By Coach Duncan Shea

The Santa Barbara Sailing Club, Santa Barbara Yacht Club and the Santa Barbara Youth Sailing Foundation co-hosted the annual Cinco De Mayo regatta over the weekend of May 1-2. The SBSC took care of the 'big boat' fleets, while the SBYC and SBYSF took charge of the Mercury, Laser and Laser Radial fleets. This regatta was the fourth and final event in the Ullman/Frost series, a year-long series of regattas for junior sailors in the Laser Full Rig and Laser Radial classes.

The first day of racing quickly turned into a survival contest, as the wind built throughout the day. We started with about 25 boats on the course, but by the time the first race started a few boats had already retired due to the strong winds. The second race saw only 14 or 15 boats cross the starting line, and by the time we ran the third race of the day there were only 7 boats left on the course. The wind was a steady 25kts puffing to 30kts, on top of steep chop driven by the breeze. Impressively, most of our Santa Barbara youth sailors stayed out the whole day - just a few days prior, we had gone out and practiced in what we later found out was 30-35kt breeze, so our sailors knew they could handle it.

On Sunday, racing was delayed for more than an hour as the race committee waited for the wind to fill in. After picking up and moving the entire course in search of wind, we were rewarded with a solid Santa Barbara sea breeze and started making up for lost time by running races in quick succession. We managed 5 races for each fleet on Sunday, bringing the total to 8 for the weekend.

Our very own Oliver Toole dominated the eleven boat Full Rig fleet, posting eight 1st-place finishes in eight races en route to locking up the Ullman series trophy. Kieron Kavanagh managed a 6th place finish even after missing the first day of competition due to the SAT test.

Local SBYSF sailors had great success in the 35-boat Radial fleet, taking three of the top five spots (and four of the top six!). Newt Cutcliffe had a break-out regatta, finishing third overall and handling the conditions very well. Stephen Long, Tucker Atterbury and Hanna Vincent were right behind him in 4th, 5th and 6th respectively. Other local finishers in the Laser Radial fleet included Nicholas Perez in 15th, Briggs Deardorff in 17th, Hunter Yegendorf in 22nd, and Matt Long in 23rd.

Special thanks to our volunteer race committee members: Beverly Toole, Page Adams, Guy Turner, Dennis Shea and Peter Jorgensen all helped out on the R/C boat (generously provided by John and Peter Jorgensen). Harry Atterbury, David Perez, Vern Vincent and Arn Adams did a great job moving marks all around the course, and the regatta would not have gone so smoothly without Dana Jones helping me out with my first PRO duty.

Results
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