PIRANHA MAKES IT SEVEN YACHTING CUPS IN A ROW

The Lakers proved it’s hard to repeat as champions, but for the seventh time in a row, Piranha was the winner of her class at Yachting Cup – a string going back to 2004 when gas cost less than $2 a gallon.  This year Piranha was also awarded the Carl B. Saunders perpertual trophy for the top overall performance of the regatta.

For a change, San Diego dished out some decent breeze in the high teens making for some fun spinnaker runs.

It didn’t look good part way through Saturday when Piranha had the spinnaker streming from the masthead after the finish of race #2 courtesy of a jammed halyard and broken sheave, but Charlie Beven took a bashing at the masthead to rig an external halyard between races.  Then in race #3, Piranha was called over early and after restarting, hunted down Dark Star to beat them to the finish line in an exciting race in which they were overlapped at the end and featured a fake jibe that sprang Piranha free on the last run.

Meanwhile, but for a medical issue that caused a retirement on Saturday, the Sunday’s winner was Far Niente that made up for lost time by posting two bullets for the day with tactics called by Jeff Thorpe from San Francisco.  Clearly Far Niente also gets the win for most arresting graphics in the fleet for 2011!

SDYC provided free food and drink every day and made us all envious of the new Sailing Center that is truly remarkable.  We look forward to going back in 2012.