Corum International Yacht Race

by Rich Roberts on 14 Feb 2005 A dozen Salsa Division competitors sailed from the gloom of a rainy day in L.A. right into a small adventure on the high seas after their start in Del Rey Yacht Club's 18th biennial Corum International Yacht Race Friday.

About two and a half hours after the start, the lead boat, Bob and Kathy Patterson's J/46, Lark, from Los Angeles, encountered a dismasted 35-foot sailboat - not a race entrant - in the middle of the 23-mile-wide San Pedro Channel between Long Beach and Santa Catalina Island.

‘We sailed right up to them,’ Lark navigator Tom Leweck reported by cell phone. ‘The mast was broken off clean at the deck. There were two people aboard, but they were OK, and then a Coast Guard helicopter was hovering overhead and asked us to stand by.’

A Vessel Assist boat arrived in about 25 minutes to take the crippled but unidentified sailboat under tow.

‘By then Cheyenne had come alongside us,’ Leweck said, referring to the Salsa rival from Venice entered by Alan Blunt and David Fox of Venice, Calif. ‘I'm sure we'll be credited for the time, though.’

Earlier, Cheyenne, a Whiting 49, had difficulty with its jib halyard and sent a crew member up the forestay to fix it a couple of minutes before the start.

Leweck, otherwise known as the ‘Curmudgeon’ who edits Scuttlebutt, the sailing e-mail newsletter, is sailing his 27th race to Mexico, not including Newport-to-Ensenada overnighters.

‘This is the first time I've ever run into something like this,’ he said.

Conditions Friday afternoon, he said, were less than ideal.

‘There are big seas out here,’ he said. ‘We've been slugging to weather in 19-22 knots [of wind], with an occasional 26, on a southeast course of 120 [degrees]. Our first stop is Cedros Island, which is southeast. We'll have to tack in another six miles or we'll hit Catalina.’

Anybody else for tacking to Mexico?

At the start, as light sprinkles persisted, winds of 5-10 knots from the southeast instead of the normal south-westerlies ushered the Salsa spinnaker and non-spinnaker fleets across the line under the reversed landing pattern of jets to LAX from the sea.

Lark and Jim Maslon's C&C 110, Broadway Babe, from Marina del Rey ran the line on port tack and headed up at the gun to win the spinnaker class start handily.

Bill Solberg's Tartan 380, Wind Dancer, Los Angeles, and Scott Adam's Davidson 53, Quest, Drummond Island, Mich., led the non-spinnaker start. Other boats---some with dodgers and canopies set against the elements---appeared less than anxious to hit the line on time.

The 10 Racing Division boats, including Roy Disney's maxZ86, Pyewacket, and Randall Pittman's Dubois 90, Genuine Risk, in their West Coast debuts, will start next Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. That pair is targeting the 20-year-old record of 4 days 23 hours 0 minutes 14 seconds held by the MacGregor 65, Joss, over the 1,125-nautical mile course.

Launched in 1971, it's the oldest and longest race to Mexico's mainland. The Salsa fleet, introduced in 1995 as the ‘cruising’ class, will sail four legs with stops at Bahia Tortugas (Turtle Bay), Bahia Santa Maria and Cabo San Lucas. That fleet may motor in light wind but will pay a time penalty for doing so.

Meanwhile, race chairman Ron Jacobs announced that Cedars-Sinai Medical Center's Department of Emergency Medicine will be available throughout the event to provide the racers and their escorts with telemedical consultative services and as a receiving facility after local stabilization in the event of serious emergencies.

‘Del Rey Yacht Club is pleased to have the backup and support from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center,’ Jacobs said.

Paul Silka, M.D., associate medical director of the Department of Emergency Medicine, will be on hand to provide the racers with expertise for professional medical and consultative services. This service is being provided by Cedars-Sinai Medical Center as an extended community service.

Corum, the title sponsor for this race, will present the owner or skipper of the overall winner in each class with a Corum Admiral's Cup Trophy 41 watch, which has a retail value of $2,195.

Corum is an independent, family owned company producing high-quality and prestigious Swiss watches since 1955. The Admiral's Cup Trophy 41, with a 41mm stainless steel case and nautical pennants instead of numerals to indicate the hours, was just introduced by Corum last year. The watch, along with the complete Corum line, may be seen at www.corum.ch