2026 Stingray Point Regatta
The Stingray Point Regatta is Fishing Bay Yacht Club’s annual Labor Day weekend event for PHRF boats. The regatta includes a distance race on Friday, two days of buoy racing on Saturday and Sunday, and a dinner, band, and party on Saturday night.
This year I sailed in the PHRF-B fleet aboard Gabrielle, a J/29 recently purchased by Bill Kitchens. It was my first time sailing on a J/29. Our crew included Bill, Bruce, Paul, and me, with Andrew joining us on Saturday and Rich working the bow on Sunday.
We were learning the boat and how to work together as the weekend progressed. Most of our maneuvers left some room for improvement, but nothing major went wrong or broke. We simply weren’t always as quick getting through the maneuvers as we needed to be. Bill did a good job keeping the boat pointed in the right direction and moving while the rest of us figured out how everything worked.
Our fleet included five other boats, with the Trip 27 Goin’ and the B25 TBD setting the pace. Saturday brought comfortable conditions, with winds in the low teens and storms moving through during the middle of the afternoon. We completed two races before the storms arrived and finished third in both.
Sunday was mostly sunny, with winds in the mid-teens. We sailed three more races, finishing fourth in the first and third in the remaining two. At times we were able to close the gap on the boats ahead of us, but we couldn’t quite put together a complete race without losing some of that ground again.
It was a good weekend of racing and a valuable opportunity to learn a new boat. By the end of Sunday, we had a better understanding of the J/29 and how to sail it together, even if there was still plenty of room to improve.