St Francis Yacht Club - Stone Cup - Soozal dominates IRC boats

by David Wells on 19 May 2010 Under grey skies and blustery winds the St. Francis Yacht Club's Stone Cup event was held this past weekend of May 15-16. With 35 boats in three divisions racing was tight in each division with one exception.

Typical San Francisco Bay weather greeted the Stone Cup sailors for two days of racing hosted by the St Francis Yacht Club. The Marine Layer that had been missing all year showed its presence over the weekend ensuring the fleets would have plenty of wind for racing. With a strong flood tide providing flat water, at least flat by San Francisco standards, and 15-25 mph of wind from the first gun, each day of racing would have been perfect it wasn't so darn cold!

The 16 boat J/105 class was missing local scratch boat Good Timin' but the competition was still fierce in this hotly contested one design class. Three different boats each won one of the four races held, but it was Adam Spiegel's Jam Session that came out on top. Bruce Stone's Arbitrage took second and Scooter Simmons on Blackhawk took third. Each of these two boats also won races individually with Blackhawk winning race 2 and 4 and Arbitrage winning race three. Simmons probably has a story to tell about his 10th place finish in race one. With a 10-1-3-1 scoring line something dramatic must have happened. Perhaps Scooter will fill us in.

In the 40ft J/120 class Desdemona owned by John Wimer took the victory while Mr. Magoo helmed by Steve Madeira took second. The podium was rounded out by Dayenu in third but only by the narrowest of margins did the Donald Payan boat miss second place. It went down to the last race in which Mr Magoo took the bullet and put two boats between himself and Dayenu (fourth) and even then it went to a tiebreaker with Mr. Magoo winning by virtue of that low score first place finish.

In the IRC division the nine boat fleet was smaller than in previous years, fielding only an A fleet, and this year Daniel Woolery's Soozal dominated the action winning all four races. Brad Copper steering TNT was in second and Sylvaine Barrielle on Ciao took third. Woolery's performance on Soozal this year makes up for missing the win in the 2009 Stone Cup by a single point.