Fall Pacific Coast Championship

Cue Guns 'N Roses "November Rain"... The skipper's briefing took place in a downpour of rain and no wind - a potential precursor to what was to become of the weekend. A short postponement on shore occurred before enough breeze warranted getting out of cars and going sailing. Fortunately, the rain lightened enough and the wind increased enough (4 knots minimum to about 12 knots at the absolute peak puff) to get 3 A races, 2 B races, and 2 C races before race 4A had to be abandoned when the wind fell below the limit early in the race. The sailors waited around on the water from 1:30pm to 2:30pm when a front came with plenty more rain yielding a lot of wet sailors and 1 more A race. Race 3b was started and abandoned when the wind died again. Frustrated the RC called the day at roughly 3:30pm recognizing a large dump of water was coming along shortly and sunset was before 5pm. As the sailors hit the docks, the dumping began and so did the 8-10 knot Southerly. Truly a brutal day to try to run races. During the races that did occur, the wind shifted steadily right the entire time starting from the East and switching all the way to the northwest.

The conference met up for the fall meeting following racing at the Santa Barbara Yacht Club who were extremely gracious hosts bringing out hot coffee, outdoor fire pits and warmers on the lower deck out of the rain. The sailors were PCCSC typical - polite, courteous, and grateful. Thank you SBYC and PCCSC Sailors! Thank you to Kris Ozolins and Claire Hunt who came out for the whole day to grind through the 8 completed races.

The rain forecast looked less ominous Sunday morning after Santa Barbara reportedly receiving a 5+ inch deluge on Saturday. The wind forecast was not great, but also not to be trusted. The first warning was moved up to 10 am in hopes of completing the regatta. But at 10am, the wind died. Fortunately, some mercy occurred with an easterly breeze that kicked on at a whopping 4-5 knots at 10:20am. 2 more races were completed in every division getting A division through race 6A when the wind zeroed out and race 5b was abandoned. And that was it. One more big dump of rain came with some decent wind to build a little more character and an attempt at a start occurred before the wind shut off. It was 2:00pm with a 3:00pm end time and the conference began voting with their feet as they all pointed their boats towards the harbor. They were right to do so as absolutely no breeze materialized for the remainder of the raceable time. We unfortunately had to throw out race 5a and 6a.

On a very positive note, the conference was in great spirits the whole weekend and seemed to agree they were building character (several teams camped all weekend)! For the PRO that's writing this, I probably already had enough character going into the weekend, but it was still awesome to see these great athletes smiling and having fun.

The following chart shows the relative rank of the teams as of the race indicated. Note that the races are ordered by number, then division, which may not represent the order in which the races were actually sailed.

The first place team as of a given race will always be at the top of the chart. The spacing from one team to the next shows relative gains/losses made from one race to the next. You may hover over the data points to display the total score as of that race.