The 2025 Islands Race kicked off the west coast offshore racing season with the 15th annual race from Point Fermin around San Clemente and Catalina Islands to the finish in San Diego off of Point Loma. Thirty-one teams racing in six ORR & ORR-EZ classes crossed the start line mid day on Friday. NHYC PRO Charlie Welsh managed the starts to the race. “Racers were greeted at the starting area in the vicinity of Pt. Fermin bout with sporty 11-16 knots of breeze with considerable bump. All starts got off on time with the breeze waning as the sun peeked through the clouds. Our most exciting start was the ORR-E and EZ classes as two boats were over early. The RC team acted swiftly and both boats cleared and continued racing. All racers looked as if they’d stay on starboard tack for the majority of the first leg to the west end of Catalina. It was a great way to kick off the 2025 Islands Race! Thank you SDYC for another great collaborative event with both clubs working seamlessly.” All fleets started on time, making 6 to 8 knots boat speed slightly below rhumbline to West End in a good WNW breeze. After rounding the top of Catalina, the wind trickled out leaving boats slowed down for about 3 hours just after sunset. The race kicked back on through the night with boats speeds back up to 6-10 knots to the virtual waypoint mark beyond San Clemente and the turning point to head east for the 72 mile run to the finish near Point Loma. On the final leg, the fleet had split either on a rhumbline direction or a more southern direction with a spread of 11+ miles from top to bottom. The Class A and B boats quickly extended their leads over the smaller boats. Doug Jorgensen, owner of the J/111 Picosa for the last 7 years, shared his experience on this year’s Islands Race. “I’ve done probably 5 Islands Races. The hospitality of both NHYC on the front end and SDYC on the backend really makes it part of the fun. Seeing your friends and so on. It was probably the coldest race in memory. It was really freezing. And we knew it was going to be freezing because that’s what the forecast was. So we geared up which was fine so we were warm enough. We had a somewhat late finish (13:50:21). The wind shut off in a couple different places, once last night between Catalina and San Clemente. But that lasted for about 3 hours, then we picked up more breeze again. My favorite part is probably going down the backside of Catalina and then shearing off to go to San Clemente. It’s good sailing.” As Picosa crossed the finish line, they established the top corrected finish time for the race to that point, 30 minutes ahead of Grand Illusion’s time. But looking back at the live standings Alli Bell’s Cal 40 Restless was projecting to have the best corrected time as possibly the final finisher if they could maintain speed through the afternoon with 40+ miles to go. The wind just wouldn’t cooperate as the Cal 40 slowed down in the last few miles of the race and fell short of Picosa’s time by about 14 minutes. Picosa also won their class for the fourth time in the Islands Race, finishing one hour ahead of Jeff Shew’s Raven in Class E. Full results: https://islandsrace.com/results