Big breeze for Long Beach Race Week's final day

by Rich Roberts on 29 Jun 2009
Sailors from these parts will tell you that San Diego 100 miles to the south is not the windiest venue on the West Coast.

'That's why we enjoy coming up here,' Chuck Nichols said late Sunday afternoon.

And when Acura presents Ullman Sails Long Beach Race Week with weather conditions like 132 boats in 18 classes found this past weekend, Nichols and his border-area peers tend to make the most of it.

Nichols, Chris Snow and Mark Surber came on strong in the last two races Sunday to win, respectively, the J/120, J/24 and PHRF-1 classes, reveling in winds of 15 to 20 knots. It was so windy that even the local Alamitos Bay and Long Beach Yacht Clubs that organized the event were impressed by the benevolence of nature that blessed the West Coast's largest keelboat regatta.

The winds blew light building to brisk the first two days, but Sunday the fleets were greeted by a carpet of whitecaps as they sailed out of the Alamitos Bay jetty to the three race courses.

'We don't get this much in San Diego,' said Nichols, like Snow a member of the San Diego Yacht Club. 'But we've had the same crew [of 10] for seven or eight years and our average age is over 50, so it's good to know we can still sail in heavy air.'

While other boats were rounding up or spinning out here and there, Nichols said, 'I think we were the only one in our class that didn't wipe out. We have really good communication for trimming and adjusting and keeping the boat sailing under us.'

Surber's Derivative, a J/125, finished fourth and sixth in the early light-air races Friday and Saturday but ran off two seconds and three firsts in the windiest races over three days.

'The windier it is the better it is for us,' said Surber, a Coronado YC member. 'It's what makes Long Beach a great event. We just kept driving as hard as we could thinking that sooner or later something may come our way.'

It did. David Bassett-Parkins' Emirage II, a 1D48, led into the final day, won the first race and was leading the last one up among the Farr 40s, which started five minutes earlier, when it snagged the last mark buoy on the windward rounding.

'We not only snagged it, we dragged it a quarter-mile,' Bassett-Parkins said.

By the time they shook it loose, they were in last place, which left them third in the final standings.

'It was very unfortunate for them,' Surber said. 'They sailed a good regatta.'

The incident occurred as Emirage II approached the mark with the Farr 40 White Knight (a.k.a. Radical Departure)---not even a boat in its class---on its windward hip.

'We couldn't come up [to clear the mark] or we would have fouled them,' Bassett-Parkins said. 'I was driving … there was nobody else to blame.'

Only two of the seven J/24s raced Friday, leaving Susan Taylor's Take Five with an early 1-1 lead and everybody else with a steep hill to climb. Like Surber, Snow started slowly with a fourth place in Saturday's first race, but then hooked into the big breeze to run off four consecutive wins to match Taylor in points and edge her on a tiebreaker---his four first places.

The regatta was the climactic event of the Ullman Sails Inshore Championship Series, following Ahmanson Cup at Newport Beach, Yachting Cup at San Diego and Cal Race Week at Marina del Rey.

Class winners

Alpha course
PHRF-1 (9 boats)---Derivative (J/125), Mark Surber, Coronado, Calif., 4-2-6-1-1-2-1, 17 points.

PHRF-2 (9)---Martela (IMX 38), Viggo Torbensen, Dana Point, Calif., 4-3-2-5-1-1-1, 17.

J/120 (10)---CC Rider, Chuck Nichols, SDYC, DNC-DNC-2-3-3-1-2, 33.

FARR 30 (6)---Frequent Flyer, Garrett Woodworth, New York YC, 1-3-1-2-1-1-2, 11.

FARR 40 (8; West Coast championship)---Piranha, David Voss, California YC, 1-5-4-2-2-2-1, 17.

FLYING TIGER 10 (5; Pacific Coast championship)---Mile High Klub, Payson & Philip Infelise, Newport Harbor YC, 1-1-1-2-1-1-DNS, 13.

Bravo course
PHRF-3 (7)---Cahoots (Etchells), Bruce Golison, Alamitos Bay YC, 1-1-2-3-2-1-1, 10.

J/105 (13)---Current Obsession, Gary Mozer, Long Beach YC, 4-1-2-1-1-1-1, 11.

J/109 (5)---Electra, Thomas Brott, Seal Beach YC, 1-1-1-1-2-2-1, 9.

J/29 (5; West Coast championship)---Sedona, Bruce Lotz, Dana Point YC, 1-1-1-1-2-2-2, 10.

J/180 (8)---Fired Up, Gary Kamins, California YC, 4-1-6-1-2-2-1, 17.

SCHOCK 35 (6; Pacific Coast championship)---Mako, Dave & Don Michaelis, Alamitos Bay YC, 3-3-1-1-2-3-1, 14.

Charlie course
J/24 (7)---Bogus, Chris Snow, San Diego YC, DNC-DNC-4-1-1-1-1, 14 (won tiebreaker over Take Five, Susan Taylor, California YC, 1-1-2-4-6-6-4, 14).

CAL 25 (5)---Jane's Addiction, Steve & Jane Horst, Bahia Corinthian YC, 2-1-1-1-1-2-1, 9.

CATALINA 37 (3; National championship)---Team ABYC, Chuck Clay, Alamitos Bay YC, 1-2-1-1-2-2-2, 11.

OPEN 5.70 (11; West Coast championship)---Il havic, Rich Festa, Cal YC, 2-1-2-1-1-2-1, 10.

VIPER 640 (6)---Boom Slang, Drew Harper, South Beach YC, 3-3-2-1-1-2-1, 13.

RANDOM LEG (9)---It's OK, Andrews 40, Balboa YC, 2-2-1, 5.

Regatta counts in SoCal High Point Series for J/80, J/105, J/109 and J/120.

Full results at http://www.lbrw.org/index.html