M Squared

SANTANARAMA 2008 : Day 2 Report by Snapper via Sailing Anarchy . With the prospect of a light air day the R/C postponed racing until early afternoon and sent the fleet out around 1230. Once again the conditions were trying with breeze on both sides of the course and lots of holes to deal with. This event has certainly been one of the most challenging Class Championships I can remember and the high scores can attest to that. Going into today, yesterday’s leader Paul Stephens, was comfortably in the lead by six points over Jim Martinez’s ‘Loose Nuts’ team with last year’s runner up Eric Kownacki in third five points back and trying to recover from a deep place (15th) in the first race. Britt Williams from OKC was in fourth place, seven points behind adrift of third. Britt has truly been on of the stalwarts of the class and has hooked up his boat ‘Fayest’ and driven to many of the West Coast events. His enthusiasm and Corinthian spirit is one of the reasons the class ...

SantanaRama 2008: Day 1 Report by Snapper via Sailing Anarchy . The Sailing Anarchy mantra is ‘where the status quo blows’, which was very fitting for day one of the 30th anniversary Santana 20 Class Championships 39 boats were on the line for race one, held in light to medium winds. The ‘status quo’ would have seen pre-regatta favorites Bruce Golison, Eric Kownacki and Chris Winnard (your scribe A.K.A Snapper) duking it out up front but at the first mark they were nowhere to be seen! In fact all three were buried on the wrong side of the course and ended up lucky to get 15, 16 and 17! The race was won by the Sacramento team aboard ‘Fusion’ with locals Ron Fish and two time champ Paul Stephens rounding out the top three. The R/C decided to send everyone in to wait for the afternoon breeze and the keg was tapped. After an hour or so we w...

SantanaRama 2008: 30 Years of Tuna Sailing A preview by Snapper via Sailing Anarchy . The Santana 20 celebrates thirty years of class racing with the ’08 Nationals being held in Eugene Oregon starting tomorrow through Friday. At last count 37 boats were signed up with several of the perennial class heavy hitters in attendance. Over the years many of the West Coast’s finest sailors have cut their teeth on this class. Bill Herrschaft, Tim Hogan, Bruce Golison, Harry Pattison, Tom and Jane Schock, Charlie Ogletree among others have racked up class championship wins and the class continues to be a fun competitive group and this event is a prime example of that. Eugene Yacht Club provides a great venue with on site camping, evening social activities to local Vineyards and brew pubs, and lots of family oriented things to do. One of the n...

It's almost here. SantanaRama 2008 starts next week. This is not some tribute tour to Carlos Santana ... It's the 2008 Santana 20 Class Championships hosted by Fleet 19 and the Eugene Yacht Club . Since the championships in 1996, this is the third attempt to bring the "Nationals" back to Fern Ridge . Early in the season , there was a lot of complaining about the lake level and the dumping of water in February. Well, fortunately the lake filled and we should have a great week of racing and fun! So far there are 30 boats registered and the wind have been great (mostly) all summer. We'll see if we can improve on our fifth place finish at the Cascade Locks on 2005.

Although vegetation occasionally cause problems for our local racing , it's nothing like the problems in Qingdao. Fortunately China has been busy (well, their "volunteers" have been busy) cleaning up the sailing venue. "The sailing event [...] will not be threatened by the algae," said Wang Wei, vice president of the sailing committee for the Beijing Olympic organising committee. According to this article , they have constructed barriers totaling more that 40 km in length to hold the menacing weed at bay. The barriers will be patrolled and any algae caught trying to cross the barriers will be "immediately cleared"... in the Olympic spirit of course. Now... what to do about the smell of "rotting broccoli or cauliflower".... Did you know that Qingdao means "Green Island" ?

Well the Emerald Cup was more like sailing in Qingdao than Giddy Up would have liked... They started the fifth race on Sunday with what seemed like an insurmountable lead (half as many points as the second place boat). Somewhere around the penultimate leg of the race they picked up a pile of salad on their keel... No one races salad... It's slow! We had a mediocre regatta (we missed you Don) but managed to do something right on the last race and pulled off a bullet. Looking back down the course we couldn't believe how far back Giddy Up was... and dropping fast. They almost tripled their point total with their 11th place finish. Congrats to Mark and "Q" .