By John Long

On January 30th San Diego Yacht Club hosted the third Shadden in the Shadden Series. The event was well attended by top youth sailors from all over California. Santa Barbara sent two boats to compete in the 54 boat FJ fleet. The event was sailed outside of the San Diego Harbor under favorable conditions. The wind was a steady 6-8 knots for the first race and built to 10+ knots for the third and fourth races. There was a large eight foot ground swell running that day pushing the little fourteen foot boats around and making marks sometimes difficult to spot. The relatively young team of Stephen Long and Soren Wilde had a couple of good races and managed to finish an impressive 18th overall. The other Santa Barbara boat, sailed by Davey McBride and Jake Bartlein sailed very consistently and placed 32nd overall at the end of the day. The fourth and final Shadden in the series will take place on March 6-7 at Alamitos Bay Yacht Club in Long Beach, California.

The following day the Stephen Long and Soren Wilde teamed up with four other sailors from Balboa, Westlake and San Francisco to compete in the Harold Adams Team Race Classic. The event was limited to 12 three boat teams. There were some strong teams from Pt. Loma, Corona Del Mar and San Diego that were extremely proficient at team racing. Our three boats were comprised of six sailors with little or no experience at team racing but were excited to give it a try. The races were short and sailed inside the harbor under 6-8 knot winds. Each team sailed against each of the other eleven teams to complete a full twelve team round robin format. A total of 66 races were run in three hours. That’s a lot of whistles from race committee. The event was a lot of fun to watch and could be seen from the Yacht Club deck. The competitors seemed to enjoy the event as well, each team cheered after they won a race. Our team seemed especially happy whenever they won a race, which happened three times that afternoon. The team finished ninth out of twelve on their first attempt at team racing and are looking forward to improving their performance next year.

Results
Photos