Overall winner on the medium course of the Southern Straits Race was Eldin Miller-Stead’s BEATS PER MINUTE, shown above with her X-Drive No. 1 that is light enough for light and strong enough to carry until No. 3 conditions. Andrew Madding Photo.
The Southern Straits Annual Yacht Race run over Easter weekend by the West Vancouver Yacht Club is a distance race with three different courses in the Salish Sea between Vancouver Island and the mainland of the Canadian Province of British Columbia. UK Sailmakers customers had some note-worthy finishes on the race’s Long and Medium courses. Fourth overall and first in Class 2 on the 138-mile Long course was the CM1200 JACK RABBIT owned by Colin Nichols. Third overall and third in Class 1 was Stuart Dahlgren’s Santa Cruz 70 WESTERLY, which sailed a great duel of a race with the venerable Santa Cruz 70 NEPTUNE’s CAR. WESTERLY got ahead at the start and kept her lead for 17 hours and 12 minutes, which was her elapsed time for the 138-mile race. WESTERLY’s mainsail is the biggest X-Drive sail made by UK Sailmakers to date.
WESTERLY
RUBATO
On the 98-mile Medium distance course, Eldin Miller-Stead’s Olson 30 BEATS PER MINUTE won Division 5 and corrected to First Overall. Third in Class 5 and 7th overall on the Medium course was Steve Blaine’s Hanse 400E RUBATO. Congratulations to all our customers that competed in Southern Straits Race.
BEATS PER MINUTE sails with X-Drive upwind headsails and Dacron main for the balance of economy and durability. Both the headsails are single-sided taffeta with carbon yarns. Her No. 1 genoa was made with an LP of 149% instead of the 155%. The reason to move to a smaller headsail was that the boat is often sailed below optimum crew weight and it easy to get over powered with the full-size No. 1. The smaller headsail, built in X-Drive, is light enough to be used as a No. 1 and strong enough to be used all the way to the No. 3 range. Eldin has found no speed loss at the bottom of the range and the sail is much quicker at what would traditionally be the top of the No. 1 range. Another boost the boat’s upwind performance was adding 3 to 4 inches of rake thanks to a suggestion from the guys at UK Sailmakers in Southern California where the Olson 30s race one-design. On the downwind side of things, BEAST PER MINUTE has migrated to a retractable bowsprit with a large A2. Changing to asymmetricals has proved very quick, especially in distance racing where it is more important to be able to stay in the pressure and get to shifts instead of simply squaring back and sailing at the mark.
