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Southern Bay Race Week Is in Full Swing!
T
he deliveries have been made. Southern Bay Race Week (SBRW) race boats are tucked in slips, rafted off piers, or waiting to be launched from trailers at Hampton Yacht Club (HYC), the regatta headquarters. The boats doing the Down the Bay Race on Memorial Day weekend, have been “resting” at HYC or at a local homeport marina before rigging up and shifting gears to engage the competition at SBRW. Thursday of SBRW is shown on schedules as Opening/Registration/Welcome. It is also when the emphasis is on renewing old friendships and building new ones. The competitor’s return rate is high at SBRW. The delight of catching lines for an old friend as he pulls in is evident up and down the docks. Sharing lunch or a Dark ‘n’ Stormy after picking up bow numbers is de rigueur. The chatter volume at the Dockside Lounge and all over the club property intensifies as the afternoon moves toward the formal check-in and the evening social and skippers meeting in the regatta tents. SBRW has a rhythm of its own. On Opening Night there exists a slow and gentle vibe that will build inexorably each following day, as races are raced, scores tallied, and seadog legends born and refined. The racing and the socializ-
By Lin McCarthy
##Mike Veraldi, skipper/helm, brings his J/24 Quicky and crew to SBRW every year.
ing are among friends who share SBRW as part of their racing history. A quick scan of the regatta scratch sheet shows that annually approximately 75 percent of the SBRW fleet are returnees from a previous year, many from multiple previous years. It could be that the high return rate is the secret sauce of SBRW. Certainly, the degree of comfort most of the racers, both skippers and crew, experience with the surroundings is contagious. “Old
##Integrity will be back at SBRW 2024 with a whole new crew of USNA Midshipmen. The J/36 Sea Star is now sailed by David Bouchard and has been renamed Bumps, in honor of her previous skipper, Bumps Eberwine.
72 June 2024 SpinSheet.com
hands” are not the least bit reluctant to share “insider” information with newcomers, except, of course, the favored side of the first beat! And, HYC volunteers and others who give their time to SBRW are familiar faces and have a pretty high return rate themselves. The origin of SBRW goes all the way back prior to 1986 when the format of the regatta had the fleet sailing the first leg from Hampton to Seaford Yacht Club, overnighting at SYC, and racing the second leg to York River Yacht Club at York River Yacht Haven on Sarah’s Creek at the foot of the Coleman Bridge. They raced the final leg from YRYC to Hampton, finishing in the harbor after battling the seemingly always adverse current at #22 off the Fort Monroe Seawall. That same #22 is still today a legendary nemesis to Southern Bay racers! However, times and circumstances changed, and SBRW changed with them. With the growing popularity of windward/leeward racecourses, the date is debatable, but circa 1990, SBRW moved to Hampton for all three days of the event. HYC, Old Point Comfort