US Optimist National Championship Regattas

by Rich Roberts on 26 Jul 2009
There were 171 competitors when the US Optimist National Championships started 10 races ago, but it's a three-boat battle for top honors going into the fourth and final day of the regatta hosted by the Cabrillo Beach Yacht Club Sunday.

Axel Sly, 15, of Weston, Fla. stumbled with his worst finish---seventh---in the first of four races Saturday but fired back with three runaway wins to stay on top with 16 points to 33 for defending champion Christopher Williford, 14, of Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. and 36 for Malcolm Lamphere, 13, of Lake Forest, Ill.

No surprises there. Living up to their national and international successes with 15 knots of breeze churning up the seas off San Pedro, all three handled the week's toughest conditions as one might expect. Over the first three days the trio has won nine of the 20 races.

Williford, in fact, sailing in the Purple fleet opposite Sly in the Yellow, would now have been clawing at Sly's transom from only nine points behind if one of his three first-place finishes on the day hadn't been chucked for an early start, otherwise known as OCS (on course side).

'I thought I might have been over,' said Williford, who chose not to restart when he heard the second horn---hoping it was someone else---but he learned otherwise moments after he crossed the finish line without a horn signal and was told it wouldn't be necessary to check in with the measurement boat that checks the equipment of the first few finishers.

'When the measurement boat said they didn't need me, I knew,' Williford said.

The OCS replaced an earlier eighth as his throwout score, and everybody will get a second discard after the 11th race is run Sunday. There probably will be only two races today, although three would be possible if there were to be no one-hour delay waiting for wind, which has been the case the first three days.

The two fleets have been scored as one, but Sunday the top 80 boats will be reassigned to the Gold-Silver fleet to sail for the top prizes. The 40th-place boat will win the Silver title. All the others will compete in the Bronze-Pearl group.

Four of the top 25 are girls, in case anyone thought they might be intimidated by big winds and seas. Megan Grapengeter, in fact, opened the day with a remarkable win using her head as well as her grit.

The 14-year-old from Darien, Conn. was running among the leaders at the leeward gate and had noticed on the way downwind that the finish line set off to one side halfway up the half-mile long course could be easily fetched on starboard tack by rounding the gate's right-side buoy and going left instead of to the normally favored right side of the upwind course.

'I saw that by rounding the right gate I could almost make the reach mark [that turns onto the short leg to the finish line],' she said. 'Almost everybody else went the other way because the right side has been the best way to go.'

By the time the others figured it out, Grapengeter said, 'they were all overstood [beyond the lay line] for the finish.'

Did anyone congratulate her ingenuity?

'My coach said, 'Good job,' ' Megan said.

Meanwhile, the fight for the title will be nothing new. Sly and Williford have been battling for the last few years. Williford smiled in anticipation.

'It's fun,' he said.
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