C420 North Americans at St. Francis Yacht Club (San Francisco, CA)
Ground Hog Day

Summer in San Francisco Bay can definitely feel like Ground Hog Day... Each morning, the five AYC teams (plus our adopted RI brother/sister team) arrived to find their boats covered in wetness, both from the previous day's sailing and from the morning fog which hid the Golden Gate Bridge just a couple miles to our west. With racing scheduled to begin at noon each day, the team had plenty of time to check over their charter boats and make the little customizations that make them feel like home before donning the "dolphin training" outfits (wetsuits) required to stay warm in the cold water and cranking breezes. Like clockwork, each afternoon brought Westerly breezes at about 230-240 degrees and 16-24 knots.

The 93 boat NA Championship was exceptionally windy, with at least part of nine of the eleven races held in at least twenty knots. It was a spectacular test for an AYC team who had really only had one day of training on the trapeze wire at home. Despite some impressive pitch-poles, "gybe--wait no, ... gybe/splash downs" and even some letter scores from black flags and equipment failures, the team left more confident and better sailors than they arrived. Top performers Owen Hennessey and Gavin Meese had an impressive six top-ten finishes; but their three races with letters (including a capsize caused by the Jury boat) left them just out of the money in 13th overall. Matt Budington and Linnea Forsberg made the podium with a 4th in Silver fleet, and were impressive with the kits on the tight reaches to the finish of the trapezoid course. The exciting part of the experience is that the next time the team encounters full-blaster-conditions, they will be ready to attack the boat-handling and treat the racing just as if they were racing in ten-twelve knots in the Chesapeake.