Rivalry lives in 25th Rose Bowl Regatta

by Rich Roberts on 3 Jan 2010 Point Loma and Newport Harbor have dominated high school sailing in Southern California for several years, and the silver anniversary Rose Bowl Regatta is following form, with a new twist added Saturday.

Skipper Owen Paine and crew Shone Bowman led Point Loma's power-packed team to a runaway lead over Newport Harbor, 19 points to 46, with a string of 3-1-1-1 finishes, while in the college competition a Newport Harbor alum, Chris Barnard, put Georgetown University of Washington D.C. into a one-point lead over College of Charleston.

'It was always between us and Point Loma,' said Barnard, a Georgetown freshman who tallied a 7-4-4-1 day with crew Sydney Bolger from Long Beach as crew.

Barnard even had a good day off the beach. Stepping off the boat after his first two races, he found a lobster in the sand, left behind by the outgoing tide.

'I put it back in the water,' he said. 'All the meat was gone, anyway.'

Both of the leaders sailed their teams' B boats, rotating with the A boats and contributing equally to team point totals. There are 54 high schools, divided into Gold and Silver fleets, and 26 colleges from Hawaii to the East Coast. All are sailing Club Flying Junior dinghies on inner Alamitos Bay, rotating boats off the beach.

The first day was cool and clear, and the wind swung hopefully from offshore to onshore from the southwest while building to 7 knots early on, but it was only a tease. Soon the nearly 400 competitors were left to deal with a drifter, and just before 4 o'clock regatta chairman Mike Segerblom was compelled to call it a day as the flags at the host Alamitos Bay Yacht Club fell limp.

The fleets completed only four to six of their 15 scheduled races---which has seldom happened, but Segerblom indicated he would be happy with a dozen or so overall by Sunday night.

And if Saturday looked like a day at the beach for Paine, a 15-year-old sophomore at the tiller, and Bowman, a 17-year-old senior working as crew, it was understandable.

'Our [Point Loma] team is pretty strong,' said Bowman. 'It makes our practices really intense.'

Barnard nodded his agreement, noting that while the East Coast is the nation's hotbed of high school sailing, 'a lot of the top college sailors come from Southern California.'

They have the advantage of sailing year-round and in enough light wind conditions to learn how to deal with it.

'It's all about patience,' Barnard said.

Paine said, 'We can do pretty well in it . . . '

'Even though we're pretty heavy,' Bowman said, 'we have pretty good boat handling . . .'

'And,' Paine continued, 'when it's windy we can hike pretty hard.'

They even give interviews like a team.

Sunday's final rounds of racing will start at 11 a.m., conditions permitting.

The event is organized by the US Sailing Center of Long Beach www.ussclb.org/, hosted by the USC sailing team www.uscsailing.org and based at Alamitos Bay Yacht Club www.abyc.org

Complete results www.uscsailing.org/Rosebowl/Rose%20Bowl%202010/Results/COL10RB.RES