Swiftsure International Yacht Race 2013

April 26, 2024 23:36 UTC

May 25 - 27, 2013

The Swiftsure International Yacht Race for 2013 took place between May 25 and May 27. While all of the action was out on the water, amateur radio operators from all over were in the background helping things run smoothly. They were at race headquarters in Victoria, at the start and finish lines, at the turn-around marks for all three races, and at Sombrio. Voice and Packet Radio (using Winlink Express) were be used.

The start was just off Clover Point, with the warning signal for the first race was at 08:50 PDT and the start of the Swiftsure Lightship Classic at 09:00. There was ten minutes between starts.

First Start - The Swiftsure Lightship Classic
Second Start - The Cape Flattery Unlimited Race and the Cape Flattery Race for Multihulls333
Third Start - The Cape Flattery Race
Fourth Start - The Juan de Fuca Race
Fifth Start - The Swiftsure Inshore Classic

The marker for the Swiftsure Bank was HMCS Yellowkniife. Another naval vessel was at Cape Flattery. An anchored sailboat was the Juan de Fuca mark vessel.

The finish line for all races was off the end of Ogden Point Breakwater. The time limit for all races was be 06:00 on Monday, May 27, 2013. If no yacht in a particular race or division finished within the time limit, the rounding times were used to determine the results for that particular race or division. Any yacht failing to round the Swiftsure Bank mark by 1400 on Sunday or failing to round the Cape Flattery or Juan de Fuca marks by 1200 on Sunday would have been recorded as DNF.

Swiftsure Links

History

The first recorded sailboat racing in the Victoria area was in the late 1850′s, between boats of the Royal Navy and the early Colonists. Interest in the sport grew in the following decades, and by 1930, a long distance race from Cadboro Bay around the Lightship on Swiftsure Bank, at the entrance to the Juan de Fuca Strait was proposed, and there were six entrants! By 1960, forty-five boats were entered in this now-classic race. However, in the following year, the Lightship was removed from service, and now sailors round a Navy Vessel temporarily on station at the same location.

In 1962, after considerable grumbling by skippers of boats that were too small to go to the Bank, the Royal Victoria Yacht Club introduced a shorter-course race to Clallam Bay, some 28 km (15 nautical miles) west of Port Angeles, and called it the Juan de Fuca Race. Like the granddaddy classic, it too started with modest beginnings. In the first year of the Juan de Fuca race, there were only four entries; by 1969 this had risen to forty-nine boats.

With continued and increased participation, and faced with only two courses, one of 257 km (138.7 nm) and the other of only 141 km (76 nm), the race organizers and many skippers found themselves in a dilemma. The solution was the introduction in 1988 of the Cape Flattery race, of 185 km (100 nm) in length, halfway between the length of the Swiftsure Bank and Clallam Bay courses. This has proved to be a very popular race, attracting some of the very largest boats.

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