The SoCal 300 was sailed concurrently with the CA 500, in its inaugural running. Three MOD70s (PowerPlay, Argo and Maserati) started the race off of St. Francis Yacht Club, sailed under the Golden Gate bridge, around the Farallon Islands and blasted down the coast to the finish in San Diego. The trimarans, who started at the same time as the SoCal 300 racers, just 250 miles to the north, caught up the SoCal 300 fleet before sunrise on Friday, about 14 hours after the starts.
PowerPlay and Argo sailed virtually the same race for the first 60%, and were neck and neck past Santa Barbara. As they made the approach to the turning buoy southeast of San Clemente, PowerPlay finally started to pull away, putting a few miles between them and Argo that just couldn’t be made up through the light wind final leg approach to the San Diego finish.
The Maserati team took a different line, heading closer to shore on the downwind leg after a collision with an unidentified floating object soon after the start and had damage to the right side rudder.
“The rudders’ anti-impact system worked very well,” said Giovanni Soldini, “without it we would’ve lost the rudder completely. The only damaged piece is the pivot attached to the steering rod, which is a small detail. Because of this we couldn’t operate the rudder anymore during the race, but it will be a very easy thing to fix.”
The Italian Team was delayed by the damaged rudder and by other impacts with algae and floating objects, so Giovanni Soldini and his Team tried a different route. “We tried a course closer to the coast to compensate the disadvantage we had because of the rudder: in those conditions, if we had set the same course as our competitors, we would’ve only followed them from behind without regaining miles. We were hoping to find a better gybing angle shown in the weather forecasts, which unfortunately turned out to be inaccurate”.
PowerPlay received the perpetual trophy developed by San Diego Yacht Club several years ago as a way to commemorate the accomplishments of the multihulls even when they didn’t have direct competition. HL Enloe’s Orma 60 Mighty Merloe would often sail the races as the lone multihull or against one other, setting course records all over the west coast. The trophy is awarded to a record setting performance by a multihull on any SDYC-hosted coastal or offshore distance race.
The three MOD70s from the US, UK and Italy will tune their boats, practice with their teams in preparation for the rematch in the 2019 Transpac Race this July. The multihull division will start on July 13th, with their eyes on Mighty Merloe’s elapsed time record set in 2017 of 4 days, 6:32:30.
Thank you to Peter Lyons and Erik Simonson for photography coverage of the CA 500, to Taggart Lee and Sharon Green of Ultimate Sailing for the photography at the start of the SoCal 300, and Bob Betancourt at the awards ceremony.
The CA Offshore Race Week is actively seeking sponsors to help support the growing series. For more information on how to partner with the series, please contact Jared Wohlgemuth (jared@sdyc.org).
By Jared Wohlgemuth
San Diego Yacht Club Regatta Administrator, IT Manager
CA Offshore Race Week Manager
For more information visit www.offshoreraceweek.com
Race Tracking: https://yb.tl/corw2019
SoCal 300 Photo Gallery: https://www.flickr.com/photos/sdyc/albums/72157708876399803
SoCal 300 Results: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1DM_HA47tJC4SNaR1xz04idxXXvqBfyMppKLqfpu1PC0/edit#gid=0
CA 500 Results: https://sdyc.org/assets/results/results19/2019-ca500-res.htm
CA Photo Gallery: https://www.flickr.com/photos/sdyc/albums/72157708854053477
CA Offshore Race Week Results: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ETd_3jKj3SkmNydJ2QJTJiTvHRusSmfM2tcQ_PcFebI/edit#gid=0
