May 28, 2019 (Tiburon, CA) Just getting everybody updated on my other racing sport … sailboat racing! This past season has definitely been the best year we’ve had racing “Basic Instinct”, my New Zealand designed and built Elliott 1050, and I’m very proud of what my team has accomplished. To all the car racers out there, racing sailboats is every bit as intense and difficult as racing cars. We fight for tenths of a knot (speed) verses tenths of a second, just like on the racetrack. It’s a demanding sport where teamwork is critical and the level of concentration is high!
Over the last summer, we found time to do a number of CYC and RYC evening club races. These are always fun as the competition is strong and the races are quick. We had our first two wins in the RYC series and also another first win in a CYC club race!
Then we raced in a couple of larger regattas. Our best finish was in the YRA Great Vallejo race that took place over a weekend. We finished 2nd on the first day and 1st on the second day giving us the overall win for the weekend! It was a 
great win, crossing the finish line first on Sunday, seeing all of our competition behind us, and then finding out we were the overall winners!
That led into the next races, including the famous CYC Mid-winter series where we came away with two strong 2nd place finishes after racing in some cold, wet and windy conditions!
Then at the beginning of 2019, we had some of our biggest wins ever in the San Francisco Singlehanded Sailing Society 
(SSS) double-handed series with my mother and daughter as crew. The first was the SSS Three Bridge Fiasco where 336 boats started the race! We won in our class of 17 boats but also finished an awesome 18th place overall … out of all 336 boats!
To top that off, a month or so later we competed in the SSS double-handed Corinthian regatta. Not only did we win our class, but we won overall out of the entire 136 boat field! That was a first for us, and it was quite a feeling reading the results and realizing what my mother and I had just accomplished. It felt so good!
We had another big race a month ago – the 2019 Great Vallejo Race which started in 1925 and has had many awesome boats and sailors compete over the years. 
We raced in the very competitive PHRF spinnaker class and came away with a win on Saturday and 3rd place on Sunday, giving us a great 2nd place finish overall!
So, what’s next for us? Well, it all depends on my car racing opportunities! But I thought it was about time I took “Basic Instinct” and the crew offshore to take 
part in the OYRA Farallones race in two weeks. This is a forty-mile, crew race where we start in San Francisco, go out the Golden Gate Bridge, out to the Farallon Islands and back! We are not taking this lightly. The (Northern) Pacific Ocean is a place where you have to race aggressively but the conditions can get challenging so you have to be smart. My crew and I plan to race “Basic Instinct” hard, but since this is our first offshore race, we expect to learn a lot for future races. I can’t wait!
