Variable sailing conditions hounded this year’s 79-strong Rolex Big Boat Series fleet, but the competition was as fierce as ever for the 59th edition of the West Coast’s premier racing event. The unpredictability influenced the leaderboards daily, with shifts across most of the eight classes competing. From a challenging ebb coupled with strong gusts in the low 20s on Thursday, to diminishing breezes each subsequent race day, even the most seasoned RBBS competitors had to work hard to earn points. But, that’s sailboat racing! In ORC C, Peter Wagner, owner and skipper of J/111 Skeleton Key, was thrilled to make it to RBBS this year after being on the road at Championship events over the past few years. His highly competitive team took first in class for the Keefe-Kilborn Trophy. “The regatta has been really great. We’ve had really close racing in our class and several of the races decided by a very small amount of time—one was two seconds, one was seven seconds, one was seventeen seconds, so to go around racecourses of this length and have the boats correcting that close to each other speaks well of the ORC system,” said Wagner. “We’re really happy to be competing under that rule.” For the Yacht Club Trophy: Recognizing the top three boats sailing from the same yacht club with the best cumulative results, the Yacht Club Team Trophy was awarded to the St. Francis Yacht Club team of Kristin and Ryan Simmons on Blackhawk, Peter Wagner’s J/111 Skeleton Key racing in ORC and Logan Ashcraft on J/88 Hijinks. For full event details, visit https://rolexbigboatseries.com/.