By Christine Weaver | June 12, 2017 | Stockton, CA | 0
Wipe-out! Despite the Delta Ditch Run’s gnarly conditions — or perhaps because of them — the 28-boat Moore 24 fleet garnered 11 top-20 finish positions in PHRF Monohull. Wet Spot (not pictured here!) finished first among the Moores.
This year’s Delta Ditch Run from Richmond to Stockton was a fast flurry of fun sailing punctuated with pitfalls. Capturing overall monohull honors was Tom Kassberg’s Melges 20 Flygfisk.
The start of the Light 2 and 3 divisions north of the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge. No downwind start this year — the first portion of the race was a tight reach on fluffy water. The overall winner, Flygfisk, is #225.
Another 20-footer but with a more venerable pedigree, the Cal 20 Slainté carried Paul Sutchek and Greg Huffman to Stockton at an average 7 knots to correct out in first place in the Doublehanded Division.
Paul Sutchek and Greg Huffman averaged 7+ knots on a Cal 20.
Brian Mullen (front), Emery Sanford (middle), Blaine Pedlow (back) sail past the entrance to False River on the J/70 Orange You Glad. This was the J/70 that many middle-of-the-pack racers passed short-tacking back down the San Joaquin. Lest you think they sailed all the way home, never fear, they were just headed to Tinsley Island to meet up with their families.
This was one of those crazy Ditch Run years when carnage littered the race course. Among the incidents were uncountable round-ups, round-downs, groundings, a dismasting, a lost rudder, and, on view for all passersby to see, the Bilafer family’s Henderson 30 high and dry in the tules in the homestretch of the San Joaquin River.
It could have been worse — at least it wasn’t a rock-wall levee.
Results are posted at www.stocktonsc.org. We’ll have much more in Racing Sheet in the July issue of Latitude 38.
For the third year in a row, the Delta Ditch Run partnered with the Delta Doo Dah. Kevin Belcastro’s Tanton 43 cat ketch Toucan sailed in the 18-boat Cruising Division. The next Delta Doo Dah event will be a BBQ at Owl Harbor next Saturday, June 17. See www.deltadoodah.com for details and to sign up.
After a slow morning of racing in Bermuda, several hundred clicks to refresh our browsers, and more than a little disgruntlement at the coverage of this year’s America’s Cup, it’s official: Team New Zealand just beat Artemis Racing 5 races to 2, and has realized a long awaited rematch with Oracle Team USA.
Some four dozen Alamedans took to their bikes on Sunday for a tour of separate proposed developments along the island’s North Waterfront designed to add housing, commercial space and public waterways access.
What a difference a few degrees of latitude can make. About a thousand miles to the north of Bermuda competitors in the OSTAR single- and doublehanded transatlantic race from Plymouth, UK, to Newport, RI, were clocked by heavy 60-knot winds and 45-foot seas 900 miles miles east of Newfoundland.
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