A Fair Dinkum Result in San Francisco

by David Tomlinson on 23 Feb 2001 Carl Nelson's new Sydney 38 'Fair Dinkum' has been turning heads over here on San Francisco Bay.

We sail out of the Corinthian Sailing Club established back in the 1870's.

This time of year we have the Corinthian Yacht Club mid-winter PHRF series. It is a four-day regatta sailed over two weekends in January and February, sailing each day over 10 mile courses.

The fleet numbered 52 boats, a mixture of Farr 40's, ILC 46's, J120's and as of January 2001 a classy Australian entry 'Fair Dinkum'.

Because that slang term is a little over the heads of the locals on the stern of the boat we translate that into The Real Thing.

Conditions on San Francisco Bay in mid-winter are not unlike the Coca's Winter series, it can be very very light.

We raced 'Fair Dinkum' for the first time over the first weekend of this regatta.
She is set up just as the factory recommended and has new Doyle sails; not as good as the Australian D4's but we can't get those here.

On the first Saturday we corrected out 3rd, The boat was very fast and responsive; we were beating a Farr 40 boat for boat in wind speeds between 5 to 10 knots. On Sunday we were first to the weather mark, ahead of two Farr 40s, an ID35 with Dee Smith at the helm, a Nelson Marek 39, and the rest of the fleet.

We finished 2nd behind the Farr 40 Blue Chip and corrected out 2nd for the weekend.

Last weekend we had races three and four. We clinched the series with a corrected win on Saturday. We sailed into the pressure, rather than trying to point to high, but when there was breeze the Farr 40's could not really sail away from us anyway, under 10 knots.

On Sunday Blue Chip could have still beaten us and we just stayed with her, until she fell into a wind hole and that was the series.

We won the Division, Best Performance Boat and Season Champion, not a bad haul… everyone on the boat was very pleased and it sure was a good time to be an Aussie on an Aussie designed and built boat.