{"id":82796,"date":"2025-12-01T16:31:02","date_gmt":"2025-12-01T21:31:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/?p=82796"},"modified":"2025-12-01T16:31:04","modified_gmt":"2025-12-01T21:31:04","slug":"how-the-buccaneers-raided-alaska","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/racing\/how-the-buccaneers-raided-alaska\/","title":{"rendered":"How the Buccaneers Raided Alaska"},"content":{"rendered":"\n        <section class=\"hydra-container\">\n\n\t\t\t                <div class=\"hydra-canvas\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" src=\"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/BNAC-Ferring2025-123-1024x768.jpg\" class=\"hydra-image disable-lazyload\" alt=\"Buccaneer Class in Alaska\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1400px) 100vw, 1400px\" fetchpriority=\"high\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/BNAC-Ferring2025-123-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/BNAC-Ferring2025-123-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/BNAC-Ferring2025-123-768x576.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/BNAC-Ferring2025-123-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/BNAC-Ferring2025-123.jpg 2000w\" \/>                <\/div>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n            <figcaption class=\"caption margin_top_xs full border_1 hydra-figcaption\">\n                <span class=\"hydra-image-caption\">Alaska served as an ideal high-latitude gathering for the Buccaneer Class and its North American Championship.<\/span>\n                <span class=\"article_image_credit italic margin_right_xs\">Mike Ferring<\/span>\n\n\t\t\t\t            <\/figcaption>\n        <\/section>\n\t\t\n\n\n<p>After an especially hot and humid weekend in Tampa, Florida, during the 2024 Buccaneer North American Championship in 2024, the sailors were ready to consider holding their next big regatta somewhere cooler, somewhere in the polar opposite direction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<iframe id=\"x8aa2rgac1\" src=\"https:\/\/Sailingworld.dragonforms.com\/x8aa2rgac1\" scrolling=\"no\" style=\"width:100%;height:165px;border:none;overflow:hidden;\"><\/iframe>\n\n\n\n<p>But where to?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Avid Buccaneer sailor Bruce Lee floated the idea of holding the 2025 version 5,000 miles away, a remote flyer to the more temperate and midnight-sun environs of Alaska. The regatta organizer would be the Alaska Sailing Club on Big Lake, an hour\u2019s drive north of Anchorage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There were, however, a few obvious challenges with this scheme. Competitors were not likely to hitch their boats and tow them all the way to America\u2019s 49th state, but maybe they would fly there and use local boats. It just happens that Alaska Sailing Club is big on Buccaneers with members owning more than a dozen of them. The regatta could split entries into A and B fleets and there would be just enough boats to make it a round-robin style regatta. Problem solved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But now for the bigger question: Would anyone come?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For Buccaneer sailor John Weiss, there was \u201cno hesitation.\u201d&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And he wasn\u2019t alone. Sixteen teams from the lower 48 signed up and the regatta was a go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The club itself has only 110 family memberships, but people quickly jumped in to help. \u201cSteve Ryan said, \u2018If you organize, I\u2019ll get the boats,\u2019\u201d Lee says. \u201cNancy Black headed hospitality. Tom Harrison and Jim Auman were on the water. Elaine Hunter, Dave Johnson and Darren Black did everything. Brie Busey kept things together.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Alaska Sailing Club has carved out a rustic nook on the south shore of Big Lake, with one club building and a half-dozen basic private \u201ccondos.\u201d The club is \u201cdry,\u201d which in Alaska-speak means no running, potable water. That also meant water bottles and port-a-potties for competitors, but this, too, was no barrier to inviting 60-plus friends for a week of sailboat racing and partying.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>To ensure fair racing, the boats had to be equal and that task fell to Ryan, who worked on the fleet for nearly a month, sometimes with Lee\u2019s help. Lee, who now escapes Alaska winters by snowbirding to Phoenix and sails with the Arizona Yacht Club\u2019s Buccaneer fleet, brought some racing sails from Buccaneer sailors there to supplement the Alaskan quiver. Well before competitors arrived, the two of them measured and tweaked and did side-by-side speed comparisons. Dock gossip suggested that one or two of the boats were just a bit slower than the rest, but a statistical breakdown at the regatta\u2019s finish found them to be essentially equal. Mission accomplished.<\/p>\n\n\n\n        <section class=\"hydra-container\">\n\n\t\t\t                <div class=\"hydra-canvas\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" src=\"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/4-panel-frames-2-1024x768.jpg\" class=\"hydra-image\" alt=\"Images of people in Alaska\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1400px) 100vw, 1400px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/4-panel-frames-2-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/4-panel-frames-2-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/4-panel-frames-2-768x576.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/4-panel-frames-2-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/4-panel-frames-2.jpg 2000w\" \/>                <\/div>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n            <figcaption class=\"caption margin_top_xs full border_1 hydra-figcaption\">\n                <span class=\"hydra-image-caption\">Faces of the fleet: sailors and friends of the Buccanneer class enjoyed the Alaskan fleet&#8217;s frontier hospitality for a memorable championship on the water and off.<\/span>\n                <span class=\"article_image_credit italic margin_right_xs\">Mike Ferring<\/span>\n\n\t\t\t\t            <\/figcaption>\n        <\/section>\n\t\t\n\n\n<p>They also imported me from Arizona to serve as principal race officer, and with that they got my wife Maryellen and daughter Elizabeth as a Race Committee package. We were lured by the legend of this Buccaneer championship, the tales of friendly competition and fun times. Before the regatta began, Harrison briefed me on Big Lake, known for frequent and substantial wind shifts. He also imparted one bit of very useful local knowledge: if a float plane lands, it has right-of-way. Good to know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The typical wind pattern on Big Lake brought sailing breeze in the afternoon and evening. With daylight lasting until midnight, the schedule was a little unusual. \u201cThey flipped the script,\u201d says Jimmy Yurko, who has been sailing Buccaneers for 27 years. \u201cInstead of rushing to get a boat ready in the morning, we sailed into the evening. After racing it was saunas and campfires.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>With kids, dogs, s\u2019mores and a steady supply of good food, the regatta and its Alaskan hosts had it all. The food was plentiful and delicious. Volunteers served continental breakfast, then around midday Nancy Black and crew laid out an elaborate meal that they called dinner. During racing in the evening, they followed with soup and sandwiches. Three kinds of soup each time: such things as vegetables and wild rice, salmon chowder or moose chili. One dinner included reindeer sausage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWe wanted to actually share some Alaska,\u201d Black says. \u201cNot everywhere can you get salmon chowder and moose chili.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>While Black was handling hospitality, husband Darren was racing with their 15-year-old son Jake Black in B Fleet. Their other son, Gabe Black, was racing with his girlfriend Adrianna Ramirez in his own boat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cGabe\u2019s a serious sailor,\u201d Lee says. \u201cHow many 17-year-olds do you know who bought their own Buccaneer?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The A fleet had 12 competitors and the B fleet had nine. We met the goal of 21 races over four days with boat swaps between every race. After on-the-water boat-to-boat exchanges bent a masthead fly after the first race, they decided to send everyone back to the nearby docks for exchanges from then on.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Meanwhile Big Lake lived up to its shifty reputation, but Harrison and the mark-set team kept up, actually twirling the course nearly 90 degrees between a couple of races, with no delay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>On a hill overlooking the racecourse, non-racers gathered to watch and hoot and holler. Someone even live-streamed the action on Facebook and bragged that he had 55 people watching.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>After stumbling to a bad finish in the penultimate race, enduring champion Ed Mantano and Shannon Devine fell behind John Weiss and his crew Jay Foght by a fraction of a point to decide the championship. Trevor and Rachel Bach claimed first in B. The young Black and Ramirez team rode consistent finishes and a couple of bullets to a second-place standing in B.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Weiss summarized the Alaskan Buccaneer 18 North American Championship as \u201cAn insane vacation wrapped around a highly competitive regatta.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Where, he asked, \u201ccan you get 12 close races and then take a helicopter to a glacier and go snowmobiling?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThey made it a family vacation,\u201d Lee says. \u201cI\u2019ve never seen so many of the families before.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The vacation theme sat well with a fleet of close friends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>No protests, one redress, one general recall, three boats OCS and no shouting. After trophies and the requisite group photo, it was off to glaciers, mountains, mushing trips and the rest of what this great, wild land has to offer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It was, indeed, a good time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThere\u2019s a comfort and familiarity to the class,\u201d says Yurko, who with his wife Kristi, will host the next Buccaneer National Championship (their third) in Maryland in October 2026. \u201cWe\u2019re friends on and off the water, we support each other and it goes way beyond sailing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That is the Buccaneer way. They\u2019re just happy to be together wherever they meet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A remote location was no barrier to these diehard Buccaneer sailors looking for a place to gather for the big championship.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":82797,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"BS_author_type":"BS_author_is_guest","BS_guest_author_name":"Mike Ferring","BS_guest_author_url":"","hydra_display_date":"","hydra_display_updated":false,"_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":"","_yoast_wpseo_metadesc":"","_yoast_wpseo_title":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","arc_story_id":"","arc_website_url":"","custom_permalink":"","arc_subtype":"","arc_exclude_from_feeds":false,"sponsored":false,"sponsored_label":"Sponsored Content","sponsored_display_label":false,"sponsored_image":false,"post_right_rail":true,"post_right_rail_ad_1":true,"post_right_rail_ad_2":true,"post_right_rail_ad_3":false,"post_right_rail_ad_4":false,"post_right_rail_recirc":true,"fixed_anchor_ad":true,"post_top_ad":true,"post_off_ramp":true,"post_taboola":false,"labels":true,"apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":"","ad_settings_ads_on_this_page":true,"ad_settings_automatic_ad_injection_into_the_content":true,"ad_targeting":"","alternate_title_newsletter":"","alternate_content_newsletter":"","sponsored_url":"","social_share":true},"categories":[159],"tags":[3062,3061,3056,177,178],"class_list":["post-82796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-racing","tag-alaska","tag-buccaneer","tag-print-fall-2025","tag-racing","tag-sailboat-racing"],"acf":[],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82796"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82796\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/82797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}