October 7, 2002

Romeo Luckier than Juliet

October 7 – Auckland, NZ

Sailors and race officials alike were challenged
by the initial southeasterly wind during Flight 5 of Round Robin
1 of the Louis Vuitton Cup Monday. The wind started from a direction
of 130 degrees, but backed more than 150 degrees before settling
in the northwest by the end of the nearly 3-hour race.

That was on Course Romeo, which could be
considered lucky just to get its two matches off in the northeast
Hauraki Gulf. The two matches on Course Juliet, in the northwestern
gulf, sat through a nearly four-hour delay before being postponed
due to lack of wind.

Scoops are made for napping, at least on
Mascalzone Latino, on Course Juliet.
Photo Bob Grieser
Courtesy Louis Vuitton Cup

The winds on Course Romeo fluctuated so
much that Principal Race Officer Peter Reggio was forced to change
every mark of the course after the opening beat. “The wind
was established on the first beat,” Reggio said of the 130
wind direction. “Kenny (Read, Stars & Stripes
helmsman) sailed by with about seven and a half minutes to the
start and I asked him what wind he had. He said ‘131’.”

Stars & Stripes may have had the same wind reading as the committee,
but they didn’t have the luck against OneWorld Challenge. With
young helmsman James Spithill guiding USA-67, OneWorld opened
a lead of 1:57 at the windward mark en route to a 1:21 victory.

The Alinghi Team won in similar fashion
to OneWorld. Namely, the Swiss survived the wild wind variations
and overcame a feisty GBR Challenge to post another point on
the scoreboard.

With so many teams completing a different
amount of races, the leaderboard is a little jumbled. After
the unbeaten OneWorld Challenge (four races) and Alinghi (five
races), in first and second, respectively, with 4 points each,
Oracle BMW Racing and Sweden’s Victory Challenge are tied with
3 points on 3-0 records. Team Dennis Conner stands alone in fifth
with 2 points on a 2-3 record. GBR Challenge and Prada are tied
for sixth, each with 1 point on 1-4 records. Mascalzone and Le
Défi are at the bottom of the board, each winless in four
matches.

To read the today’s complete report, see
www.louisvuittoncup.yahoo.com/story511.html.
For coverage of the weekend’s races, go to www.louisvuittoncup.yahoo.com
and scroll down the list of stories.

Offshore Championship Turns on a Protest

October 7 – Long Beach

First Scott Soonier and his sailing crew
eluded Hurricane Lili, then got a boost from the Navy to overtake
Claudia and win their second U.S. Offshore Championship for US
Sailing’s Lloyd Phoenix Trophy, which concluded Sunday, October
6. Rolex Watch U.S.A. sponsored the event, which was held at
the Long Beach Yacht Club.

Hurricane Lili hit New Orleans the day
after the sailors from the Southern Yacht Club flew out of town
last week. Claudia is Claudia Wainer, who appeared to be the
event’s first winning woman skipper until after the sailing was
done and the title turned on a protest involving two other teams.

Ten teams from across the country competed
over three days on Catalina 37s in the Long Beach outer harbor,
sailing in the shadows of cargo-laden container freighters and
barges parked in limbo due to the waterfront labor dispute. There
were two buoy races each Friday and Sunday and a 24-mile distance
race Saturday.

Doug McLean’s Alamitos Bay YC team led
going into the last two races Sunday but stumbled to fourth and
sixth place as Wainer, sailing for LBYC with an all-male crew,
and then Soonier came on strong. Wainer won Sunday’s first race
in 12 knots of breeze going away, then finished a conservative
fifth to Soonier’s first in the last race to finish with 13 points
to Soonier’s 14 – pending protests.

The protest stunned Wainer, who won the
2001 Schock 35 class nationals and has won the prestigious women’s
One-Design Championship on the same waters the last three years.
It involved an incident between San Diego YC’s Ross Ritto and
the U.S. Naval Academy’s Mike Stapleton at the first windward
mark in Sunday’s first race. Wainer had already gone around well
in front when Ritto risked crossing Stapleton on port tack within
a few feet of the mark. It was close, and Stapleton, who had
the right of way on starboard tack, later filed a protest that
he had to alter course to avoid a collision.

The jury agreed, which disqualified Ritto
from second place behind Wainer and moved everyone else up a
spot. That left Soonier tied with Wainer at 13 points, and the
Louisiana team won the tiebreaker – in Wainer’s case, a heartbreaker
– for having won two races to Wainer’s one. “It was a tough
way to lose,” Wainer said. “We sailed our hearts out
and won on the water.”

“That’s sailboat racing,” Soonier
said. “Sometimes you can’t control your destiny.” Ironically,
Soonier added, a protest against him cost his team a chance to
win the same event at Long Beach two years ago, although they
had won it at the Naval Academy in 1997.

For the complete story, see www.ussailing.org/pressreleases/2002/OffshorePost.htm.

YOTREPS

October 7 – The Pacific Ocean and Cyberspace

Who is out making passages in the Pacific
and what kind of weather are they having? Check out YOTREPS –
‘yacht reports’ – at http://www.bitwrangler.com/yotreps/

Weather Updates

October 7 – Pacific
Ocean

San Francisco Bay Weather

To see what the winds are like on the Bay
and just outside the Gate right now, check out http://sfports.wr.usgs.gov/wind/.
The National Weather Service site for San Francisco Bay is at
www.wrh.noaa.gov/Monterey/.

California Coast Weather

Looking for current as well as recent wind
and sea readings from 17 buoys and stations between Pt. Arena
and the Mexican border? Here’s the place – which has further
links to weather buoys and stations all over the U.S.: www.ndbc.noaa.gov/Maps/Southwest.shtml.

Pacific Winds and Pressure

The University of Hawaii Dept. of Meteorology
page posts a daily
map of the NE Pacific Ocean barometric pressure and winds.

Pacific Sea State

Check out the Pacific Ocean sea states
at: http://www.mpc.ncep.noaa.gov/RSSA/PacRegSSA.html.

For views of sea states anywhere in the world,
see http://www.oceanweather.com/data/.