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Please excuse the boast but Biscayne Bay in the 9 months of winter has some of the best sailing in the world judging by this SORC. What's not to like about 4 days of racing in 85 degree weather and consistent 20 to 30 knot winds. Most of the fleet docked or anchored at the Miami Yacht Club and a hamlet of RV's sprang up in the parking lot. The accompanying music and smell of barbecue added to the general ambience. The consensus among the 17 skippers and crew, including 3 Stilletto's, 4 F25C's, 6 F27's, an F9A, and 3 F24's, was thumbs up as evidenced by the blistered hands and wild eyed grins.
The race committee ran a superb on the water series (less than perfect off) running two races a day each lasting about and hour and a half. Courses were the typical windward leeward for all of the 7 races. We shared the course with PHRF 4 and Hobie 33's without incident, however there were a lot of wows in the downwind crossings as multis zoomed by at up to 25+ knots. There was but one racing protest, the first in 8 years of MASF racing, which upheld Just Right against Alliance in a start incident with no contact.
As usual there were several races within the race and the most eye catching was for first place between Adrenalin Rush and YO. I recall seeing Adrenalin's windward daggerboard well clear of the water as she headed up and trimmed for the start on the last day. It's pretty exciting seeing a 30' cat fly a hull with only feet to spare on either side as she put the bit in her mouth to try and beat YO on the last race. The spread between the two going into the race was but 2 points and they had been doing first and second pretty much the whole race. On Adrenalin in addition to skipper Chris Schofield were Ron Nichol champion stilletto sailor and Peter Wormwood. She's generally accepted to be the fastest Stilletto ever built with her modified hull, tall rig and huge, deck sweeping kevlar main. Although being considerably heavier than the carbon F25c's (3,030 pounds as compared to 1,980, 53% more) she had a lot of sail area (2,034 vs 1,575, 30% more). The heavy weather was considered to be a big plus for her as well. Cats make out by flying a hull in heavy weather whereas tris will have two hulls in the water. So the competition was pretty keen. However Randy used some kind of wizardry to get YO out in front, way out in front. I've always said his sailing was questionable … like how does he do that? Well he did it again and watching it was a pleasure as always. In spite of his usual awful first race, a fifth, he posted bullets the rest of the races excepting a second on the last race due to a broken spin halyard. Our boat did pick up on one trick watching him spinnaker reach in 25 - 30 knots of wind. Half his crew (2) were devoutly kneeling in the the transom whilst gripping the traveler. Perhaps there was some supernatural assistance as has been suspected all along? But what god were they praying to? Of course we tried it and found out they were praying to the rudder god and leeward ama god. We had much better rudder control and didn't stuff the ama at all and immediately put 5 knots more on our previous best speed. It had the added benefit of baptizing the kneelers as well.
Waiting for either Adrenalin or YO to make a mistake or break was Silverheels skippered by Lyman White. But that never happened and Lyman ended up with a third overall with a strong showing of five thirds, a second and a seventh, well ahead of fourth place.
The next 6 places were jammed into an even smaller point spread than the first 3 places and had probably the most in your face boat to boat racing of the whole fleet. Just Right skippered by Eric Arens included Dave Calvert and Gille from the Calvert loft and was sporting a new raked rig and new vertical leach main sail. It seemed to work well however the strong winds were not felt to be the best initial test bed but still good enough to just grab fourth overall.
Bobsled's skipper Robert Onsgard had world class Tornado sailor Jay Glaser crewing and with the exception of a 10th and 9th put together solid 4th to 6th place finishes which earned him 5th place overall and became the new Formula F-27 Southeastern Regional Champion.
Alliance a joint effort of John Sherry and Joe Labato ran an astonishingly good race that would likely have put them overall in fourth except for their 5th race disqualification. They were in the top four places in three races. Cataclysmal, another Stilletto 27 skippered by Andy Roedig, would also have placed well if only his daggerboard hadn't broken forcing him to miss two races for repairs. His boat had terrific speed and in the fifth race had a 4th place finish. Lion's Paw skippered by Phil Styne with Rick White driving was only a single point behind Alliance overall.
Tim Palmer's Alacrity, recently launched, showed excellent boat speed but was still being tuned and missed a couple of races to tune/repair the rudder.
Alpha Wolf the F9A was skippered by the offshore master builder/designer/sailor Walter Greene. As a last minute entry the boat did not have the fair rating she might have had otherwise but Walter and his crew greatly enjoyed the sailing and hospitality.
The F-24s struggled a bit in the boisterous conditions, but towards the end of the week the F-24 Mk II of David Saint started moving very well and was hounding the F-27s.
Thanks to MYC for their hospitality and I hope everyone makes it back next year!