The miracle of combined events

by Pressure-Drop.US on 1 Jun 2016 With 2/3s or two legs of the Inaugural California Offshore Race Week in the books, one thing stands out, it's a winner!

By combining the efforts of three singular events into one extended week and working around the Memorial Day holiday, organizers and participants alike have to be ecstatic on the turnout and competition achieved.

Beginning with Fridays Spinnaker Cup, the annual 88nm (usually downhill) jaunt from Francisco to Monterey seeing a record 60 boats registered, up significantly from 23 participants in 2015, and well exceeding the average mid 30's to low 40's over past five - seven years. With boats and crews already that far down the coast, why not continue on?

The second leg, the Coastal Cup was reduced from its original 277 nm grind from San Francisco to Santa Barbara, had been on life support recently. With only eight boats in attendance in 2015, and a complete cancellation in 2014 for lack of participants, nine boats in 2013 and not much better in the previous years, it appears the magic is back. 29 boats registered and 27 sailed the now 200nm race from Monterey to Santa Barbara.

The third leg of the Race week, will take the 29 registered boats from Santa Barbara to San Diego this Friday and wrap up on Sunday June 5th. A 10 day week if you will, with layovers! Compared to most race weeks these day which run for three - four days, it’s a lot of serious sailing comingled with some relaxing and enjoying the places you have sailed to.

'We wanted to create an event that would combine some of the most scenic ports and coastline on the West Coast with family friendly travel' says David Servais, one of the chairs on the CORW committee. 'You have San Francisco, Monterey, Santa Barbara and San Diego all linked together in a situation where family and friends can follow along, while enjoying great scenery and reconnoiter in these beautiful cities, and have some relaxing down time in the process, and it seems to be working!'

There is something to be said for destination sailing, but all too often, crews, upon arrival will quickly turn around to deliver boats back to port, or throw them on a trailer and hit the highway without taking in much of the ambiance. As for the extended layover in Santa Barbara, the extra time allows for some sailors and crew to return home to tend to business while others can mend worn bits and pieces on the boats and body.

The final leg, the second annual SoCal 300, which is actually 255nm as the crow flies, begins with a 35nm semi-uphill leg from Santa Barbara to the west end of Santa Cruz Island, then crack off to towards San Nicolas Island, before heading almost due south to the Bishop Rock Buoy before turning back to shore in a south east fashion and finishing in San Diego. Last year's inaugural event drew nine offshore competitors, but was embraced with remarkable rave reviews. 'We tried to form an offshore race that gets boats out to where the wind is, and showcase some of the finer bluewater attributes of the So Cal area and I think we succeeded' Dave adds. With 29 Boats participating, 20 more than last year, it appears the marriage of Nor Cal and So Cal events has legs.

Thus far, sailors have enjoyed a wide variety of conditions, from brisk down hill surfing, to tight reaches in light air, close encounters of the cetacean kind, including up close and personal, humpback braches, grey whale nudges, elephant seals, dolphins, schools of tuna crab, hooked crab pots and a couple USCG boardings to keep them amused.

Records have been set, and reset, and for the first time, a Mod 70' has joined the action. A new class of offshore one design, in the Pacific 52' has debuted. Watching closely has been Frank Slootman, an avid offshore owner, who campaigned his RP63' Invisible Hand in a multitude of west coast offshore events, and is soon to be the proud owner of his own Pacific 52. 'It (the CORW) has the potential to become an institution, a classic. That said, we need to have divisions such as the one the Pac 52's will provide for great, closely matched, high seas battles. I'm looking forward to next year’s event!'

This year, 18 boats have signed up and are competing in the entirety of the three offshore legs of the CORW. Others have picked and chosen legs that work for them. Which is exactly how the race organizers had planned for. However, if there seems to be a fly in the ointment, it might just be the various rating rules. Each of the offshore events is currently run under a separate rating schedule. This can be a bit confusing, but we attempt explain the variations here:

Spinnaker Cup
NOR available here.

Northern California PHRF Ratings will be used to calculate the corrected times using Time-on-Time scoring.

13.2

Either standard or downwind PHRF Ratings will be used. The rating used will be based on the following data observed during the race:

Average wind direction calculated from hourly data reported from the following National Data Buoy Center buoys for the 14 hours after the first class’ starting signal. Each buoy’s average will then be averaged. Any individual observations that are missing will be disregarded.

a.) Station 46026 (San Francisco) located 18NM West of San Francisco
b.) Station 46012 (Half Moon Bay) located 24NM SSW of San Francisco
c.) Station 46042 (Monterey) located 27NM WNW of Monterey

Observed data from these buoys is available at website.

13.3

Standard PHRF Ratings will be used if the computed wind direction is greater than or equal to 65 (degrees true) and lower than or equal to 245 (degrees true).

13.4

Downwind PHRF Ratings will be used if the computed wind direction is lower than 65 (degrees true) and greater than 245 (degrees true).

Coastal Cup

The Scoring System

The Low-Point Scoring System, RRS A4, will be used. Boats will be handicapped and scored using their Northern California PHRF Downwind rating, as described in the Notice of Race.

So Cal 300 is using a complicated leg by leg scoring system which can be found here.

The CORW series score will use the sum of each boats finish position in all three races which can be found here.

We look forward to the conclusion of this inaugural California Offshore Race Week, and look forward to years and years of additional events!