The VanIsle 360: Fun or Serious?
Weekday evening sailing against your pals is fun, courtroom battles that determine the winner of the America's Cup are serious. Which one is the VanIsle360? It is hard to imagine a lawsuit about the VanIsle, but the conditions and location are serious, so it cannot be entirely fun either. A review of the resources page on the organizer’s website starts to move the serious meter. There are two items under Planning Guides, and two under Presentations, and six under Safety and Technical Documents. The Safety and Technical requirements document itself runs 26 pages and ends with a list of required medical trainings. When the race organizer won't let you start without a life raft and survival suits, and proof that you know how to use them, things are serious.
Fortunately for us, sailors don't have to choose between fun and serious because the two are not mutually exclusive. To settle the matter, we proclaim that the VanIsle 360 is Seriously Fun. Here is some supporting evidence from the first half of the 2025 VanIsle 360 which is currently enjoying a sunny layday in Port Hardy before the second half of the race resumes tomorrow morning at 9:30 PDT.
Seriously Fun Evidence Point #1
46 Sailboats ranging in size from 30 feet to 52 feet spent months preparing, passed all of the safety requirements, and started the race in Nanaimo last Saturday, May 31st. We will rate this one, mostly serious.
Seriously Fun Evidence Point #2
There is a boat from Portland, Oregon named "Free Bowl of Soup", and another from Vancouver, BC named "Mah Na Mah Na". I have no inside information about these names, but these are my guesses: In Caddyshack, Rodney Dangerfield is in the pro shop at the swanky golf course clubhouse and sees a hat on display and says: "What, do you get a free bowl of soup with that hat?". And everyone knows that "Mah Na Mah Na" was a song performed by Jim Henson and the Muppets on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1969. We must agree, pretty fun!
Now is that a great boat name or what? “It looks good on you though!” Erik Kristen photo.
Seriously Fun Evidence Point #3
On the third day of racing, when the boats entered the famously windy Johnstone Strait, they encountered wind exceeding 30 knots and up to 4 knots of current in the opposite direction. This condition is called "wind against tide" in the sailboat racing business and produces very large and steep waves. In these heavy conditions, the standard practice is to put up a small forward jib sail, and reduce the size of the mainsail by pulling it partway down, or "reefing" it. These conditions were so heavy that two of the biggest boats decided to sail the entire day with no mainsail at all. Only two of the 46 boats that started the race retired. One, because they thought the keel was making bad noises. Keels have been known to break off of boats. Pretty serious stuff.
‘Mist’ sailing with a completely reefed main (100% reefed). Erik Kristen photo.
Seriously Fun Evidence Point #4
After that giant day of wind and waves, the competing boats had no marina to tie up in, and went to a secluded bay to anchor for the night. The sun came out and the bay was protected from the wind, and at least one of the boats had BBQ delivered by boat to their boat from a nearby resort. After a full day of battles against mother nature, there were no reports of injuries, and the two compromised boats made it to safety in the marina in Campbell River without incident. Serious and fun!
The team on ‘Smoke’ getting BBQ from the Blind Channel resort, delivered to the wilderness by boat! Harry Dursch photo.
Seriously Fun Evidence Point #5
Since all of the boats in this race are different, the only way they can compete against each other is with a handicap system. No system is perfect, but more or less, the system considers the differences in the boats and gives the boat a rating. The actual time a boat takes to finish the race is then adjusted into a corrected time, based on the boat's rating, and the corrected times are compared to determine the winner. Since no one is ever happy with the rating systems, they change all the time and recently, someone invented a rating system that takes the weather into consideration. This was done because some boat designs are better suited to windy conditions, and others are better in light wind conditions. Some would call this magic, others would call it voodoo. In the end, there is some awesome racing, the sailors do their best, and often when they finish, they have no idea if they won or lost. This could be serious or it could be fun depending entirely on the sailor’s attitude.
Wildlife watching the wild sailors come into Port Hardy. Bucci Photography Tours photo.
In Port Hardy, on the layday in the middle of the 2025 VanIsle 360, the skippers of the boats met with the race officials and decided that some of the handicapping magic might have been laced with too much voodoo. An agreement was reached and the scores are being recalculated. While most of the sailors are on wildlife hikes, or kayak expeditions, or fixing up their boats, or enjoying some fun in the bar with their mates, some person is having to recalculate numbers no one ever understood in the first place. Seriously?
We will of course post the new numbers in the morning.