Top finishers on elapsed time are always exciting, but let's talk about the top 3 CORRECTED TIME PHRF Fleet winners in this year's Oregon Offshore sailing race;
BLADE RUNNER, the Santa Cruz 27 out of Bellingham, WA and skippered by Ward Naviaux & crew was the TOP PHRF CORRECTED TIME FINISHER at 15 hours, 17 minutes & 31 seconds. They won this race... smallest boat wins the whole enchilada; sort of amazing. Great job BLADE RUNNER!
FREE BOWL OF SOUP, the J/105 from Portland and winner of PHRF Class B, had a corrected time of 15 hours, 33 minutes and 53 seconds.
KOKOPELLI, another Santa Cruz 27 skippered by Eric Collins of Portland, had the 3rd best corrected time. She didn't register on the tracker for much of the race, but her corrected time was 15 hours, 37 minutes and 24 seconds.
When the breeze holds, smaller boats often have an advantage on corrected time, frustrating for some bigger boats at times but inevitable under the handicapped rating system.
These were the only 3 boats in the race with corrected times under 16 hours, and clearly earned their victories.
Soup missed the record elapsed time by just under two hours, and Blade Runner finished in just a little under one day with Koko just about 20 minutes behind. Free Bowl of Soup corrected over Kokopelli by just about 3 and 1/2 minutes... over 193 miles! Blade Runner corrected out by about 15 minutes over the Soup; close racing!
Two lessons learned here; fast IS fun, and there is such a thing as a Soup sandwich!
Okay, I said I'd cover just the top three, but 4-10 deserve honorable mention too!
4th Overall on Corrected Time was California Girl, the Cal 40 sailed by Timm & Victoria Lessley. I love these boats! They also took top honors in PHRF Class C. Timm & Victoria made it into Victoria in less than 1 day, finishing in about 23 & 1/2 hours.
5th Overall on corrected time, 3rd boat to finish the race and 1ST OVERALL IN CLASS IRC AND SMASHING THE COURSE RECORD with an elapsed time of 17 hours, 24 minutes and 59 seconds was the Fox 44 OCELOT built at Schooner Creek and sailed by Kevin Flanigan & crew from Portland. This nocturnal hunter finished the race before midnight of the first day. Like their elusive namesake in the wild, OCELOT crept up the course in the shadow of much larger boats, then pounced at Race Rocks and devoured the finish line like it was a quivering rodent. The only boat under 50 feet to EVER finish Oregon Offshore in sub 20 hour time, this record might stand for a long time. That includes a slightly delayed start after a pre-start "bump"; Ocelot had to actually come back to the line and re-start, sending her off the line close to dead last (I think they were mixing Bloody Mary's on Souffle a few yards astern of Ocelot). Grrrrr...
6th, 7th & 8th places Overall go to A Fleet winners Time Bandit, Riva & Anam Cara respectively. These guys had tight racing all the way up the track and finished early in the a.m., so I missed some crucial coverage at the finish. None of these veteran boats has ever finished this course as fast as this year's race. Great job A Fleet!
9th Overall goes to Neptune's Car, a race veteran who almost found top gear, and one of the most venerable challengers in the competition. ICON doesn't have a PHRF rating apparently (really, ICON?) but I'll give them an honorary unofficial top ten because they smoked the elapsed time record, with Passepartout the officially recorded 10th place overall PHRF winner.
Great job again to ALL competitors in this year's race.
