With due respect to the region’s Opening Day celebrations, Corinthian Yacht Club of Seattle’s Center Sound Series is Puget Sound’s official season opener for the racing community. It’s the time to bust off the rust, slap a high-five to your sailing pals you haven’t seen for a few months, and get reacquainted with the incredible game of boat racing.
This year’s series really hit the ground running (er… water). Full courses, mostly sailable breeze, good turnout; there were hardly any appearances of the postponement flag and no precipitation. Hello spring! It didn’t wrap-up with quite the fervor it started with, but it was still a great way to kick off the year.
One fun thing about Center Sound Series is that it can be a coming out party for boats joining the fleet, which was true this year. The big boat ORC had two additions to the core group, another TP52, Mayhem, as well as Sunrise 70 Rage. A few boats who made their debuts in 2025 were out to enjoy the launch of their first full season, like Carkeek 40 Zvi2 and the custom refit Melges 30 Maelstrom, among others.
The Blakely Rock Race started the series in late February, a week earlier than traditionally scheduled. The day’s sunshine and breeze made the early start seem particularly prescient—skiers in the fleet were particularly happy to be sailing after a rough season for snowfall. Things got underway upwind to a temporary mark near the tanks north of Richmond Beach. The sequence was in standard (not chase) order, and all eyes were on the fastest ORC fleets as jockeyed.
Even with a light flood tide to start, the better breeze in the center would prove more advantageous than current relief near shore on the way up, though the margins were fairly slim.
Rounding the weather mark with breeze in the mid-teens didn’t make for a super-rowdy first hoist of the season, but there were a handful of hiccups to keep everyone on their toes. Once headed down, the planing boats got launched and the displacement set found a little surfing on starboard jibe, but a less cooperative wave angle on port. If you stayed deep and/or used the breeze compression at West Point, you likely made it to Blakely Rock looking good
Near the leeward rounding, the breeze bumped up to 20, but was back off a bit as the fleet headed north to the finish. There were battles of tacks and nerves in the shallows as boats played the shore approaching West Point from the Elliott Bay side.
Among the day’s impressive performances were Zvi2 with their first class bullet on the new boat, J/109 Eclipse who kept the pedal down to the end and snagged a class win by 19 seconds, Maelstrom planing their way to a 10-second class victory over the always-well-sailed Farr 39 ML Absolutely, J/105 Peer Gynt taking the top spot in the 13-boat one-design fleet, and J/111 Hooligan whose speed and smarts propelled them to the top of the 36-boat ORC overall competition.
The table was set for the second installment, sending the fleet south to Three Tree Point. As one friend put it, “We were reminded just how far away Three Tree is.” It was a long tacking session in moderate breeze pushing near 20 in the gusts. A switch from the first race was the return to chase starting sequence with the slower boats starting first. Getting off the line, there was quite a lot of easterly, but the breeze would push south, and eventually shifted
southwesterly by the time kites were flying. The shifts proved decisive, and protecting the right tended to pay off early, until most everyone was short-tacking south of Alki.
Rounding the weather mark down south with a westerly shift setup a near-fetch for most boats heading north, fast especially for the planing boats with A-sails who spent much of their run with boat speeds in double digits. TP52s Smoke and Glory took home the overall ORC honors with Smoke winning by 14 seconds on corrected time. Right behind them in the overall was another terrific showing and another class win for the Zvi2 crew, followed by the same for Hooligan. On such a long race, things did spread out a bit more than the first race, and a number of class winners enjoyed deltas of several minutes. Other than the ORC A nail-biter, the next closest finish was among the J/105s, in which Moose Unknown had a come from behind day to take the one-design class by more than three minutes.
The series rounded out after a week off with a day forecast to be pleasant with northerly wind to start but a lightening trend as the day went on. The course was the familiar 25-mile out and back to Possession Point. It started off decently well, but dwindled. The day unfolded with strong current besting the dying breeze at a critical time. Many boats couldn’t make the mark, and ultimately more than half of the fleet retired. Those that persevered were rewarded with results if not heaploads of fun.
From the J/105 fleet, the day’s winners on Panic shared this description of the current becoming insurmountable: “As the pressure decreased and we approached the mark, we began noticing the big boats ahead in quite a hole. A few minutes later boats on the right were stuck in less pressure and adverse current. Creative and Moose tacked out in time and smartly headed to Cultus Bay. They appeared to have played the shore breeze well and were headed to the mark. By now there was quite a lot of current and very little wind. Moose was within spitting distance of the then-crowded mark and was sadly swept out. Creative felt the same pain and they both slowly drifted 1.5 miles towards Kingston.”
Even if you did make the mark, it was a light air slog home with some trying kites and jibs and kites again. Experienced PNW racers know the feeling when crossing the finish prompts as much relief as celebration. There was a bit of that in this year’s Possession Point.
The day’s best performances included the Buchans’ Custom 40, Madrona, taking the ORC overall for the and securing a class win for the series. Smoke sailed ahead of Glory in ORC A to take home the series victory among the bigger fleet of big boats. Hooligan secured the ORC overall series victory with an impressive top-five finish overall in each of the three races. J/105 Panic was one of two in their class to finish, doing so more than an hour ahead of second place and taking PHRF overall for the day.
Over the three days of Center Sound Series, the sailing community around Seattle was treated to its annual reunion, fun and friendly competition, and some genuinely fabulous sailing to go with a bit of classic PNW white-knuckle light-air. If the rest of the season offers the same, it’s going to be a great year.
Full results at cycseattle.org
Title background photo by Joe Cline.
