By Vern Vincent

This last weekend the Santa Barbara Yacht Club and the Santa Barbara Youth Sailing Foundation hosted a high performance sailing event; The Skiff Fest. Sailors from San Diego to San Francisco made the trip to Santa Barbara to compete. Skiffs are unique sailboats that are known for speed and excitement. Three fleets competed this year: seven I-14s and eleven 29ers, and four Moths. The I-14 and 29er are two-handed (2 sailors) boats with the crew on a trapeze wire…extended well outside the boat to keep it flat at high speeds. Both the I-14 and 29er have a very shallow draft (no much below the waterline), and large high tech Mylar sails and a spinnaker. 29ers have very bright, distinctive day-glow orange trimmed sails. Moths are very small, very fast single-handed rockets that look like something out of a Batman movie. They have ‘foils’ that lift them totally out of the water, so they hydrofoil silently at amazing speeds. The I-14 fleet of seven boats was a mixed ‘adult’ and youth fleet. The 29ers were all junior sailors from high school sailing programs all over California. The ideal deck weight for a 29er is about 200 pounds, so the boat is best sailed by nimble young people. Both days of the regatta was blessed with steady, moderate winds. The event was organized and conducted by Dana Jones, SBYC Racing Director. Great conditions and the clock-work race committee allowed for seven races for the I-14s and 8 races for the 29ers and Moths over the two days.

The winners in the I-14 fleet were Paul Galvez and Peter Mohler (DPYC - Dana Point), followed by Kirk Twardoski and Andrew Nelson (RYC - Richmond/ SF) and Terry Gleeson and Bryan Bufaloe (SWYC - San Diego).

The 29er fleet ended with Tyler Macdonald and Brian Bolton both 16 (NHYC - Newport Beach) in 1st place having convincingly netted three 1st place and four 2nd place finishes. In 2nd place was Max Fraser (RYC) and David Leibenberg (SCYC – Santa Cruz)), followed by Chris Ford and Mike Deady of RYC. Local finishers included Newt Cutcliffe and Nick Perez (SBYSF- Dos Pueblos High School) in 6th place, Jack Jorgensen (SDYC) sailing with Tucker Atterbury (SBYSF – Laguna Blanca HS) in 8th and Sky Adams (heading to Brown in September) and Hanna Vincent (Heading to MIT in September), (SBYSF – Dos Pueblos HS) in 11th.

The small, but very entertaining Moth fleet was taken by R. Davies (ABYC - Long Beach) followed by Nat Shaver (ABYC) and Eric Aakhus (BYC – Corona Del Mar)

Results
Photos