Few sailing events can provide the setting found at the
GMC Yukon Key West Race Week Jan. 17-21, and the new millennium's edition
of this five-day regatta could hardly have been better.
The race week opened its stint in the aqua waters south of Key West with bangs and bluster as more than a few bumps and collisions marked a breezy day of racing. Two light air days followed, which gave every dog his day during the week of windward/leeward races. The breeze came back into the teens on Day 4 with flat water, and the closing race Friday brought back the waves and the biggest breeze of the week, gusting over 20 with major shifts thrown in to see who was paying attention. Given the warm water, challenging breeze, hot competition, and Key West's own ambiance (it's a love/hate relationship for me), Key West Race Week has to be the premier annual sailing event in North America.
With race management provided by Premier Racing, there could be little to grouse about on the course setups and on-the-water management. Race officials went the extra step of mixing up the finish legs, sometimes upwind, sometimes downwind, to "share the wealth" among boats which tend to do better going up or down the course.
While there were overall honors among the 261 boats competing at race week, the Michigan-based 1D35 Heartbreaker captured the Yachting Magazine trophy, and the Annapolis-based Beneteau FC10 L'Outrage took the Key West Trophy for top PHRF performance, you'd be hard pressed to convince any one of the other class champions that they didn't also qualify for boat of the week. With 16 classes racing on three courses, only four skippers could rest easy going into the closing race on Friday.
Day 1 There was perhaps no more aggressive a fleet than the ID35s, 21-boats strong and seemingly most of them reached the first upwind mark at the same time. Despite a series of bangs and bumps, all but one of the 35-footers continued on to revel in a near-perfect day of racing. Sotet Lo was damaged in the melee and retired from the first race but returned with a vengeance and placed 11th in the second race of the day.
A spectacular collision between the upwind-bound Nelson Merek 50 Idler and the downwind running Thompson 30 Wairere in the second race fortunately spared any serious injuries but disabled both boats. According to Marty Kullman aboard the Henderson 30 New Wave, who witnessed the incident, Wairere's rig locked up with the bigger Idler.
"I've never seen anything like it," Kullman said. "Wairere was pulled upright with the stern in the water and the keel out of the water." Despite the violent nature of the collision, damage to Idler was reportedly limited primarily to a torn mainsail while Wairere's crew spent the evening repairing the mast, which amazingly did not come down.
But for most of the boats racing at this premier winter regatta, close finishes more than close contact were the rule of the day. In race one on the big boat course, the CM60 Rima edged their sistership CM60 Highland Fling by seven seconds after some 82 minutes of racing. The just launched Farr 52 Scream tied Highland Fling for second place with an identical IMS corrected time.
Not to be outdone among the bigger PHRF boats, the Farr 39 ML Fatal Attraction and the Farr 40 Custom Uarshek finished their 10.18-mile battle in a dead heat on corrected time. Race one in the 1D35 Class came down to the last puff as Tabasco edged Avalanche by one second after almost 69 minutes of racing. The third through fifth place boats each finished one second apart, and positions deep in the 21-boat fleet were determined by seconds.
Day 2 Oh, what a difference a day makes! After a week of strong winds and punishing waves, the waters around Key West turned into a rippled lake as Day 2 of the race week brought new conditions and new challengers to the forefront of many classes. After a one-hour postponement Tuesday morning waiting for the breeze to stabilize and fill in on each of the three courses, the fleet was able to complete only one longish race.
The Greek-based Farr 40 Atalanti XI, with owner George Andreadis at the helm, was forced to the right side of the course early on, found a favorable shift and led the 27-boat fleet from the first mark to the finish with an impressive three-minute margin in perhaps the most competitive one-design fleet at this regatta. The ID35 fleet was just as competitive, and the San Diego, CA-based Tabasco of John Wylie moved into a tie for the lead with a fourth-place finish Tuesday, sharing top-of-the-class honors after two days with Kip Meadow's Roxanne from Indian Island, NC.
Making the largest move up the leader board was Accumulator, skippered by Laser champion Mark Mendelblatt of St. Petersburg, FL. Sailing a chartered boat sponsored by Equitable Insurance, with a crew made up of Mendelblatt's small-boat racing friends, Accumulator finished second and moved up to ninth overall. "We had our own little lane up the middle, then took a lane to the left and rounded third at the first mark," Mendelblatt said. "We battled between third and fifth in a LONG light air race before getting into second on the last leg."
Mendelblatt described the wind conditions as "patchy." He added, "Getting the velocity was the key to the race today. You needed to be very patient."
Houston sailmaker Jay Lutz, who became the North Sails representative in his region in mid-January, had little trouble in the J/80 class regardless of the breeze. He posted three straight bullets with convincing wins in each race. Citing the problems of racing on a course mixed with seven different classes, each with its own angles and boat speed, Lutz said it was just as important to follow the other classes as his own.
"You have to figure out where your class is. You have to figure out where the wind is...where's the favored side. And you have to figure out what the boats in the other classes are doing." He added, "It's not necessarily going faster than the other guy that wins, but consistency in your boat speed."
Jeff Gale of Hope Town, Bahamas, used his boat speed advantage to get clean air and take the win in PHRF 4 aboard his B-32 Abbey Normal after struggling on Day 1 in the heavy air conditions.
"We're fast in light air. The boat loves the flat water. We're the scratch boat in our division, so we can sail away and get clean air."
Day 3 It's not the conditions they boast about at Key West, but for the second straight day at the GMC/Yukon Yachting Key West Race Week, light and spotty winds prevailed across the three racing circles. It was a day for huge gains...and huge losses. After nailing the start and sailing most of the second race of the day in clean air with the lead, the ID35 Accumulator found itself less than
a mile from the finish with little wind and too much company.
Crew Tim Landt of Tierra Verde, FL, said, "The fleet went left, all but three boats. The left had paid off all day. We went left but ran out of wind just before the finish. The three boats rode the breeze on the right side into the finish, then our wind came back and we finished."
The light conditions at the start of race two on the Division 1 big-boat course, with the pin end of the starting line favored, saw the 27-boat Farr 40 class slipping down the line towards the favored end. Too many boats and not enough room and steerage brought on slow motion contact between at least three 40-footers and the pin end race committee launch.
Atalanti XI, winner of race one of the day, found itself squeezed out before the start and had to duck the pin end RC boat, spin, then head across the line on port tack. With some clean air and a lane up the course, Atalanti XI came back to finish second and take over the top spot in the Farr 40 class after five races.
Day 4 After four days and seven races, the fat lady was ready to sing at Key West Race Week, but not before one more blast of cold and powerful winds were due to spread across the Florida Keys on Friday. With 16 one-design, PHRF, and IMS divisions racing, only four teams could be assured of winning their divisions prior to the closing race Friday morning. Atalanti XI increased their Farr 40 Class lead to 16 points after a 5-2 posting Thursday. That's wasn't a lock on the trophy, but with Olympian Robbie Haines calling tactics and a veteran core of crew aboard, it wasn't likely they would beat themselves.
One of the crew who has raced aboard a number of the Atalanti series of boats with Andreadis is North sailmaker Ethan Bixby of St. Petersburg, FL.
"We've had some breaks, and we know how to change gears in the different conditions," Bixby said. "There are six core guys and three new guys on the boat here. There is a wide range in the level of the owners in this class, but George (Andreadis) is doing a great job driving."
The Sarasota, FL-based Henderson 30 Speed Racer, owned by the Liebel brothers Steve, Scott, and Chris, finished 2-1 Thursday to put a 10-point gap between the Henderson 30 and its closest rival, Buddy Melges' Melges 32 Ceres Group. Reveling in the 12 to 17-knot breezes, the Henderson 30 sport boats reported downwind speeds over 15 knots on the windward/leeward courses.
Proving that even the best sailors in the world can get in trouble, Buddy,about to celebrate his 69th birthday,managed to tangle with a starting line committee boat in the second race Thursday. The RC boat reported that Buddy's boat had several stanchions torn loose when the race boat hooked up with the anchor line and bowsprit of the much heavier powerboat.
Day 5 Just to be sure the competitors remembered where they were and why they come from around the world to sail in the Florida Keys, Mother Nature threw in one last challenge for the fleet on Friday.
The cold front, which raced down the state late Thursday, awakened the sailors with a 10-degree air temperature drop into the 60s and a modest increase in the wind strength.
While the gusts rarely topped 20 knots, the wind direction bounced back and forth,sometimes with 25 and 30-degree shifts,and there was plenty at stake as more than half of the 16 divisions would not be settled until the closing race.
Taking the cautious approach, Steve Liebel's Sarasota-based Henderson 30 Speed Racer locked up the overall championship in PHRF Division 2 with a fourth-place finish in the closing race.
"We had a 10-point lead going into today (Friday) so we played it conservative," helmsman Scott Liebel said at the awards ceremony. "It took a lot of patience, and really good crew work, to win."
Bruce Lockwood's Connecticut-based J/29 Tomahawk didn't have the luxury of a comfortable points lead when Friday's starting gun fired. He and Titillation, skippered by Paul Andersen of Deltaville, VA, had been locked in a points battle throughout the week, and Lockwood led by only one point when the closing race began. Whoever won the last race won the regatta since Andersen would win the tie-breaker if he had a bullet in the last race.
"They (Titillation) got ahead of us on the fourth leg," Lockwood said. "On the last leg we saw more wind on the right side of the course. We got to it before they did."
After eight tough races over five days, Tomahawk beat Titillation by five seconds and captured the overall J/29 Class C trophy, their first Key West victory after four years of trying.
For racers and spectators alike, one obvious element at Key West Race Week is the diversity of the fleet. It's a venue which brings together monstrous boats like the 70-foot Santa Cruz Chessie Racing, the CM60s, and showcases newly launched designs like the all-carbon fiber Farr 52 Scream which raced its first races at Key West this week.
Vladimir "Kuli" Kulinichenko of Tampa, FL, was aboard the 60-footer Rima, one of two huge CM60 designs in the IMS class for the larger boats, and his team finished second overall for the week.
Accustomed to racing on smaller boats, Kulinichenko said, "You're like on the third floor, looking down at everyone else...it was an interesting experience."
And the venue entices the less spectacular boats as well. PHRF classes made up more than 25% of the fleet and those teams push just as hard without the high roller approach to racing.
Winning PHRF 3 in his Mobile, AL-based Olson 40 White Trash, owner Greg Smith edged the runner-up IMX 38 Brainstorm by one point to record his first overall win at Key West Race Week after eight attempts with two different boats.
"The key to this week is consistency...and not quitting," Smith said. "I have a crew that newer quits. The race is never over in their minds."
Sailing out of the Davis Island Yacht Club in Tampa, FL, Jack Cavalier's vintage C & C 40 Creola struggled in the light winds during the middle of the week. Then they blew out a spinnaker and bent the spinnaker pole in Thursday's first race, but finished the regatta with a respectable fifth-place finish in the PHRF 6 Division.
Smiling as he recalled the loss of the sail, Cavalier said, "It was a big, expensive mistake."
Cavalier was racing a slightly faded orange boat which was built in 1979, but he is accustomed to doing well despite the age of the boat. "This is the first regatta in four years which we entered that we haven't placed," Cavalier added. "But we come down here to mix it up with the best in the world."