ICOYC News

An Unexpected Day with an Unexpected Outcome

 

Back in March during a speaker series event at San Francisco Yacht Club with members from the USA SailGP team, skipper Taylor Canfield was asked a question by a junior sailor: “I want to be you…how can I do that?” Taylor’s answer was concise and specific: “Sail with as many different people as you can, on as many different kinds of boats as you can, and try to learn from all of it.”

Taking that advice to heart, and with the generosity of club members Tom Coats and Steve Marsh, we enlisted the help of J/105 Masquerade, and built a crew of five junior sailors to compete in San Francisco Yacht Club’s Anniversary Cup and Staff Commodore’s Cup regattas. Four sailors on our crew were under the age of 10 – Madeline Doyle, Maclin Gear, Ateas Dailey-Paulin, Mattie Marsh. We augmented that crew with a few adults including skipper Morgan Frymier, Steve Marsh, Ben Xu, Molly Carapiet, myself and Matt Frymier.

Our goal was to get kids on the water, having fun learning about sailing bigger boats while staying safe. It was also a wonderful demonstration of sportsmanship for these young sailors, with multiple North American champions, Olympians, and other storied sailors from our club cheering them on along the course.

 

 

Conditions at the start of the Anniversary Cup pursuit race were light: 4-8 knots out of a southeasterly direction, which is quite uncommon for San Francisco Bay. The key to this race was using all of that non-traditional breeze to “get to” the eventual westerly seabreeze which we all knew was eventually coming. The big question was “when?” The race had several tough dead zones which at times moved the standings around and created challenging helming conditions.

In the end, the kids finished first in our division of seven boats, just able to hold off Dave MacEwen and team aboard the always-speedy Lucky Duck at the finish. There were lots of grins among the youth sailors. What a treat and our second unexpected outcome of the day given the talent on some of the other boats racing!

 

 

The Staff Commodore’s Cup was sailed in similarly dynamic conditions. Although we were trailing S/C Tad Lacey and the mighty team aboard J/120 Peregrine at the first weather mark we were able to stay close to them and Lucky Duck though two laps, and when they unluckily found one of those pesky holes at the last leeward mark, we were able to slip past them both to sweep the day.

One of the kids said it best: “This is the most exciting day of my life!”