SEASON CHAMPIONS, PART III — his third installment of our annual Season Champs series shines the spotlight onto the divisions of the Singlehanded Sailing Society, Bay Area Multihull Association, Yacht Racing Association and even the Master Mariners Benevolent Association. Most, though not all, of these segments of the Bay Area's yacht population race under ratings assigned by the YRA's PHRF committee (for monohulls) or BAMA (for multihulls). The YRA, SSS and MMBA also offer divisions for one-design fleets, given enough signups. The Yacht Racing Association's chairman Don Ahrens, addressed a crowd gathered for awards at Berkeley Yacht Club on November 17. "The participation was up," he said, "which was really great to see. I'd like all you guys to go out there, find those skippers that should be racing, and use those cattle prods to get them out there next year, because we need all the participation we can get. If folks have recommendations on how we can get more racers out, feel free to email me because we love getting feedback from our customers." Contact Don at chairman@yra.org. John Arndt, publisher of this fine rag, MC'd the awards. "I'm here to help congratulate all the winners," he commented, "but the first thing I want to do is say thanks to all the losers, because if you don't have losers, you can't be a winner. And I think what Don is saying is we got to recruit more losers, right? One organization in California has done The 'Ferox' crew, left to right: David Sharp, Phillip Meredith, Anja Bog, Peter Weigt, Porter Teegarden.
ALL PHOTOS LATITUDE / CHRIS EXCEPT AS NOTED an amazing job recruiting and getting losers to come back every time, and that is the California Lottery. People lose and lose their whole life and keep playing. We need more people like that." But for now, on to the winners. OYRA PHRO1 — Blue, Swan 53 Ray Paul, SFYC Topping his offshore division for two years in a row was Ray Paul. "Blue has the secret and the secret is its crew," he said. "The crew except, for a couple, have been racing on Blue since the beginning," reports her boat captain, Carlos Badell. "They are Ray Paul, Carlos Badell, Seadon Wijsen, Jeff Wayne, Dennis Rowedder, Sonny Lopez, Tim Lidgard, Elizabeth Mitchell, Peter King, Janine Largen, Mark Imus, Joe Crum, Delmar Badell and Ray Paul Orlando Montalvan. We usually sail the ocean series with 12 people." "It's kind of a bittersweet time for me," says Ray Paul, "because we campaigned Blue for a number of years, and this will be the last year. We're moving on to a somewhat more racy boat. It's a Botin 65, Artemis. We're looking forward to sailing
that this coming season in 2020 in at least some of the YRA races. That will certainly be a lot of fun. It will be my same group sailing that boat. You'll see us on the racecourse next year." OYRA PHRO2 Ferox, Pogo 36 Anja Bog, SeqYC Peter Weigt, Phillip Meredith, David Sharp, Porter Teegarden and Patrick Szeto sailed with Anja Bog on her new steed. "The first three were in all the races with me. Plus a few one-off visitors in between when one of our crew did not make it. Some races we also ended up shorter, just four or five rather than the usual six that we were targeting for most of the ocean races. "Going from Head Rush, the Antrim 27, to the Pogo was definitely a huge upgrade in confidence, comfort and speed. We were eyeing the ocean races before, but were never really sure if we wanted to do them on Head Rush. With Ferox, even 31 knots of steady wind leaves us happily chugging along doublehanded. On the ocean, we definitely expected there to be more wind and adventure based on our previous experience, but this season did not quite deliver except for maybe the Farallon Islands race, which was the most fun one. In the other races, we mostly had our adrenaline 'lit-up' moments trying to make the finish line at the high angles coming in from the Golden Gate Bridge. Good old Slot always delivers! "2018 was a hard year for my husband, Peter. His mother passed ERIK SIMONSON / WWW.PRESSURE-DROP.US
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