Santana 22 White Sails Series #2

The June 12th race was interesting...... not nearly as physical as the first race along the city front, but kept things extra interesting by having an unintentional random element introduced by the race committee. The committee boat signals the various racing classes when their respective starts are happening. Usually this is very orderly and systematic, this was not to be the case this day with races being started at bizarre intervals etc. I remain thankful that I wasn't in charge of tracking the start order ( I did try though and failed miserably ). I did help with flag identification and fished the sailing instructions out constantly for Tom ( the skipper ) and Sean (foredeck) to look over (I'm helping.....).

We did get started and there were four boats in our class, all fast boats and we were consistently harried by Anna's boat, sail #801. There was some very cool close sailing for a couple of legs and Anna would have been with us the whole first race except she headed for the wrong mark after the first windward leg.

Meliki took line honors for certain in the first race and the second race is still undergoing debate. The Bay View Boat Club had apparently moved our finish line without telling anyone and would not return any hails on the radio. It was incredibly frustrating especially since they were still finishing other boats at the original line. Putting the traditions and idiosyncrasies of sailboat racing aside, I know of no other sport where you set a course and during the race move the finish line and the not communicate the fact. I can see a cycling event, maybe a 120 miles of hard road racing, and the pack comes screaming into town only to find the finish has been moved to the next town 15 miles down the road. The organizers would be beaten soundly by nearly psychotic athletes ( who tend to be crazy at the finish anyway ). So, it is a mystery as to why the committee was happy to encourage us, by radio, to round up the other S22's for the start of the second race, but didn't bother to say, "Hey, we think the start finish line will be too busy when you guys finish, so we're setting a second line over there".