SAILING ANARCHY: SIXES AND SEVENS

The International Six Metre Invitational Regatta hosted by St. Francis Yacht Club this week concluded with a whimper a day early, the result of a masterpiece of scheduling by the race organizers.

Racing was slated for Tuesday through Friday with the first warning signal at 2PM Tuesday and Wednesday and 4PM Thursday and Friday due to the race area being closed because of Fleet Week, an awesome display of naval aviation, oh, and the Canadian Snowbirds, who do a few flyby’s and then apologize to everyone. The Blue Angels always put on a great show with practice runs Thursday and Friday.

The ideal wind speed conditions for optimal 6m racing is 8-14 true. This allows the boats to be powered up and keeps the fleet tight.  In San Francisco, starting races later in the day typically means lots of breeze. With this in mind, concerns were voiced to the primary race organizers with hopes that racing would be moved up to take advantage of the lighter morning breezes. This was brought up at the skippers meeting and quashed by the skipper of one of the two locally crewed boats, who also happened to be the StFYC Commodore. Apparently his crew was unavailable earlier, and the wishes of those teams who had traveled from as far as Rhode Island didn’t matter.

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