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  A big weekend for racing - Sailing news from North America and beyond
 | | Bermuda may be a long ways from the Seattle Yacht Club's Opening Day parade, but the waters are getting hot off of Bermuda ahead of next month's 35th America's Cup match Austin Wong | ACEA |
Seattle might have earned its national reputation due to our “lovely” weather (read: rain, and copious amounts of it), but four feet of rain in seven months is a lot of precipitation. However, I heard on the news the other day that this is the amount of rain that has graced my hometown just since October 1. While this no doubt helped our friends at REI and West Marine sell Gore-Tex jackets and foul-weather gear, it didn't do much for the city's collective psyche (except for this season's powder skiing, but that's a different story), so you can imagine the overall reception when the first weekend in May-otherwise known as Opening Day Weekend to any Seattle-area boater-was bluebird sunny (OK, so there were a few clouds), with some of the warmest temps that we've enjoyed since last August.
True, the sales of rain- and foul-weather gear jackets were likely down, but another fun Seattle statistic is that-as a collective whole-we buy more sunglasses than Americans living in any other large city (Punch line? Because there's so [relatively] little need for these devices, Seattleites can't remember where they last stashed their shades), so hopefully sales of sunscreen, sun hats, and yes, sunglasses, helped make up for any shortfalls.
For the rest of us who are far more concerned with harvesting Vitamin D than retail-sales numbers, Seattle Yacht Club's Opening Day boat parade along the shores of Lake Union, Portage Bay, the Montlake Cut, Union Bay and Lake Washington, provided more than enough nautical entertainment and pageantry to launch another boating season off onto a great start.
 | | California might be hundreds of miles from Seattle, but sailors participating in the Sloop Tavern's Race to the Straits enjoyed similar conditions as these sailors seen here enjoying the 2015 Great Vallejo Race Pressure Drop . US |
Across town and across yacht-club lines, the Sloop Tavern Yacht Club, which occupies a dramatically different albeit equally loved spot on Seattle's sailing scene (YC membership at the extremely modest Sloop Tavern will run you $125 to join and $75 to renew, and that's for a voting membership; associate memberships are roughly half this rate) than the significantly more refined Seattle Yacht Club, hosted their annual Race to the Strait. This two-day affair started and ended at Shilshole Bay Marina and took the fleet some (ballpark) 35 nautical miles north to charming the charming Olympic Peninsula community of Port Townsend for a night before spinning the compass cards and bringing the fleet home on Sunday.
While I sadly missed this race, I enjoyed a fine view of the fleet vanishing to the south from the highlands at Ebey's Landing National Historical Reserve on Whidbey Island's western shore, and while I doubt a new course record was set in the 10-12 knots of northerly breeze that was flowing down the course, my friends out in the fleet sure didn't look like they were encumbered by the heavy layers of polar fleece, merino wool and foul-weather gear that we were hiding beneath just eight days before during the Protection Islands Race.
Seattle may have enjoyed a (seemingly rare, at least for this spring) warm and sunny weekend but Sail-World.com's enthusiastic embrace of the boating season certainly isn't limited to the Pacific Northwest (although I doubt that any other serious American sailing city can compete with our four feet of rain since October 1!), and this early May weekend was a big one for racing from coast to coast to coast, as well as on the waters between.
 | | 2015 Great Vallejo Race Pressure Drop . US |
For example, on the West Coast, Vallejo Yacht Club, in Vallejo, California, hosted the Great Vallejo Race, while back East the Annapolis Yacht Club, in Annapolis, Maryland, hosted its Helly Hansen Annapolis NOOD Regatta on the waters of the Chesapeake Bay and the American Yacht Club, in Rye, New York, hosted its annual American Yacht Club Spring Series on Long Island Sound. In Florida, the Key Biscayne Yacht Club, situated on Key Biscayne, hosted its Annual Regatta, while in Kemah, Texas, the Texas Corinthian Yacht Club hosted the U.S. Match Racing Championship Qualifier.
 | | 2015 Great Vallejo Race Pressure Drop . US |
In between America's three coastlines reside myriad lakes, rivers, and waterways, as well as many hard-core boaters who love to race sailboats as much as their saltwater-obsessed friends on the coasts and who also made the most of an early May weekend. For example, the Ozark Yacht Club, in Osage Beach, Missouri, hosted the Megabyte Midwest Regional Regatta, while the Kentucky Lake Sailing Club, situated in Grand Rivers, Kentucky, hosted the Governor's Cup.
 | | Emirates Team New Zealand America's Cup Class (ACC) AC50 on her first sail in Bermuda Austin Wong | ACEA |
Meanwhile, on the island nation of Bermuda, situated some 600 nautical miles off the coast of South Carolina, six teams are preparing their wingsail-powered and fully foiling ACC boats for the 35th America's Cup (June 17-27, 2017), which begins its Louis Vuitton America's Cup Qualifiers (Round Robin 1) on Friday, May 26. While excitement is building across the USA for a great summer of racing, you can bet your last remaining shackle that the energy on Bermuda (population: 64,237 according to 2010 census data) will be nearing a hydrofoil-borne crescendo come mid-to-late June, so stay tuned!
May the four winds blow you safely home,
David Schmidt, Sail-World USA Editor
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