Round Saltspring Sailing Race 2014,
4:45 pm Trincomali Channel

JAZ, a Beneteau 36.7 First from Glenmore Sailing Club splits tacks with Shuriken, a Flying Tiger 10 from West Vancouver Yacht Club. The Beneteau has a handicap rating of 93 while the Flying Tiger has 45. This means that the Flying Tiger is a faster rated sailboat and, this close to the finish, should be much farther ahead of the Beneteau.

The race distance is 42 nautical miles, but since the boats cannot sail tight along the Island’s shoreline, the actual distance is much farther. And this year’s race seems to be a wonderfully fast ride, at least for the 40 or so boats just ahead and behind the boats pictured above. Completing the course in time for dinner is not often achieved on boats affordable to mere mortals (we only did it once). The abundance of tides and lack of wind makes this an overnight race for many boats most years. Hopefully no one gets left bobbing around on the wrong side of the tideline tonight*.

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* this post was published at 6pm on the 17th

** Information about the race was completely absent this year making it frustrating for people who wanted to watch the race but were unable to get to the Douglas Road club for the start. The new website was no help as it was still saying this afternoon that “registration for the race would be closing soon”.  And then was offline with “Error establishing a database connection” this evening.

Hopefully next year the race committee will use the site and/or social media to:

1. publish which way the boats were going around, early on, perhaps by 9 am so we can get where we need to be before the boats arrive
2. publish the ‘who’s who’ list that’s given to boats in the race (boat name, skipper, sail number, spinnaker colours etc) to help us identify, well, who’s who as the boats travel the course
3. update on the website, and social media, the positions of at least the leaders so we can estimate when the boats will be at certain viewpoint on the Island