Star Class Honoring the Past, Leading the Future
Vancouver, BC (June 2, 2023) - The third day of the 2023 Star North American Championship, hosted by Royal Vancouver Yacht Club on English Bay, proved to be another day of patience and frustration. The morning was cloud-less blue skies with hope of the westerlies coming in early to be able to complete the two races scheduled for the day. However, the forecast south-southwesterly for the greater English Bay materialized as a northerly, locally known as “Where the wind goes to die.”
Prefaced with a fading easterly, the race committee postponed at 1200 to wait for more stable conditions. A light breeze from 280 to 300 filled in around 1430. By 1500 conditions were mostly steady at a bearing of 300 with 5-7 knots of breeze.
A typical English Bay fixture, the anchored commercial traffic presented an open course geometry for 1.25 mile leg, and the sailors were rolled into an all clear start at 1515 for race 5 of the series. The first leg of the four leg course with a downwind finish saw the fleet evenly split going upwind, left and right. Local knowledge was evident as the sailors heading left were mostly Canadian.
The first 15 boats coming out of the left and right, arrived at the weather mark in 40 minutes, while the second half of fleet was challenged with pressure drops and a brutal 1.5 - 2 knots of current.
The first downwind leg was a starboard fetch, staying above the anchored cargo ship to port and maintaining rhumb line in significant cross course current was key. At the leeward mark, a course change to a new weather mark at bearing 290 was signaled. The length of the leg was shortened to 1.0 mile.
Up the second weather leg, the top two-thirds of the fleet stayed in phase with the pressure and finished downwind within about 12 minutes of one another. The remaining 10 boats fell into a hole and were stuck at the top mark, struggling to round and head down to the finish. Four survivors broke free to finish before 45 minute finish window (after first to finish) closed.
Four others lowered their sails, and declared DNF. Two other teams (Brain Ledbetter and Brian Terhaar, USA and 03 LEDBETTER, and brothers Timothy and Bill Siemers, USA) strategically persisted until race committee announced, “The course is closed”. They could then take advantage of STCR 34.6.3, which provides points equal to average of places still racing at the close of time limit window. That difference gave the TLE boats 25.5 points vs DNF boats 31 points (entries +1). It pays to know the class rules.
In the end, Allen Cullen and Dave Martin (CAN) won the race, which puts them into 7th place overall (the drop came into play with the completion of five races). Ben Mumford and Jason Vandergaag (CAN) finished second, followed by James Buckingham and Phil Toth (USA).
George Szabo and Guy Avellon (USA) maintain their series lead after placing 5th today.
Racing continues through Saturday, June 3.
