Afterburner is a 52' catamaran owned by Bill Gibbs and based out of Ventura, Ca. After battling the steep part of the learning curve for awhile, they are getting the boat to sail pretty fast these days. Few things are more fun than reading first hand stories about interesting races, and here is one from Bill himself - Ed

I enjoy writing a long, GPS track based, report to share with friends/sailors/crew outside our local ORCA group. Hence the excessive detail . Only takes a click to delete :-) Otherwise, here it is for your enjoyment.


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The Tri-Point Race is the last and shortest of our local Land Rover"Island" Series, which includes the Hardway and the Milt Ingram races. All involve Anacapa Island as a mark. Kind of hard to miss. Anacapa is one of our local Channel Islands, a small one. Its neighbors, Santa Cruz and Santa Rosa, are huge by comparison. Anacapa is long (~ 4.3 miles mostly E-W), skinny, broken into three sections by narrow gaps, has a lighthouse and a famous arch at the east end, and sports a small mountain with a pelican refuge at it's west end. The backside can be a nightmare to racers due to variable wind shadows. And Santa Cruz, 7.5 miles west, can cast its own long shadow when the wind pipes up. The local "normal" winds are westerly. The Tri-Point is the only local race leaving Anacapa to starboard, making the backside the upwind leg for extra fun. One of its oddities is that in a W wind, there is no downwind leg. Leg 1 is a beam reach (5.1 miles) to oil rig Gina, leg 2 a close reach (7.2 miles), leg 3 the weather leg (the backside of Anacapa, 5 miles), leg 4 a broad reach to the finish (17 miles).

My last two Tri-Point races have been less than stellar performances. Both were in light winds. Both times I tacked in close for the final island rounding, only to get severely headed by light confused winds in close to the west tip of the island. Both times I struggled around the island, watching boats that had stayed out, sail past me. Last year a local monohull, Quantum (Andrews 56) beat Afterburner on elapsed time. I got a humbling education on light air weather legs. This year will be different!

Preparation - We sail the week before, and watch the winds daily. The whole week is very similar. We should have 8 knots W at the start. It should build up to 12 later in the afternoon. We arrive early and re-rig our bowsprit for the screecher reaching we'll be doing. Then it's out to the start line.

Start - We get out to the start line about 25 minutes before our start (the fifth start). We have a small jib up and are ready to unfurl our screecher at the beam reach start. Odd, it's already blowing 10-12, and bit more northerly then we expected. 5 minutes before our start it's built to 12-14, just out of our screecher range. So we quickly hank on the #1 jib. The honk at 11:20 is our start (the last), we hit the line doing 16 knots and we're off for Gina. Spectators commented on the 2 fast cats throwing up rooster tails through the start line, us and the Roland 36 2-of-10, sailed by Billy Bob Boyer.

Leg 1 (182 degrees true) - The wind seems to be building further, and on short races I'm concerned with losing time with sail changes. We stick with the small jib. Our competition is 2-of-10. They start a little ahead and to leeward, we pass high, bear off for the mark, she ends up high and behind us. We could have carried a bit more sail, but we're set up for the next leg nicely, and average 17 knots for the leg. We pass all but the top monos.

Leg 2 (212 degrees true) - Behind the rig is a small lee, and a couple of boats fishing. Then we're through (11:37), and heading up for the island. Winds have kept building and its hull flying time. We've also got some waves running (4'?) which works to our advantage over the smaller 2-of-10 and we start making time on them, as we continue to hull fly and average 17 knots (16-20). We must have looked good, as a leading mono (The Santa Cruz 50 Lina) gave us a full crew cheer as we passed them to leeward. Winds look stronger in front of Anacapa and we depower a bit by traveling down. Then we're into the east lee of the island (12:03).

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