Home	Westpoint Regatta, 6/30 2018

Fellow Islanders:

We had a great turnout for the Westpoint Regatta. There was tons of wind and a lot of fun! There will be lots of pictures to follow. There were some great shots of our fleet at the party. I am tracking down those photos! We also have some from our boat that will be along shortly.

First a great big welcome back to Bill Hackel and the crew of Highlighter. It was wonderful to see the out there.

There were enough entries to get our own start! We started at 11:40 with a pretty good start for everybody. The sky was clear and we had strong winds in the mid 20's and building in typical central bay slot fashion.

We elected to keep our 135 up knowing we would get hammered a little going to Harding Rock. We showed up a little early to the line and Zingara right on our hip just missed taking us up while we just cleared the pin end of the line. Zingara just tapped the pin and had to go back around. Everyone else started closer to the committee boat and tacked over almost immediately to see if they could take advantage of the current relief behind Angel Island.

We decided to take the current relief on the front side and headed up behind Angel Island. We tacked over and found ourselves to windward of the fleet. Unfortunately our 135 has just not allowed us to point with the rest of the fleet and this was no exception. The rest of the fleet climbed on us until we hit Angel Island and tacked to go around Pt. Blunt. Most of the fleet was together at this point tacking along the west side of Angel Island to take advantage of the current break.

We got stomped on by a CAL 40 and didn't quite make it as far up Angel Island as we wanted. We short tacked to get further north and went for Harding when we thought we had enough in the bank to make Harding. We were just making it when a trio of bigger faster boats went over the top of us forcing a short tack to make the mark. We were in good company as several boats also had to tack to make up for the famous heavy currents at Harding Rock.

Once we were around we shot for the right middle of the Bay bridge knowing that to go to close to the city was asking for trouble. We had a light fast boat to our leeward who kept heading us up until we just had enough and ducked him in order to keep our course. Staying out from the city front we took the course further to the west, and got more consistent wind. Zingara stopped for a while probably about the time the wind changed 1430. They literally lost rudderway. We did not. We were going back and forth with them until we set our chute around Hunters Point.

We probably should have set our spinnaker a bit earlier, but we saw plenty of people not having luck with a spinnaker up along the city front. Once the chute was up we took off :) Total credit goes to my crew of Roger and Greg. They did an incredible job through the entire race keeping the sails going.

We lost track of the other Islander 36's as we stayed close to the channel in order to take advantage of the current. With the heavy winds keeping the boat under the chute was definitely fun. We saw what turned out to be Dan Knox ahead and off to starboard. From about south bay buoy eight we had a Beneteau 36.7 right on our tail. Our real goal was to get past Dan. We almost made it too. We were gaining on him with about a knot of boat speed advantage once he dropped his chute for the final leg. About 1/4 mile from the finish and less than a boat length behind Dan our spinnaker exploded into shreds. We got the jib out quickly while we picked up the pieces of the kite. The Beneteau which had been licking at out heels for the last 10 miles or so almost made it past us but we still managed to beat them by a half a boat length. Nothing like keeping a Beneteau that rates 81 to our 144 at bay for 10 miles.

It was a wonderful race! Congratulations go to Highlighter which must have set their chute a bit earlier than we did. They took first place. We came in second with Zingara, Kapai and Nutmeg all making it through in that order. A big hand to Kapai for running with a father son duo for the race.

We met with lots of crews at the Sequoia Y.C. party afterwards. On the dock at Westpoint they had complementary tritip sandwiches and beer. Once at the party it was great fun talking with everyone. I stayed on the boat over night and enjoyed the nice facilities at Westpoint. In the morning my crew returned minus one and we grabbed breakfast at Sequoia. We saw Kapai take off early and should have followed their lead. As it was we had to dig a furrow in the mud to get to the channel. We did make it out and back to Coyote Point in time to clean the boat up.

Congratulations to everyone who came!!!! Click here for the details.
This will split into Spinnaker and non-spinnaker for our fleet results, with Zingara still on top for non-spinnaker! We hope to see more of Highlighter, Kapai, and Nutmeg!

Eric Mueller
3I6 SV Serenity