Our local club has a race every year the Frenchy’s Rum Run… This goes out to Anacapa Island and back.. This is an easy race that is good “tune up” for the Island Series that starts a few weeks later. It is usably pretty benign weather wise and can be a screaming beam reach on the way back when the wind starts to rip up little in the afternoon.

A few years back we had a freak weather system come through the evening before the race with the weather station at the destination mark showing 40 plus mile winds… This is one of the tools we use to determine the winds:

http://www.sccoos.org/data/coamps/analyses/searange/analysis.html

We (Race Committee) decided to alter the race course to stay close to shore even with the weather reporting the winds to calm down later in the day…. It may have not been the best decision, but it was the prudent one as the safety of the racers came first. Sometimes you have to make the smart call no matter how much this is going to piss some people off.. In this case it turned out 99% the participants were very happy with the alternate course. We had some great wind for all points of sail, and a good time was had by all.

Needless to say, there was one participant that was very vocal of his displeasure on our decision to which we offered them a refund on the entry fee. Funny thing about this is to this day that one sailor that was not happy with our decision has noted this other forums as his worse day of sailing and it was our fault.

Personally, I have never had a bad day of sailing!!! Guess some folks need to stop listing to the voice in their head!