2017 Sailing Results & Recap

Article by Kenneth Johnson

We ended the 2017 on a high note with an excellent PSSC- 13 races over two days, with very nice winds, interesting tides to contend with, no rain, and a brilliant sunshine day on Sunday with the full range of the Olympics looking down on us.

7 SJ 24s participated, so the only “downer” was that Return and Sweet Jesus did not race due to last-minute crew shortages.

Of the 7 boats, 6 had at least a 4th place or better, and 4 had at least one first place. So the racing was very competitive. As often the case, a good start means a good result….and vice versa. It is difficult to recover from a poor beginning, given both the length of the races and the general high level of racing throughout the fleet. Showing good sportsmanship, a couple of boats took penalty turns even if there was no official protest flag - good on Fancy and Manhattan.

Overall, Fancy came back in the last three races to nip Manhattan for third. Grauer had a solid second place, but the weekend belonged to Snappy Tom - after a 3rd place in the first races (when she went west after the start while most of the fleet went east toward the breakwater), Snappy had only seconds and firsts — a high level of consistent sailing. Since there are no throwouts at PSSC, consistency pays off — and all other boats had at least several 4th places (or worse) over the weekend. Gil Lund praised his new bottom job at CSR - and the rest of us knew having Mark Bunker on board Snappy providing a guiding influence on Gil!! Well done.

For the Salt Water trophy, we take the best 2 of 3 results (PSSR, North Americans and PSSC), and Return led the way with two firsts, followed by Grauer, which edged out Fancy and Snappy Tom by one point and which tied for third (we don’t break ties except for first place). Manhattan and Sweet Jesus were tied for fifth and Wiki and Miss Mayhem tied for 7th.

For the Fleet Championship, since we had no results for Mark Mayer and Lake Fall Regatta, we counted each boat’s top 5 results. Again, Return, with a clean sweep (a first in each of six events!) was by far the 2017 Fleet Champion. Congratulations to Mark and his excellent crew for a consistent high-level year.

Fancy finished 2nd, with Grauer a point behind in third. Manhattan finished one point ahead of Snappy Tom and 2 points ahead of Sweet Jesus with Wiki following of the boats that participated in at least 5 events.

Full results for both the Salt Water and Fleet Championship are attached (the 5 results used for the Fleet Championship are marked in yellow).

As usual, let me know of any errors.