October 2009 eBook all pages (free PDF, 36.6 - Latitude 38

LATITUDE/ROB
THE GREAT SCHOONER RACE
Sixteen schooners in two divisions
turned out August 29 for the San Francisco
YC's Great Schooner Race. With
participation up 40% over last year and
some of the Bay's most notable schooners
— some old, some new — in attendance,
the Great Schooner Race was
exactly that. The after-sail party featured
live music and a cameo appearance by
Latitude 38 Managing Editor "Banjo
Andy" Turpin, and perhaps the best of
all, an artfully managed raft-up of all the
boats on proud display.
Don't be tempted into thinking this
was some kind of boat parade, a 'concours
d'museum pieces.' Many, if not all,
of these boats are actively sailed and, on
that day, sailed hard. With breeze into
the low 20s, the pursuit race saw the
Marconi division do a Bay tour — Yellow
Bluff-Cityfront-Blossom-Southampton
Shoal-Marker#4-finish at the club
— while the gaffers did all but the Yellow
Bluff leg.
Bob Vespa's Edson Schock-designed
Scorpio beat all comers in the Marconi
division. At 42 feet on deck, the boat has
been around since it was christened for a
movie director — a silent movie director
— in 1927. Vespa purchased Scorpio in
1994 during a standstill in an ongoing
restoration; it would be 10 more years
before she sailed again. He credits the
boat with getting him to retire from the
faculty of City College of San Francisco,
where he taught commercial photography
from 1971 to 1996.
" T h i s w a s a b o u t t h e f o u r t h
boat race I've ever entered," Vespa said.
Page 108 • Latitude 38 • October, 2009
"So I worked the decks, and deferred the
strategy to a seasoned crew."
His decision to let Dave Rempe, Bill
Vespa, Mark Lindlaw and Justin Ward
take care of the strategy paid off.
"It seemed we'd never catch Tillicum
I, who stayed ahead of the pack forever,"
Vespa said. "It was seesaw from Blossom
Rock to Southampton Shoal, with
Scorpio staying barely ahead of the last of
the pack on the downwind side. Tillicum
decided to sail higher into the falling
wind and, I believe, got into some of Angel
Island's wind shadow, and dropping
in with us.
"We approached Southampton in a
tight pack. After rounding it, we dropped
to the back of the pack and headed a
bit more to weather, but when we were
about even with the last of them, the
wind all but died.
"Though we were all ghosting along
at a barely navigable speed, we began
inching ahead of the pack as the breeze
backed a bit to the south, and they fell
into our wind shadow. At that point,
we could see Elizabeth Muir joining the
pack, and then Santana — but they both
came to the same halt about the time we
began to see the whitecaps forming up
ahead. We threw up a small fisherman
in anticipation of moderate winds to the
finish, rounded Marker #4, and dropped
the genoa jib in favor of a yankee jib and
fore-staysail for the beat up Raccoon
Strait."
Jeff Hawkins' Jakatan — the newest
boat in the fleet — beat six other gaffers.
LATITUDE/ROB
LATITUDE/ROB