Summer Sailstice ambassador, Brandon Mercer, sent in the photo below of he and Scott Racette and Stacy Riggs on Nicholas Grebe’s Santa Cruz 37 Wildcard approaching Santa Rosa Island in the recent SoCall 300. Scott and his partner were recently featured in a story in Latitude 38 since they were departing San Francisco Bay to sail south, through the Panama Canal and on to Virginia. Brandon Mercer crossed tacks with them in Santa Barbara and that's how Scott ended up taking a pause from cruising to go racing.
Brandon wrote in to say, "We hung out with Scott in Santa Barbara, and when two of our crew had to drop out of the SoCal 300, with 30 minutes till leaving the dock we said, “Hey Scott, want to race with us?” 20 minutes later he was on board in foulies, and casting off dock lines.
"And when the wind died 125 miles from the finish, and the only wind offshore another 20 miles, we retired, turned around, and found 7-24 knots of breeze way outside, and took that straight back up to Santa Barbara where we returned Scott back to where we found him.
"And we had some of the best sailing of the trip… with the stars and the Milky Way emerging as we exited the fog and rounded Santa Cruz, heading back to harbor…. With bioluminescent dolphins playing in our bow waves, and hoisting the A2 coming back in to port."
Sometimes racing is as pleasant as cruising or racers have to simply stop racing and shift into cruising mode. Scott, Brandon and Stacy were ready for whatever came their way. We'll look forward to sailing with them all on June 19th.