A Q&A with Eric Arens about the Richmond YC’s Great Pumpkin Regatta

by David Schmidt, Sail-World USA Editor on 23 Oct 2017 When it comes to intriguing and creative regatta names, the Richmond Yacht Club’s (RYC) Great Pumpkin Regatta (GPR) finds itself in rarefied company. Granted, the GPR takes place on the waters of San Francisco Bay near Halloween (October 28 and 29, 2017), but the moniker is an attention-grabbing one, as is the fact that this event, now preparing for its 32nd running, regularly attracts starting-line crowds that are north of 150 boats. Impressive stuff, but this Corinthian- and family-oriented event works hard to foster a welcoming environment that is big on fun and shy on some of the formalities that sometimes deter less-ambitious racers (read: cruising sailors) from getting involved in organized regattas.

Like many regattas, the GPR will rifle off its share of sausage-shaped courses, but-like other Bay-area clubs-the RYC makes use of its nearby islands, bridges and other natural features to test the fleet’s ability to stretch things out a bit and play with some seldom-sailed angles.

Given the year (2017), the regatta’s location, and the fact that 50 years have slipped astern since San Francisco helped ignite a cultural revolution, the theme of this year’s GPR is Summer of Love Sailing, and the event’s webpage promises that Saturday night’s party will feature “Great food, Great Band, Outrageous Costumes”, so participants can expect a rockin’ great time, both on the water and off.

I caught up with Eric Arens, race chair for the GPR, via email to learn more about this uniquely named regatta.

Can you give us a little background on the GPR? How and when did it start and what kind of sailor does it attract?
The Great Pumpkin began about 1980, around Halloween and at the end of summer racing. There is a big party with a theme on Saturday night that stimulates quite a few people to come in costume, and with a dance band and dancers the clubhouse really shakes.

Although there are a lot of boats on the water, occasionally a fleet has used the races as its national championship.

How many boats are you anticipating seeing on this year’s starting line? Also, how does this metric compare to recent years’ entries?
There are three racecourse areas on Saturday, which are in the Olympic Circle area, in the Southampton area north of Angel Island, and in an area between the other two courses.

The first Great Pumpkin I ran was in 1998, and there were two courses as there had been in the immediately previous years. Then the fleets were all One Design, and one course had the fleets of smaller boats and the other course had the fleets of larger boats.

In the early 2000s, several owners of even larger boats asked me if they could participate, and I added a third course. Also, [after] getting requests from owners of boats that did not have fleets, I began to make PHRF fleets to accommodate the boats that did not have fleets of the minimum required size.

On Sunday there is a pursuit race around Alcatraz and Angel Islands, which can be sailed in either direction.

The number of entries kept increasing year by year, from about 130 in the late 1990s to a plateau of about 230 a few years ago.

In the ideal world, how many races will you guys fit into the weekend-long event?
There are three races scheduled on each of three courses for Saturday, and one long distance race around Angel Island and Alcatraz is scheduled for Sunday.

What kinds of course shapes to do employ? All windward-leewards, or do you guys get creative with the Bay’s islands and geography?
On Saturday each course area has only a windward-leeward course with one mark at the windward end and one mark at the leeward end. The starting line boat is to leeward of the leeward mark, and the finishing line boat is to windward of the windward mark.

With this arrangement, the starting and finishing lines are not crossed by boats in the middle of their races. Also-and what helps to make the regatta popular-is that a fleet can start as soon as it comes back to the starting area. There is no waiting around.

On Sunday there is a large motorboat on each end of the starting line of the pursuit race. For about 10 years now I have put a steel-drum band onto one of the starting-line boats. This is quite popular, as is the trivia quiz that can be answered while sailing around the islands.

It takes a lot of people to run the regatta in this format. The racing takes about 70 people on Saturday. The on-shore operations take about 40 people. The on-the-water volunteers are all gotten by phoning them. It takes 10 hours of phoning about 250 people, but people like it. It's old fashioned. If requests for volunteers are made by email, few people respond. People like to be spoken to. Included in the list of people to be phoned are all the new members of the club who said they would like to help on race committees. So the Great Pumpkin is also a regatta for new people to learn.

What have been the biggest changes and evolutions to the event that you have seen in your 20 years of chairing the event?
The Great Pumpkin takes any fleets and will make PHRF fleets, so we have added fleets. We have also lost fleets.

Can you tell us about any steps that the event has taken to green-up or lower its environmental footprint in the 20 years that you have been chairing the event? Also, anything new this year to reduce the regatta’s environmental footprint?
No, we have not taken any steps to green-up. Actually we have gone the other way, with the large use of plastic water bottles now. We do not throw the bottles into the water, but not all the bottles end up in recycling. Plastic in the ocean bothers me, but I do not know what to do about it.

Anything else that you’d like to add, for the record?
I took up sailing in 1966 when I graduated from grad school and moved to the Annapolis, Maryland area, and I found International 14s in 1969. I really got into it and won the International 14 U.S. National Championship in 1984 in a boat that three of us International 14 sailors had designed based on a Kirby 7 International 14 and that Steve Clark built when he was young and building one-offs.

I ran all the Chesapeake Bay Race Week protest committees for several years around 1980, and became a USYRU (United States Yacht Racing Union) judge in 1981. USYRU was trying to become more organized and was making a list of people who had heard a lot of protests. They called these people judges. In later years USYRU and then USSA (United States Sailing Association) required judges to attend seminars and take tests and fill out synopses of protest hearings, which turned off the judges who were really good sailors.

The newer judges were often people who found prestige in being a judge instead of people who already had prestige by being a good sailor. The same thing happened with race committee chairmen, who became called PROs in the new bureaucratic language. These newer rules-followers follow the rules to stay out of trouble but do not know what rules are needed for what kinds of regattas.

I write non-standard NORs and SIs that are easy to read and have a few fun additions. Sailors like the more casual settings and turn out in greater numbers for fun events. The best example of fun regattas generating large turnouts is the Three Bridge Fiasco on San Francisco Bay, that has a course around islands in any direction and starts across the starting line in either direction. It might be the largest regatta in the US.

This information shows where I got my ideas and thinking for running the Great Pumpkin.

When I took over running the Pumpkin, I was left to do things pretty much as I wanted to. Things were less strict then, and I had fun making the regatta fun. My goal was to get as many boats to come so that we would have a low entry fee and a lot of money for the party on Saturday night.