This weekend saw 8 International 14s come to San Diego Yacht Club for the first San Diego Skiff Supercup. I’ve been trying to put this race together for a few years with Jeff Johnson of the Sailing Office at SDYC in order to get some of these high performance skiffs seen and sailing in different locations. With the SD NOOD now a standard stop on the 14 calendar, and 3 boats now based in San Diego, the interest is building due to the I-14 World Championships coming back to Southern California at Alamitos Bay Yacht Club in Long Beach during Sep.’06. We thought we’d start small, and let the event grow over the course of a couple years.

We were very happy to have 8 boats for the first event, some of the boats only recently returning from the New Zealand Worlds in Feb.’05. We’d like to invite additional skiffs in the coming years, possibly getting the 29ers, 49ers, and 18s down for this type of event. A Supercup course is generally a very short course, we ended up with ½ mi. windward/leeward legs, there is a narrow mid leg gate, which must be passed through both uphill and downhill, and a leeward gate, we did 2 laps/race. The Mid-leg gate is designed to make you tack and gybe more often, no flyers to one side of the course, thus keep the boats more compressed together. Typical race was about 20 min. of sailing.

The course was set along Harbor Island in San Diego’s main bay. This allowed family, friends, and touristas to watch the action up close. It was good fun sailing in front of people yelling and cheering on the island, as well as some local sailors who came out and watched in powerboats and other larger sailboats. We had 6 short races Sat. and 4 more Sun. Entry fees were two 6 packs of your favorite local micro brewed beer and $14. The beers were ice cold by the time we got in on Sat. afternoon. Local San Diego 14 fleet member Jack and Cheryl Salerno, hosted a great BBQ at their beautiful Cardiff home Sat. night where the majority of the beer was finished off. Most of the sailors were put up just like dinghy regattas are supposed to be. There was a significant amount of bay traffic which made sailing in these conditions even more fun, dodging commercial fishing boats, tour boats and ferries, Naval vessels and Cruise ships, along with the normal weekend harbor traffic. Add in the normal shifty and puffy breeze of San Diego Bay, and this made for challenging sailing in the 8-12 knot, double wire conditions.

Some of the skippers were asking for even tighter courses with more hoists, drops, tacks and gybes. The general consensus from the crews was that the work level was fine just the way it was! This type sailing was great fun and seems to be a good start up to the next season of 14 sailing which will become more and more intense with the Worlds less than 1 ½ yrs. away. The interest is there from the fleet, and I’d predict at least 20 I-14s for this event next year. Upcoming events on this years 14 calendar include; Bay View Boat Club Dinghy Regatta in San Francisco mid May, Skiff Fest in Santa Barbara late May, Huntington High Sierra early July, North Americans at the Gorge in early Aug., and US Nationals at ABYC in Early Sep., one year before the Worlds.

Brad Ruetenik

More info. available at www.i14.org
More photos can be seen at: www.digiproofs.com password: supercup

4/28/05