Alive claims Spinnaker Cup

Thirty-nine teams in seven divisions of PHRF took part in the 2019 Spinnaker Cup from San Francisco Bay to Monterey, the opening stage of California Offshore Race Week. Phillip Turner’s Reichel Pugh 66 Alive earned line honors in addition to winning PHRF A and Overall, finishing the 88nm course in 07:16:17.

After an hour delay, the race got started along the west side of Angel Island, sending the fleet out the Golden Gate Bridge before turning south for the run to Monterey.

The Spinnaker Cup is the first of three races in the fifth edition of California Offshore Race Week, to be followed by the Coastal Cup and SoCal 300. Nine teams are competing in the full series, and many boats have their Transpac Race crews on board in preparation for this summer’s 50th running of the Transpac Race.

One such team preparing for Transpac is Alive which is visiting California from Derwent Sailing Squadron in Hobart, Tasmania. Alive elapsed time win was about 30 minutes behind the monohull course record. Alive is racing the full Offshore Race Week series before taking on a massive 17 boat Division 1 in the Transpac Race in July.

Also in PHRF-A Class was the next edition of the Santa Cruz 70 battle between Edward Marez’s Buona Sera and Joel Ronning’s Catapult. After a correct time tie between the two in 2018, Catapult managed to hold off Buona Sera this year, pulling away on the final downwind leg crossing Monterey Bay to cover the rating difference and take the SC70 win. They’ll have their work cut out to keep pace with Alive as the three will battle in Class A in the Coastal Cup.

In the PHRF-C Class, James Bradford’s Farr 40 Bright Hour sailed the shortest distance in the class to help net the class win, sailing 92nm versus the 100nm sailed by Zachery Anderson’s J/125 Velvet Hammer who finished 2nd in class. The other Farr 40 in the class, Barrington Darcy’s Taurus visiting from the UK, also in Transpac Race preparation, took 3rd in class.

The always competitive Santa Cruz 50/52 class kept the racing tight once again this year. As experienced teams from Northern California racing this course, Oaxaca, Lucky Duck, and Deception all finished within 13 minutes of each other and corrected to even closer with Michael Moradzadeh’s Oaxaca taking the class win despite sailing the most miles in the class.

Wayne Zittel’s J World’s Hula Girl had to return to the dock soon after leaving San Francisco Bay with some damage to the boat. The team was scheduled to race the full week, so having to drop out soon early seemed like a major problem. Thanks to a weekend welder and fiberglass repair, the boat was repaired, tested and made its way down to Monterey and will be on the start line for the Coastal Cup.

All four Santa Cruz boats will have another chance to compete against each other as they are all doing the full race week.

Ray Paul’s beautiful Swan 53-2 Blue was the winner for Class E, taking a straighter line across Monterey Bay to pass Michael Clarke’s J/120 Shenanigans who had led the fleet down the coast most of the way.

More than any other stage in race week, the Spinnaker Cup lends itself to including smaller boats as it is the shortest distance, arrives in Monterey on Saturday/Sunday of Memorial Day weekend, and allows Northern California’s the chance to race and get home over the holiday weekend. As a result, the Classes E and F have typically more participation from these types of local teams.

Class E was won by Pete Trachy’s Donovan 30 Wolfpack. They took the farther west line in the class to pull out in front and finish nearly an hour before any other Class E teams for the class win before turning around and heading straight home with the boat. Brice Dunwoodie, sailing in his first Spinnaker Cup in the C&C 115 Raven, took 2nd place.

James Goldberg used the Spinnaker Cup as the first chance to take his new JPK 1080 Psycho Tiller II out for an ocean race. After racing a J/109 for many years, he couldn’t pass up the opportunity to make the move to the JPK 1080 when a rare one became available in the US. Psycho Tiller II finished 4th in Class E.

In Class F, the Cal 40s took two of the top three spots, led by Don Jesberg’s Cal 40 Viva. Jesberg is new to Cal 40 racing, taking a close line to the rhumbline to win the class. Viva will continue to race head to head all week against Rodney Pimentel’s Azure, who is stacked with an experienced Cal 40 team.

Rebecca Hinden’s Express 27 Bombora was 2nd in Class F for the second year in a row, using her past experience in this race to finish ahead of the other to Express 27s and just about all of the Class F competition.

Rafi Yahalom sailed LookinGood II as the lone multihull entry, finishing with a corrected time of 10th overall.

For those racing for the full week, teams were dual scored as PHRF (using PHRF downwind ratings) for the Spinnaker Cup as a stand alone event, and with ORR for the overall CORW series scoring. The best ORR corrected time went to J/125 Velvet Hammer.

Next up is the Coastal Cup on May 27 with 17 teams racing from Montherey to Santa Barbara.

Event details – Entry list – Spinnaker Cup results – Tracker

The fifth edition of California Offshore Race Week once again connects three distances races into a full offshore race week series. The first stage is the Spinnaker Cup on May 25 (San Francisco to Monterey; 88nm) followed by the Coastal Cup on May 27 (Monterey to Santa Barbara; 204nm) and the SoCal 300 on May 30 (Santa Barbara to San Diego; 245nm).

New this year, the California Offshore Week includes a fourth component for the fastest boats – the CA 500 from San Francisco to San Diego on May 30. Originally conceived by Manouch Moshayedi who owns Rio100, the big monohulls couldn’t rally interest but three MOD70s will be using the course as preparation for the 2019 Transpac Race in July.

Source: Jared Wohlgemuth