Southern California Yachting Assoc. Mid Winter Regatta was held this weekend. The 20 footers raced out of Mission Beach YC in San Diego. 7 boats entered...6 I20's and one Tornado (guess who!).

We were raced boat for boat...no handicapping applied.


My crew was a new Afterburner recruit…18 year-old Colin Delany. He's a real quick study, very keen. Was his first small boat race/regatta.

On day one we saw 5-10 knot winds out on the ocean. We fought hard upwind against the better light-wind sailing I20's…barely able to hang with them. Off wind was a completely different story..we stomped them all day long! Was only when we had problems/mistakes (douse line or sail getting wrapped under the snuffer ring, hitting big kelp patch right at leeward mark and drifting into mark..then hooking rudder on mark) did we slip back and loose positions & points.

Sunday saw 15+ knots in the 1st race. We needed 3 bullets to ensure a series win. We could now double-trap to weather and ate up the fleet…had a huge lead by the first mark, extended downwind again but had a sail wrap around the snuffer ring during the douse…took a while to fix it and fell back to nearly last place. Came storming back but winds lightened some and only managed a 2nd place. Best we could hope for now was a series tie unless the lead I20 screwed up big time…he was pretty flawless.

Second race we got it together, no big issues except on the last downwind run we discovered our spin halyard had frayed through to a few remaining strands of spectra right where the cleat grabbed it. It held together and got us over the line for a 1st place. We frantically jury rigged the halyard for the next/last race by re-positioning the frayed area to the unloaded side of the cleat…had to last 3 downwinds in 10-12 knts. The leading I20 stepped it up some and we fell behind in the lighter air…didn't look good. We were behind by about 500 yards after 3 laps in lightening winds…took a flyer off to the left side right after the leeward mark, the leader tacked to cover. We got excellent winds, finally got the hull out again while double-trapped…clawed back his lead and at the crossing
we were dead even…had to duck his sterns…he tried to tack right on top of us, but we blew by to leeward. By pure luck (couldn't see the marks when we tacked) we were on the perfect layline to the finish, still double-trapped and flying…he couldn't do a thing and fell way back in the remaining 1000 meters.

Came down to a tie-breaker with the leading I20. 3 wins each, 2
second places each. So, it went to the placings in the last race…

Offical Results:

Place # Skipper Hometown Race 1 Race 2 Race 3 Race 4 Race 5 Race
6 Total

1 99 Mike Dobbs Newbury Park, CA - 5 2 1 2 1 1 7

2 273 Bob Sherman San Diego, CA 1 1 - 2 1 2 2 7

3 229 Steve Stroebel San Diego, CA 2 3 - 4 4 4 3 16

4 1014 Kevan Peck San Diego, CA - 6 5 5 3 3 4 20

5 1026 Carl Teyssier Ramona, CA 3 4 3 5 5 - 6 20

6 227 Wally Chapman El Cajon, CA - 7 7 7 6 6 5 31

7 478 Richard Brenner Palos Verdes Estates, CA 4 6 6 - 8 dnc 8 dnc
8 dnc 32

Mike.






Last edited by Tornado; 02/23/09 04:39 PM.

Mike Dobbs
Tornado CAN 99 "Full Tilt"