Saturday, April 7, 2018

J/32s Sail Island Fever Series


(San Francisco, CA)- The “Island Fever Midwinter Series” just finished at the South Beach Yacht Club in San Francisco, right in the shadow of the San Francisco Giants Ballpark. This is a five-month series from November 2017 to March 2018 with 1 race day per month. Here is the report from J/32 owner Chris Boome:

“The J/32 is a great boat for San Francisco and we have four active racers on the bay. Three of the boats are kept at South Beach Harbor, which makes our Summer Beer Can racing all the more fun.

Two of the J/32s in the harbor raced in this series, LA DOLCE VITA (Hull # 64) owned by John Riley and Larry Weinhoff and STRATOCASTER (Hull # 16) owned Lewis Lanier. The racing was very tight, right up to the end with any one of four boats having a chance to win the series at the start of the last race.

I was fortunate enough to sail on La DOLCE VITA with my good friends John and Larry and it was fun to see how they do things differently than we do on my J/32 RHAPSODY (Hull #53) that I own with my boat partner Molly Morris.

The rest of the crews were also J/32 owners. Luther Izmirian (Hull # 79) keeps his J/32 a few miles down the bay at Coyote Point Marina. Then, Luther's brother- Robert- recently bought a home in Southern California and decided he needed a boat to both race and cruise! Therefore, of course, Robert also purchased a J/32 (Hull #46). Luther was the first one to discover the J/32 on San Francisco Bay and Larry (before he and John bought their boat) was the one that told me that I needed to go sailing with Luther before I decided which boat to buy!

So, our crew was made up of 100% J/32 owners!  How did it go for us? We ended up winning the race and the series by one meager point! In third place was Lewis Lanier’s STRATOCASTER. For the series, the J/32's won 5 of the 8 races that were completed, not bad for a cruising boat!

From left to right in the photo above: Luther Izmirian, Larry Weinhoff, John Riley, Chris Boome (Not shown, Robert Izmirian). Add to Flipboard Magazine.