(Santa Barbara, CA)- One of the highlights of the Santa Barbara sailing season
is always the Cinco de Mayo celebration. The event always attracts a good
fleet of one-design classes. In fact, Cinco de Mayo and the Fiesta Cup
celebrated later in July are the highlights of the summertime sailing season
for locals due to the enormous influx of sailors looking forward to the
time-honored celebrations associated with each event.Host of the Cinco de Mayo Regatta is the Santa Barbara Sailing Club, a wonderful "home-grown" sailing organization dedicated to promote primarily one-design class sailboat racing in the Santa Barbara area. Perhaps most importantly, it primary objective has been to provide affordable access to the sport of sailboat racing for the general sailing public.
Attending this year's event was one of the strongest J/24
one-design turnouts in quite some time. A dozen J/24s with some hot
competition, especially for the top of the leaderboard. Past J/24 North
American Champion, Pat Toole and crew on THREE BIG DOGS, just barely managed to
hang on to win the J/24 crown on a tie-breaker with identical scores! The
3BD crew took a 3-1-1-3-2-2-1-2-1 scoreline for nine races to win. Giving them
a serious run for the money was Klatt's JADED with a 1-2-3-1-4-1-2-1-2 tally
for equal 13.0 pts for their eight counter races. How was the tie-breaker
broken? Well after identical counts for 1st, 2nd and 3rds, it goes to
who-beat-who in the last race! Great racing to all! Taking third
overall while watching the histrionics taking place in front was Zimmerman
sailing the mighty SVENJA. Fourth was Baurley's CRITTER and fifth was Susan
Taylor's TAKE FIVE. For more Cinco de Mayo Regatta sailing information
