With Shana Bagley and Lisa Perkins

April 20 at 7:00 PM

Have you wondered what a day in the life of an ocean racer is like? How about a first person account of the recent Clipper race from China to the Golden Gate across 6,000 nautical miles of the stormy North Pacific Ocean?

Come to this Friday’s Fireside Chat at the Santa Cruz Yacht Club for an exciting presentation by Shana Bagley and Lisa Perkins. The presentation will include a slide show and videos and a opportunity to ask questions and learn what it is like to race at sea.

Shana Bagley is a Bay area sailor who provides this personal profile:

I sailed 3 legs of the 09/10 Clipper race (England to France to Brazil and SF to Panama, Jamaica, New York and Nova Scotia) on Team California. I have since gone on to sailing an Open 60 with solo ocean racer Brad Van Liew, racing a Mini TransAt, Antrim 27, Santa Cruz 50 and an X-362, working for Spirit of the Sea (a non profit group that takes underprivilieged children sailing and teaches them about the environment, seamanship and confidence), delivered a 44 ton cutter rig 1,000 nm in the North Pacific with solo ocean hero Mark Schrader, and just earned my RYA yachtmaster certificate. I’ve logged about 20,000 ocean miles. I do have a desk job as a state prosecutor.

Lisa Perkins is a Bay area wine consultant who just completed a leg of the Clipper Round the World Yacht Race from Qingdao to the Golden Gate on the Clipper “New York”. She will have photos and tales to tell! Lisa provies this background:

I just completed 3 legs on the Clipper Round the World 2011-12 race on board CV2/New York. I sailed from Rio to Cape Town, and then from Gold Coast Australia to Batam, Indonesia to Singapore to Qingdao, China and home to San Francisco. 16,000 miles including crossing the Atlantic, the Equator, the international dateline, and the Pacific.
I’m not sure what’s next for me in terms of sailing!

Dinner will be served as usual beginning at 5:30 PM and the program will begin at 7:00 PM. This promises to be an informative and entertaining evening, so please join us in welcoming Shana and Lisa to our club.

Cruising Seminar / Potluck

Marc Hersch, “Sailing and Navigating the Channel Islands and Island Highlights.” Potluck. Thursday, April 26, 2012 starting at 6:30 pm and seminar will begin at 7:00 pm.

Safe Powerboat Handling Course offered at SCYC

Saturday & Sunday April 28-29

Instructor: Chuck Hawley

Fee: $150

register: www.SCYC.org

Course Required to use SCYC sAfety Boats-Pinto Lake etc

Especially for parents Jr. Sailors and Corinthians

Prerequisites: none
Age: 14–adult Includes snacks, lunchs, drinks.
Certification(s) Earned: NASBLA certificate, state boating education certificate (in applicable states), Safe Powerboat Handling certificate

Santa Cruz Yacht Club
244 4th Avenue
Santa Cruz California 95062
United States

Rob and De Schuyler

The many contemporary American Navy Ships measured and designed by tons, and millions of tons by the slide rule, and drafting table alongside ships measured and designed to the ounces and grams on computers running 3D scientific models for draft, drag, and lift. This was not the Monterey Bay Marine Sanctuary, where we spent the better part of a month enjoying our late Summer with The Cold Water Classic, and a pod of Humpback Whales and Kayaks during our Wednesday Night races. This wasn’t even close to the celebrated TransPac, or Pacific Cup. The new America’s Cup race is much more than all that we hold dear to our piece of the World. This is fierce competition at the highest level of sailing in our backyard, the best of the best in technology, sportsmanship, and professionalism that has never been seen in the sailing world.

We took a “drive by” and quick tour of the Race grounds, and headed off to the San Diego Yacht club for a late lunch. Wow. I could get used to this atmosphere.

Working for Oracle, I had the opportunity to focus on another airplane ride. Sean D. Tucker works for Oracle as our stunt acrobatic pilot. He does what he loves to do, and he is the best at what he does, better than anyone who has walked our planet ever! The same design philosophies and tools that built Sean’s custom acrobatic plane, developed the Mainsail of the new wing sails and hulls of the America’s Cup boats. Meeting Sean for the first time is a rush, he is an overwhelmingly intense guy, passionate about his craft, he’s got the right stuff. Sean took some friends of mine out in his plane for some aerial acrobatic maneuvers, looking at the beautiful plane reminded me of what I saw when I was looking out the window of that 737 on approach. We had lunch, I bid Marc a wonderful Sunday with the VIP event that I sponsored him for, and headed off to the AC World Series grounds to try to catch some of the action. I was taken aback by the atmosphere, this felt more like a Formula One event.

The boats were hauling ass above the 6 deep crowds lining the Piers. This is the future of sailing! Fast is Fun is one thing, this was faster than fast, faster than the wind. You see, these boats are never downwind, and could never fly a Spinnaker because the sail would collapse from the forward speed. They are always on a reach. Imagine an airplane wing turned vertical. With the light weight of the boat, the wing generates more forward lift than the speed of the air flowing over it’s downwind surface. Same basic physics that put us in motion on any sailboat, but the lift to weight ratio is so great, the boat is faster than the wind. This is the technology that delivered the America’s Cup to San Francisco, and this is what makes this time in sailing so exciting, similar to Chuck Yeager breaking the sound barrier in an Aircraft. I walked the grounds on this beautiful dusk, and took what I thought would be my last pictures, get a flight out early Sunday, and call it a great time. Jimmy Spithill has taken the Match Championship, shared with Team Oracle.

It was a restless nights sleep at the San Diego Westin. I was up very late working on finishing up my weekly reports. I was thinking of scheduling my return to the rain soaked Bay Area, when April called me to tell me that Marc, my friend that I got up in the Oracle plane, was in the Oracle reception tent. I hit the Snooze button, and after a bitter struggle with my early morning lazy state, decided that I better go down and greet him before he went out on his AC World Series VIP experience. The weather was the worst it had been all week, raining in the early morning. Roll back to the day I packed for this event, I did what ever sailor would do with any chance of sailing, pack your foulies!!! I dragged myself out to the race grounds with my camera, sweating from the walk in my foulies, I managed to get through the security to wish my friend a hearty Bon Voyage when the unthinkable happened, I’m on a Boat, and Sean is going out with Jimmy Spithill! I’m going out on America on the race course for the day. Out on a big boat, watching the best racers, in the grandest navel harbor on the West Coast. Good times, I am on top of the world.

Here we go, we are out in the middle of the race course, watching the speed trials, similar to a bike race, one boat against the clock.

Team Artemis at the finish. Sorry, try again. Each boat get’s 2 runs over a 500 Yard mad dash to the finish. 25.98 knots

Energy Team, not good enough today. 25.96 knots

Team China, not today guys, keep up the good work. 25.67 knots

Team Aleph, not bad, not good enough. 25.19 knots

Team Oracle Coutts hammers out a win at 26.87 Knots.

Team Spithill not happy with a 2nd place 26.79 knots.

To be continued…

Wednesday Winter Sailing Seminar

The first rains have come, Wednesday Night racing is over, it’s dark when you get home and even the whales have left town so it must be time for the second season of Wednesday Winter Sailing Seminars!

Last winter, SCYC kicked off a very popular series of seminars on sailing with a focus on racing.  Many of the evening events were standing-room-only and received great reviews.  This year we’re broadening the topics to include a great presentation on safety and we’ve added a section on cruising to faraway places to encourage expeditions to exotic ports. For a real treat, we’ve got a session on sailing ashore – on wheels – that should be fascinating.

These seminars are intended to inform and entertain our entire community of sailors whether they sail a powerboat, row a dingy or ocean race big boats. It’s a great way to get to know the Club, its Members and what we’re all about here at SCYC.  Please take the time to invite a friend or your crew who may be interested – everyone is welcome!

We’ll kick off the Wednesday Winter Sailing Seminar season on January 11^th with a terrific presentation by our own Chuck Hawley.  There were a handful of real disasters during the 2011 sailing season and Chuck is heading up a US Sailing task force to figure out what happened and what we all should learn from it. The rest of the season will be:

Jan 18^th      So you have to go to The Room – The protest hearing process with Mike Gross & Beau Vrolyk

Feb 1^st       Ocean and Distance Racing with Jay Crum

Feb 8^th       Cruising Near and Far with Beau Vrolyk and invited speakers

Feb 15^th     Winning in Santa Cruz with Jack Halterman

Feb 29^th     Land Sailing with Dennis Bassano, Jr.

Mar 7th     Beating da Boyz with Kristen Lane

The Clubhouse will open at 6:30 each of these Wednesdays with the presentations beginning promptly at 7 pm and the SideBar will be serving up the best deal on drinks in town.

Be sure you are on Greg’s email BLAST list so we can keep you updated on future events in the Wednesday Winter Sailing Seminar series.  Just send your email to greg@scyc.org and he will add you to his blast list.  You do not want to miss out on any of the happenings in 2012.  Get your calendars and ink in the dates.

See you at the Club!!

Beau Vrolyk, Regatta Chair

De Schuyler, Event Chair

Santa Cruz Yacht Club
244 4th Avenue
Santa Cruz California 95062
United States

The big swell is expected to die down by Sunday, but caution should be exercised in leaving and returning to the Santa Cruz Harbor. Skippers should monitor the entrance conditions and be aware that breaking waves may be present.

For those of you who were planning to do the Windjammer, please join us for the BBBS Regatta and get your sailing fix in for this weekend. Sing ups are available at the BBBS website:

http://santacruzmentor.org/Events_Regatta.html

Thanks to all who have made this 20th year with the BBBS such a great event!
Bob DeWitt SCYC/BBBS Committee