point Regatta is a mostly downwind destination race from the Central Bay south to Redwood City 25 miles away. The start is off Berkeley with a beat up to Harding Rock Buoy which is left to Port commencing a long downwind run to the South Bay. 30 boats participated including Islander 36 stalwarts Windwalker,Luna Sea and Kapai. Kapai's crew included my wife Kathy, Son Bryce and daughter in law Reanne who is our perennial photographer.

The start was breezy with about 15 to 20 kts out of the NW. The summer marine layer was firmly in place in the central bay. The Islanders were included in the first start and both Windwalker and Luna Sea got away cleanly. Kapai misjudged the 2 knot flood and had to take a second crack at the line. Windwalker took the Alcatraz side of the course with Kapai to leeward and Luna Sea favoring Angel Island for current relief.

Windwalker rounded Harding first with Luna Sea quite a way behind. Luna Sea and Kapai were within 50 yards windward of us approaching Harding in what was now a 3 Knot Flood. The current intensifies around Harding Buoy so when you think you are fetching the mark suddenly you are not! It is not unusual for boats to make three attempts to get around Harding and in fact Kapai took an extra tack at the last minute which put us on port tack avoiding starboard boats upwind trying to fetch the mark.

We finally made it and had a nice reach until we were off SFO when the wind went light and backed forcing us to pole out our jib. We were one of only a few boats not flying a spinnaker which afforded us a nice view of the fleet heading for the horizon. No complaints as it was about 75 degrees which was quite a welcome change from the central bay. Simply a glorious clear day!

The West Point volunteers could not have been nicer as they assisted us in tying up and even took a couple of group pics for us. After tidying up Kapai we walked down to Luna Sea to congratulate Dan, Myphi and their crew on a great race. Dan said that Windwalker dropped out after getting into some traffic with heavy shipping. Anxious to hear from Rich about this.

West Point hosted a delicious Taco Bar and even had some volunteers on the dock at 5am with coffee and pastries for boats that wished to beat the low tide and get back up to SF. Kapai left WestPoint at 5:15 am and was snug in her dock at South Beach at 8am. Great time had by all.

Commodore Egan


From Luna Sea
I started thinking about this regatta a on Wednesday when I looked at the tide book. Three knot flood at Harding Rock right after the start of the race. There have been times when Luna Sea could not actually get around Harding Rock when there was a three-knot flood. One time we tried for more than two hours before dropping out of a race and heading home. It did not help that the wind projections were all over the place. Some predicting gusts to 18 knots and others showing lows of three knots. For the next couple of days, I was having trouble sleeping thinking about Harding Rock. Ouch.

Plus, we were going to have a short crew, and we had not been sailing much over the last few months. Then I looked at the boats we were racing against. Seven boats in our fleet and four of them were boats that beat us often and of course one was Windwalker and I just marked them down as finishing first. Not in pencil, but in a black Sharpie! The rest of us would be going for second.

So our plan at the start was to sail a long port tack up past Point Blunt and hope to go all the way up near Sausalito before tacking over for Harding Rock and maybe even tack toward Little Harding so we would make it around Harding Rock on the first try. And maybe even get some current relief. We have done this in the past and it seems like a reasonable thing to do most of the time. We have been ten minutes behind Windwalker at Harding when we had tried this. This effectively ends any chance to beat them by the first mark. Maybe a new strategy is something we should consider, but not today.

Since my timing was a bit rusty because of the lack of recent sailing, we decided we should just go for a mid-line starboard start and then tack on to port as soon as we could. Well, I screwed up the start and were blocked out at the start had to gibe around and were 30 seconds late at the start. However, it seems everyone had a bad start, so we were not far behind. Also, the late start left us right at the committee boat and so we could immediately tack on to port. So much for making it easy on the crew. Two tracks and a gybe in the first couple of minutes. I apologized to the crew, who seemed not to have been surprised my my screw up the start. (Wonder why that is.)

So here we were the boat leeward boat in our fleet and heading to Point Blunt. All along looking at our speed through the water and our speed over ground looking for the promised current relief. As we got within a few hundred yards of Point Blunt it was obvious we were going to have to tack and I asked the crew if they could be two short tacks to get us around Blunt and then back inshore next to Angel Island. At this point in the course, we were actually in a counter current, and well that was very nice. That lasted for two minutes and then we were back in the ripping flood. I was hoping for better. That two minutes of ebb was great but we gave up so much for it. Anyway, we had to tack a few more times before actually rounding Harding Rock on the first try, although we definitely overstood the mark. Windwalker had taken a much more direct route, didn't get the two minutes of current relief, and took a few times to actually get around Harding Rock but they still beat us there by more than five minutes! We would never catch them. Next time maybe we will just follow them and forget about the two minutes of current relief.

After rounding the mark the flood was now in our favor, and we were zooming. 7-8 knots on a beam reach with almost 10 over ground. We moved the sheets on the headsail to the toe rail and pointed downwind just enough to make sure we could get past the Alcatraz buoy. We have seen this movie before and were prepared, a few boats that were ahead of us found themselves struggling to get around that mark. We did fine. It was nice beam reach all the way to the City Front and down to the Bay Bridge. As we got to the Bay Bridge the wind lighten and we put up the half ounce kite. This turned out to be a good decision for two reasons, first we waited a bit to put it up because we didn't want to blow it up and second the boats that rushed to put up a kite were rounding up! Never a good sign. After putting up the kite it was really nice sailing and we were pretty much in a parade. In conditions like these it is tuff to pass anyone. We had lunch, enjoyed the wind on the beam and the still massive flood tide.

But of course, sailing is never without excitement. We were just gliding along in our position in the parade and boom, the after guy gave way and the kite turned into a big flag. The noise sounded something like a bomb. We then got the kite back onboard and took out the headsail. At first, we thought we had ripped the kite because there was a nice puff right before the boom but once we got it onboard in looked ok. The clew was not ripped out. Anyway after a few minutes we decided to put it back up which we did. Fortunately for us not a single boat passed us in the parade. But a couple did get closer. Once we got it back up we were on our way. Back to champagne sailing. Our final guess as to why this happened is that the after guy had only two wraps around the second aft winch. It was light winds and I mistakenly thought two would be enough. Three would have been enough. Two was not.

Once we got to the deep-water channel the wind backed off a bit and we were sailing deeper as the apparent wind had dropped at bit. Most boats wanted to continue in the channel as the current was better there. Windwalker had of course got there before us and had positioned herself exactly in the right place to take advantage of the current. But unlucky for her she sailed right into a hole right as a very large bulk carrier was headed down the channel. I think it was the only time all day there was not enough wind to sail. She had no choice but to start her engine and retire. Just bad luck. We all felt very bad for Rich and his crew has they had sailed a wonderful race, but luck is part of every race and today luck was not on their side. Still they showed excellent sportsmanship by doing what they needed to do. They continue to be at the top of our fleet, and this is just another example.

After that it was all pretty straight forward to the finish. We had to gybe a couple of times and did not screw any of those up to badly and we finished pretty much all by ourselves with boats way ahead and other way behind. After our finish we did have a very poor take down of our kite as it went in the water again! Maybe it just wanted to be cleaned. Anyway, we motored into the harbor without any problems and got tied up to the dock wailing for Kapai and the other boats in fleet to finish. Turns out we were first to finish in our section but corrected out second. We were happy with that.

On another note I wanted to mention what a beautiful marina this is. It could very well be the nicest marina I have ever sailed in to. The facilities are all new and the Yacht Club club house is beautiful. There is even a nice restaurant that has an outdoor ice cream store. They had a band and had installed seating and a bar on the docks. Just wonderful. There is only one big problem, not enough water in the harbor. Saturday night we were again stuck in the mud and not a little in the mud. We were in three feet of water. We had planned on having a nice brunch at the restaurant in the morning and a casual sail back to Marina Village. Instead, I had to get up at four am and motor in the dark to get out of the marina and back to the deeper water of the bay. This is not something I enjoyed. Not even a little. I am not sure how someone spends $50 million dollars on a marina that is this nice and makes it only three feet deep. I can put up with The Vallejo Yacht Club having us all in the mud. It's a colorful place and they are always broke. But these guys at not the VYC. Still the staff is excellent, and everyone was fine and very helpful. Did I mention they had a taco bar? On the docks! I'm not sure about coming back next year but that's the same thing I said last year.

BTW thanks to Kapai and Windwalker for showing up. It is just better with having a couple of boats to race against. I don't even mind Windwalker always beating us. I'm just pleased to see them out there.

Happy Sailing, and here's a link to our video..
Dan
Luna Sea, #420

Windwalker	Luna Sea	Bryce - Reanna on Kapai	Windwalker to windward	Luna Sea to leeward
Welcoming Westpoint dock ...	Beautiful Linmar ...	Kapai crew ...	Everyone on Luna Sea