Peck Joins Railey on U.S. Finn Team for China

by Rich Roberts on 3 Apr 2006 Zach Railey, 21, of Clearwater, Fla. and Darrell Peck, 41, of Gresham, Ore. may seem unlikely buddies, but they’ll be hanging out a lot together for the next couple of years.

Railey, the top-ranked U.S. sailor in the single-handed Finn class, won five of seven races in a fleet of 20 boats in Alamitos Bay Yacht Club’s 46th Olympic Classes Regatta Saturday and Sunday, while Peck’s close second place jumped him from fifth to second ranking.

The top two in each Olympic class qualify for the pre-Olympic regatta at Qingdao, China in August, so Railey and Peck officially became a team. Besides the Olympic preview this year, they’ll train and sail alongside each other in other events in Europe, Canada and the U.S., all leading up to the U.S. Olympic Trials at Newport Beach in October of 2007.

‘It’s exciting,’ said Peck, who has been chasing his Olympic dream sailing a Finn since 1988, when Railey was, um, 3 years old. ‘I not only had to do well at this regatta but had to have another guy do badly---and that was Bryan’s bad luck.’

Bryan Boyd of Annapolis, Md., ranked No. 4, remains in the Olympic chase and was planning to compete for the China trip here but drove a chisel into his left hand two days before the event, putting him out of competition indefinitely. The other two sailors that Peck had to leapfrog didn’t compete, either.

‘So I just sailed conservatively,’ Peck said, ‘and tried not to foul anybody or break anything.’

Erik Lidecis of nearby Huntington Beach and crew Kyle Henehan won four races and claimed the 11-boat Star class by one point over Ben Mitchell of San Diego and crew Michael Marzahi. John Pearce of Menlo Park, Calif., edged ABYC’s Chris Raab by a point among 31 Lasers. Michael Schalka of Seattle shaded Jon Scott of Vancouver, B.C. by two points among 16 Laser Radials.

In moderate winds Saturday and light 5-knot shifty breeze Sunday, Peck won the only two Finn races that Railey didn’t and had four seconds and a fifth, which he discarded.

‘Zach deserved to win this regatta,’ Peck said. ‘He let me take one of those close finishes yesterday and another one today. Actually, I took one of them. I wanted it.’

A note about Finns: the little 14-foot boats are physically demanding, but the class is multigenerational. The OCR fleet ranged from Railey, 21, to August (Gus) Miller of Portsmouth, R.I., 71.

And Finn sailors are tough. Brad Nieuwstad of Santa Clara, Calif., sailed with a cast on his broken right forearm sustained two weeks ago and placed ninth. He is ranked No. 9 in the U.S.

Veterans persevere, Peck said, because ‘it’s a difficult boat to sail, and while a lot of people can sail it, few people can sail it well.’

Railey is a rarity who outgrew a Laser, stepped into a Finn two years ago and immediately found success.

‘I’m really looking forward to sailing more with Darrell,’ Railey said. ‘We’ll be in Croatia for the Finn Gold Cup [world championship] in July, and I’m sure we’ll help each other get better along the way.’

Like Railey and Peck, Licedis also has Olympic ambitions, and at 6-9 ½ he literally stands head and shoulders above the competition. Marzahi, who is 6-5, is his usual crew but had committed to sail with Mitchell before Licedis entered the event, so Licedis recruited Henehan on short notice.

‘We had a really good first day,’ Licedis said, ‘and today we just wanted to control the fleet. But as soon as the wind goes light it’s a scramble. When it gets strong we can walk on people. So we just tried to stay on the lifted tacks and in phase with the shifts.’

Licedis and Henehan (3-1-1-1-2-1) clinched victory before the last race but sailed it, anyway, finishing a laid-back ninth.

‘We just tried not to mess it up for anybody else,’ Licedis said.

Complete results at www.abyc.org