San Diego Yacht Club has been hosting the annual Yachting Cup regatta for nearly 50 years often with nearly 100 boats in competition. Typically a spring time tradition, the Yachting Cup was postponed in 2020 to October 10-11 with the hopes of saving one of the west coast’s premier regattas from the cancelations that most events this year have befallen.
The 2020 version of Yachting Cup came together at the final hour as recreational boating restrictions were amended in San Diego to allow non-household boating to occur just weeks before. 36 boats joined the regatta. The J/105 fleet and Beneteau 36.7s formed one-design fleets, while a group of 25 boats split into 4 handicap classes, ranging from John Raymont’s Ker-51 Fast Exit II to Wayne Zittel’s two J/World J/80 entries.
First place finishers include:
Steve Torres’ Pendragon IV (PHRF-A and Overall Yachting Cup winner)
Standish Fleming’s Nereid (PHRF-B)
Ed Sanford’s Creative (PHRF-C)
Roderick Messinger’s Buttercup (PHRF-D)
John Raymont’s Fast Exit II (ORR/EZ subclass)
Ted Butterfield’s Adventure (B36.7)
Stewart Cannon’s J-OK (J/105)
Steve Torres and his crew of 14 sailed Pendragon IV, the first TP52 made, to victory in the PHRF-A class against a competitive and diverse fleet. “Conditions were ideal for us, 10-12 knots with a flat ocean. The Race for Home was fun, but on Sunday the tanker took out the whole course and several boats including ourselves got a bad deal coming home. Competition was great considering the COVID situation. This was our first race in the last 7 months. We had a great time and we all felt the race was organized very well especially given the current situation.”
Ed Sanford, skipper of Creative (J/111, PHRC-C Winner) has been eager to take his recently acquired J/111 out racing, with plans to compete both inshore and offshore. “[The Yachting Cup] was the first big event for Creative and crew this year. The Race Committee did a great job organizing the Yachting Cup, the conditions and weather were beautiful. We are very much trying to learn our new boat/program. I am very thankful to my crew who were awesome and were having a blast out there working together! So much fun with these guys. The Creative crew really enjoyed being out there with our competitors. We have participated in a few other events this year, such as the CRA Race Around the Coronado’s and the Cold Rum Series, and are now looking forward to the Hot Rum Series!”
One of the unique additions made to the 2020 event was the Race for Home as the final race on both Saturday and Sunday. Initial races each day would be windward/leeward races, and the final daily race would be a random leg race back to a finish line near the yacht club with distances ranging between 7 and 11 nm depending on the course selected by the Race Committee. If there was ever a year to try something different, this was it.
Ted Butterfield’s Beneteau 36.7 Adventure won their one design class. “The Beneteau 36.7 Class was pretty small probably due to crew COVID concerns. At one point there were 7 boats registered, but only 4 showed up on Saturday, and 3 on Sunday. We hadn’t raced since February and were pretty rusty. We made plenty of mistakes, but maybe our competitors made a few more. Conditions were ideal and as usual the Race Committee did a great job in communicating and running the races. The ‘Race for Home’ was grueling particularly on Saturday when there was so much kelp at the [channel] entrance. We had to run over small patches to avoid larger patches.”
Stan Fleming’s J/125 Nereid won the PHRF-B class, while winning 5 of the 6 races in the class. “I would like to express my appreciation to SDYC and the Yachting Cup Organizing and Race Committees for a splendid regatta under challenging circumstances. Given all the work that goes into an event of this caliber, I would not have believed that anyone could do such an outstanding job on such short notice. The race went well for us—no injuries on the water, competitive performance despite a nine-month layoff and a great outcome against more experienced crews. The switch from spring to fall certainly didn’t hurt the sailing. We had excellent conditions; 8-15 knots of steady breeze, a perfect “San Diego day” on the water. The fresh air and salt spray made up for a lot of missed racing since February. I thought the race for home worked well. We had great wheel-to-wheel racing at the turning buoy and a lead change on the last leg on Saturday that I never expected. It is too bad that we didn’t have more out-of-town racers, but the San Diego boats gave us a good battle both days. On most races, we were within a few boat lengths all the way around. Yachting Cup under these conditions would have been great fun in any year. Coming as our first outing since the lockdown, it was a gift.”
Skippers meetings, daily debrief presentations from North Sails and post-regatta awards announcements were conducted on Zoom. There were no social events for this year’s event.
The Race Committee was eager to get back to running races after months of minimal racing in San Diego. Susi Graff and Jeff Johnson served as PROs on each of the ocean courses. Race Committee Chair Joanne O’Dea and her team of volunteers worked the other tasks of Race Committee with Mike Foster scoring from the Club.
Thank you to Yachting Cup chairman Patrick Murray for navigating the start/pause/restart organization of this year’s event and bringing it to fruition.
This year’s Yachting Cup was supported by North Sails, Helly Hansen, Mount Gay Rum, Regatta Craft Mixers, Amavara Sunscreen, The Bay Club Hotel & Marina with custom regatta merchandise offered by Pirate’s Lair.