This past weekend Southwestern Yacht Club hosted their showcase event The Little Ensenada. The weather forecast was looking grim and I was not expecting to get into my hotel room at an early hour.
Sailing on the Anarchy is always a good time and regardless of the wind predictions I was looking forward to racing with friends. We drifted around the start line for an hour or so in postponement waiting for any sign of wind. We finally got off and started down the coast to Mexico with the two other spotrboats Mile high Klub and the Cheetah 30 Super Fly. Every time I do a point-to-point race on a Fyling Tiger 10M I ask myself the same question, “Why don’t more people race these boats??”
We had tight racing with MHK until the quit off Rosarito Beach. Unfortunately for them this is where the race got good! The FT is such a good boat in light air downwind that it is hard to imagine what boat this size will challenge it in the conditions we see in S. California. As the wind picked up to about 8kts we wereable to keep the boatspeed at almost the same velocity as the wind!!
We kept ourselves about 2 miles offshore and avoided the temptation to go further out. We thought that boats offshore would have trouble soaking down to the finish line (and I think we were spot on with that prediction).
As we approached Ensenada we saw some tall masts coming across on the opposite jibe. It was this point that we knew we were in the running for the overall. We had sailed the boat really hard and now we could see the rewards. With the finish line about ¼ mile from us the wind shut off!! This is so typical of Ensenada and its bias towards the larger boats. The Santa Cruz 50 Horizon motored past us and let us know that they just finished and we were probably going to win. I just laughed because I knew we were at the point of drifting for the next 45 minutes as we tried to cover 300 yards. So frustrating
When we finally finished it was 1:24am and the last push was not enough for the overall. 1st in class and 5th overall was not to shabby on a 30ft boat made in China and probably an 1/8th of the cost of the boats that barely beat us (I think it was like 25 minutes of corrected time). It was a pleasure to wake up in the morning and watch, from my hotel balcony, boats the same size and bigger finish more than 8 hours after us.
Once again I came away from a weekend of Flying Tiger sailing with a smile on my face and a huge amount of satisfaction. Hopefully people will start to realize the potential of the boat and start buying and racing them in more events like this.
I have to say thank you to Scott Tempesta for another fantastic race and a great time in Ensenada. The crew Todd McGuire, Eva Rummel and Ed McCoy made the trip that much faster with the hard work and relaxed attitudes.
Keith Magnussen
