All it took was a year of elbow grease and a little bit of TLC for Alex Simanis to get his newly restored Pt Bonita 27, Pell Mell, back into the water… and titled a winner. The smallest boat on the course for the duration of the 2022 California Offshore Race Week has proved that it is heart and skill that gets you first overall, not size. Simanis’ Pell Mell is the official winner of not just the SoCal 300, but the overall series winner of CORW.
Simanis commented, “The Spinnaker Cup was epic. We stuck with our plan of staying out and waiting for the new breeze to come - and it worked out well. The last 50 miles we did in about 6 hours and we came into Monterey on a nice angle and 25+ knots of breeze. For the SoCal 300, it was a beautiful jib reach to the islands. We thought it was going to be game on, but it was really light. We got stuck in the island and had to battle back and forth to find a lane. A bunch of the fleet moved more to the west and we ended up sneaking towards more of the east breeze that filled in. We were able to catch up to the 1D35 and J/111 and the bigger boats for the run. Our boat is pretty quick on the run, so nobody got away from us.”












