Club News


Baby Fleet Wins the Club Championship

By | January 26, 2016

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Winter blizzard Jonas may have buried the East Coast with mounds of snow this past weekend, but the sun was shining and the water was glistening in La Playa for the 5th annual Club Championships. This year’s event featured close, competitive racing for the fifteen teams participating, making for an energized weekend of sailing!

The races started on Saturday, which was overcast with unpredictable shifty and heavy winds. However, Sunday’s conditions were ideal- temperatures in the high 60s with bright sunshine. Sunday’s winds were originally out of the south, but then shifted to normal La Playa conditions, oscillating winds out of the west, for the remainder of the day. This allowed the race committee to pull off all 60 planned races.

Club Champs is consistently a well-regarded event for Club members, and a great outlet for healthy competition and camaraderie since members and friends are competing against one other. This unique event is a great example of SDYC members and juniors sailing together and having a blast while doing it. Using the Club’s J/22s are ideal for this race- competitors just hop in and get started, and the boats are rotated every race to keep things fair.

The Baby Fleet, comprised of skipper Brian Haines and crew members Mandi Hardesty and Stacey Szabo, won first place this year. First place is familiar to the Hardesty family as Mandi’s husband, Bill Hardesty, was the winning skipper at last year’s Club Champs. Second place went to the Club 420 Fleet, consisting of skipper Jack Reiter and crew members John Reiter and Al Pleskus. The Camet Racing Fleet, with skipper Alex Camet and crew members Matt Camet and Troy Barrowclough, came in third. Both the Baby Fleet and the C420 Fleet won 9 out of the 15 races they sailed. And while the C420 Fleet beat the Baby Fleet head to head both times they sailed the course together, it wasn’t quite enough to keep up.

As Club Champs came to a close, Brian Haines described the highlight of his weekend. “It was great to have a wide range of people out there this weekend. Having our babies on the boat was a lot of fun.” That’s right- the Baby Fleet, named for the three babies of the team members, actually brought their babies on board for a few of their races.

Many people worked hard to make this another successful Club Champs. A BIG thank you goes out to Joanne O’Dea, Marilyn Foster, Susi Graff and the rest of the race committee volunteers, Tama Pack-Harris, Tom Ehman, Alli Bell, Commodore Doug Werner and the SDYC Board.