August 02, 2002-Redondo Beach, CA
TEAM AFTERBURNER broke the all time fastest elapsed time record on Friday and was the first boat to finish in this year's Santa Barbara to King Harbor annual yacht race. The 70 mile course is a favorite for Southern California racers who flock to the event by the thousands. The race is run at the same time that Santa Barbara celebrates "FIESTA DAYS" which is a HUGE celebration of partiers who vary in age between 18 and 75. Most are in their college years and the whole town is a P-A-R-T-Y.
A favorite spot to gather before the event is the Palace Restaurant just off SB's famous State Street. This cajun style restaurant serves up the BEST food in the city and is conveniently located within just steps of the best and wildest bars in the city. Among the revelers this year were Michael Jordan and few notable actors and actresses. Bill Gibbs (Owner of AFTERBURNER) treated the team to a lavish dinner. After dinner it was time to hit the sack. NO partying for us unfortunately as 6:00AM comes early.
A study of the weather maps showed modest westerly winds in the outer waters and moderate NW to North flow up the coast. Knowing that moderate winds at Point Conception (West of Santa Barbara) would likely mean the wrap around effect would more closely hug the shore we laid out our game plan. We would sail South-South West in the South Easterly breeze that showed itself at the start at a velocity of 3-4 knots. We would take this to a building Westerly that began to show up on the 11:00AM buoy observations.
Taking a port tack approach to a line you could not lay on starboard tack we found a hole and sailed toward what we expected to be a building Westerly. Victoria 5 (Trans PAC 52) went the same direction at approximately the same boat speed while most of her fleet sailed high and slow trying to climb to what is the traditional windline. After about 35 minutes of sailing in very light winds (under 5 knots) we found our westerly. A 70' wind shift in under three minutes and then a final ten degrees pushed us instantly onto starboard tack. We were off! (We reached this windline a full five minutes before any other boat after reaching off hard on the gamble that it would be there...gamble paid...)
Within twenty five minutes of hard reaching with our screacher up there was nary another boat in sight. Averaging 16 knots we screamed toward Anacapa Island being careful not to get pulled up into the lee of Santa Cruz Island. One mile off Anacapa we made a sail change to our small spinnaker. After getting everything set we jibed and ran 1/2 way down the back side of Anacapa Island. One jibe out for ten minutes and then a jibe back onto port tack. We carried that all the way to a waypoint just above Point Dume averaging 17 knots and hitting speeds in the low 20s. Wind speeds at this time were 8-11 knots. We believe we saw a puff or two to 12 knots but that's about it!
We carried the starboard jibe 1/2 way across Santa Monica Bay still averaging in the high teens with boat speed in 9-11 knots of wind. One more jibe back toward Marina del Rey and I asked the owner if he wanted to try for the record of 6:43 elapsed time....after some careful consideration Bill replied "SURE!"....Everyone on the crew turned up the intensity a few more clicks and close attention was paid to navigation, jibe angles and boat handling (We had been cruising a bit since there was not another boat within 15 miles of us for hours).
For the complete story go to:
http://www.sailingproshop.com/afterburner4.htm 
