PHRF SoCal Championship - Michael Shlens and James Devling in action

by Rick Roberts on 7 Aug 2017 Michael Shlens’ Farr 40, Blade 2, finished in first place overall on corrected time in the Buoy Division, and James Devling’s Rogers 46, Carbon Footprint, took first place honors overall on corrected time in the Random Leg Division in this weekend’s 2017 PHRF SoCal Championship, hosted by Long Beach Yacht Club and sponsored by Ullman Sails and PHRF of Southern California.

LBYC’s race committee, headed by Principal Race Officer Randy Smith, ran four races for the Buoy Division and three races for the Random Leg Division in moderate breezes out of the south-southwest of seven - ten knots both days.

Shlens was not able to race his Farr 40 this weekend, but crewman Steve Natvig talked about their races.

“We had fun this weekend,” Natvig said. “Well, the first race was not so fun with us overreaching at the start, but other than that it was fun winning.

“Randy did a good job of sending us around the buoys. Mick (Shlens) wasn’t able to be here, but Jim Murrell skippered and the team had their race program out. The team is working on winning buoy races so that we can be ready for the Big Boat Series in San Francisco later this year.”

Devling’s Rodgers 46 was the fastest boat in his class and owed the other eight entries corrected time. Despite that, he was still able to win two of the three races taking a second in race three.

“We had a big chance today with our new code-zero,” Devling said. “Everybody did a great job including our Tactician Dave Millett and Bruce Cooper.

“This is hull (number) five of the Rodgers 46’s. We just bought the boat in January so we’re still tuning it. But we’re working out a lot of the kinks.”

The Performance Handicap Racing Fleet, known simply as PHRF, is an organization that calculates a sailboat’s racing speed in various conditions. They then take this information and come up with handicap seconds-per-mile ratings. Each boat’s rating is designed so that slower boats entered in a race with faster boats, have a chance of “correcting out” on their rating and, hopefully, getting a better finish position.

In PHRF racing, bigger faster boats often cross the finish line first, but do not win the race after their corrected time factor is applied. That, in a nutshell, is what PHRF racing is all about.

Final Results:

Buoy Division

1. Michael Shlens, CBYC/KHYC, 1-1-1-1, 4 points
2. John Snook, HYC, 2-2-3-2, 9
3. David Haas, Seal Beach YC, 3-4-2-4, 13
4. Scott McDaniel, SlBYC, 4-3-4-3, 14
5. Jerry Montgomery, Alamitos Bay YC, 5-5-5-5, 20

Random Leg Division

1. James Devling, Balboa YC, 1-1-2, 4
2. Paul Casanova, SBRYC, 3-2-3, 8
3. Bob Hubbard/Tom Valcich, SlBYC, 4-5-1, 10 on
tiebreaker
4. Gary Green, Del Rey YC, 2-3-5, 10
5. Mark Itnyre, SlBYC, 5-4-6, 15
6. John Szalay, BCYC, 7-6-4, 17
7. Don Weimer, SlBYC, 6-7-7, 20

For more information and full results visit www.lbyc.org.