Huntington High Sierra Regatta Report

Huntington High Sierra Regatta Report
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“I can’t wait until …”

Huntington Lake, one of the most Southern lakes in the Sierra mountain range offers a unique blend of warm air, cold water and fresh breeze that runs down the length of a somewhat narrow lake. Capping out 7,000 feet Huntington certainly has to be one of the best lake sailing venues in the west.

This year was no exception. A record number of boats vie for the opportunity to race here. Historically, the US forest service careful guards the number of sailboats that have access to the lake. This year was no exception. The High Sierra keelboat weekend broke attendance records with over 131 boats on what was supposed to be a 100-boat limit…oops. Fresno Yacht club flawlessly runs this event and has done so since the mid-50.

The normal cast of mixed PHRF boats showed along with the Ultimate 20’s always a mainstay at this event. This year the Vipers were awarded a one-design start (on the same line as the U20’s). I went out of my way to thanks the RC promising them 8-10 boats for next year’s event.

I can’t WAIT until we have numbers like the East Coast and can pack 25 Vipers onto the lake for a West Coast Championship. Perhaps we’ll be rewarded one day by hosting a North Americans here, as the U20’s offered in 2008, a hugely fun event!

Friday’s practice saw the lake filled with boats running the various courses and reveling in the 85° air temperature. Garett and I ended up sailing 2 up this event as Mahalynn had too much work to escape, preferring employment to the obvious alternative; she stayed back in the Bay Area this year. After seeing the pics from this race she vows not to make that mistake EVER again.

The racecourses take full advantage of the varying conditions along the length of the lake. Fresh breeze on the start line sailing up to light air at the top, banging corners all the way down the entire lake to the final rounding mark at the riverhead and a quick upwind finish back at the ramp.

Saturday’s first race was very light at the start. The line was full with 4 Vipers and 6 U20’s keeping it busy. The key to the start is to make it to the left side of the lake/course first to sail the lift up the shoreline. It’s almost a beeline where the first one to that side often gets the holeshot at the weather mark.

The wind freshened to 12-14 for the second race. Hard fought position changes, a few miscues and mistakes left Team Dion’s “Coup De Rouge” with her second first of the regatta, thus sewing up first place.

Most of the teams stayed in the campgrounds or the small cabins up behind the launch ramp. As is normal with Viperers, parties were heard running late into the night. The camaraderie between the teams in the West is legendary…lots of exchanges of ideas and tactics keeping everyone on the same page for the next days racing. Team BoomSlang split up in the pre-race period to help another boat deal with some trimming and dousing issues. That’s Viper sailing at it’s best…the front of the fleet helping the back of the fleet to hone their skills and tighten up the racing.

Well, it certainly worked. The first leeward turning mark on the only race of the day found 3 boats all within inches (actually prods over heads) and everyone gibing hard to make it to clear air and the freshening breeze in the middle of the lake. With its two-up crew, BoomSlang blasted out onto a high-speed plane and led the bottom mark by 3 minutes, taking first for the last race and second overall in the regatta.

A beachside post-race awards program was held and wonderful, handmade redwood plaques were issued to the winners. The 56th running of the High Sierra regatta was concluded…another fine job by the Fresno Yacht Club.

The Rondar West Coast reps had a brochure rack mounting on BoomSlang’s trailer. There was a constant buzz of folks hanging out, ogling the Viper and over 30 brochures made it into their hands.

Huntington Lake is certainly a GREAT venue for the Viper. The Arizona and West Coast fleets will likely include the High Sierra Regatta into the West Coast Viper Circuit for 2010. Come join us at this Alpine lake. Fresh breeze, good camping and great friends. It really doesn’t get any better than this.

Long Beach Race Week

We spent the last weekend racing Hull #104 "BoomSlang" at Long Beach Race Week. Alamitos Bay is the perfect venue for the sportboats, the Viper 640 in particular. This turned out to be the first year of a one-design start for the Viper. We had 6 boats on the line. Two were chartered from local owners and the furthest traveled was a tie between us and Laurent from Phoenix.

We pulled up mid-day on Thursday to a freakin' sandstorm it was blowing so hard. A quick rig up and we're out on the water having a ball.

Friday the wind subsided considerably. We softened up the rig a bit and managed two thirds. Still trying to make the boat go fast in lighter air. The highlight of Friday was the second race, a one-hour, 45-minute, six leg ordeal. The top three boats finished within 1 foot of each other screaming downwind. Dave Morse and Glen VanHeel traded places a few times on the final leg of the race with Dave's #38 "Sheriff Bart" taking the win. The poor race committee had no time to blow three separate finishes. One-design racing at it's very best !!

Saturday the wind filled in a bit and we took a 2nd in the first race, then finished up the day with two firsts. Team Coup De Rouge lead by Skipper Laurent and crewed by Viper veterans John Riddell and Lucian Sahali put the pressure on with great sailing and solid tactics.

On Sunday the competition was hot with the International 14 veterans led by Jeff Young on #33 "Happy Endings." We traded place on 1st and second finishing within seconds of each other.

Our goal is to double the size of the fleet for next years Long Beach Race Week. Come join in the fun !!

photos courtesy of Rich Roberts

1	104	BoomSlang	Drew Harper	3	3	2	1	1	2	1	13
2	38	Sheriff Bart	David Morse	2	1	4	3	3	3	4	20
3	34	snake eyes	Glenn VanHeel	1	6	1	4	4	4	3	23
4	33	Happy Endings	Jeff Young	4	2	5	7 dnf	7 dnc	1	2	28
5	31	Coup De Rouge	Laurent Dion	5	4	3	2	2	7 dnf	7 dns	30
6	601	Aqua Baby	Tom Dent	6	5	6	5	7 dnf	5	7 dns	41

Charleston Race Week !!

Viper Racing at Charleston Race Week.

I still can’t get this smile off my face. What a complete and unadulterated blast.

If you’re a west coast sailor, you owe it to yourself to take in a few of the major east coast regattas. Great participation and the Atlantic is a fun ocean.

Landed in Charleston late Thursday, just in time to catch the last of the skippers meeting. The skipper of the boat, Dan Taylor suggested that we go sailing. Kurt, the bowguy, a local college sailor was stoked, so off we went.

My first sail in Charleston harbor was greeted with a pod of Atlantic Bottlenose Dolphins off our portside. What a delight !!

We went through a series of tacks and jibes, worked on sets and douses and hustled back to the party on the beach at CRW central. Some huge sponsors for this event adds up to some great parties. With 37 Vipers registered for the event, the largest fleet in the regatta, there were many, many opportunities to meet the other sailing teams. Paul Young, the owner of Rondar, the English company that builds the boat, flew in from England to hang out with the fleet, lend his support and do some on-water coaching. He was joined by Rondar USA manager and Viper designer, Brian Bennett. These guys went out of their way to help every single Viper owner to sail faster, better and safer. They recently introduced the Viper tuning guide. I’ve been sailing a loooong time and I can’t remember such dedication from a class association or builder since the good old Hobie fleet 16 days.

The event was hosted by Charleston Harbor Resort and Marina and they couldn’t have found a better spot. Great beach, awesome parties, pool, facilities, you name it. Oh yeah, and the perfect marina location for racing from.

Here’s some GREAT Video of the Friday Racing.

Three days of racing on the uber-fun Viper is JUST what I needed. This boat is immensely fun and easy to go fast on. We sailed hard, crashed hard, partied hard and what can I say…lived large. Check out all the info from Charleston Race Week and more on the Viper Class site.

The West Coast Demo Viper, #104 “BoomSlang” will soon arrive. We’ll be posting up a series of demo sails around the West Coast on the Sailing Anarchy Sportboat Forum.

Life’s short…..Sail Fast !!

I've Been SnakeBitten. The Viper 640 is coming to Cal.

(photos and video from the recent Texas Viper Demo)

I just got back from Arizona racing hull #72 at the Leukemia Cup. It was the first time my crew had raced the Viper, though, as a team, we have about a dozen regattas under our belt. The conditions varied widely from zero to nearly 20 knots, so we got a sampling of most the conditions you're likely to see.

I have to tell you, I'm thoroughly impressed with the range of the boat. It performs much better than any of the other 20' sportboats. I've sailed the Melges 20, the Laser SB3, the Open 5.70 and I own an Ultimate 20.

The Viper flat out FLIES in lighter air. In 5 knots TWS, we sailed with 4-4.5 knots boatspeed. The reason? The Viper has a remarkably narrow beam waterline but a long waterline length. This adds greatly to the light air capability. Even in ghoster breezes we could get the boat moving very well...typically 2+ knots, something you're simply not going to acheive in a boat with a wider beam waterline.

In the middle range, 10-12, the boat quickly jumps onto a light plane. Every thing about it is easy. My crew consists of myself, a 150 lb man and a 130 lb woman. My lady crew has no problem performing every task on the boat. She ended up being the jib/spinny trimmer in all conditions, even 20 knots.

The last day of racing found the fleet in 18-20, puffs perhaps to 22. This was obviously the fun day. The Viper has the right controls to depower the rig. Bendy carbon mast, big purchase on the Gnav, strong cunningham and fine-tune jib halyard tensioner. We had no problem sailing the boat flat, even reaching up a bit with the kite. We typically saw speeds in the 12-14 knot range and hit our top (according to the Velocitek) at 16.8. That particular reach was the topic of conversation at the post race celebration. :-) We crashed the boat once and it was very forgiving. One big ease on the spinsheet, a hard pull on the rudder and whooosh, out she squirted onto a plane, fully in control.

The fleet was a wonderful group of sailors. There was at least one woman on every boat and one boat was crewed by the owners kids. We were immediately made to feel warm and welcome within a group that has sailed together for years. Quite unusual in fleet one-design sailing.

The boat has it all. Speed, quality, affordability, grass-roots and manufacturer support, strong but friendly fleet competition and steady growth across the country.

Having tried them all, I chose the Viper am very pleased I did.

Try one soon. If there's anything I can do to assist you in that endeavor, please do let me know.

Here's some video taken at the latest demo in Texas.

Still photos of the same event.

Here's a short video from YouTube.

Stella Gets her First Bullet (Win)

3 races out of the barn and we got our first win. Of course it was heavy air...something we sail well in. We sailed the Berkeley mid-winters two day series in December. The first day we were still trying to get the boat on her numbers. Lumpy seas and light air left us middle of the pack trying to find speed. Sunday was a different story. Learning much from the lessons the fleet taught us on Saturday, we found great speed from the starting line to the first mark, fell back to second for a brief period but regained the lead and never looked back. After the nearly 1.5 hour race we ended up overtaking most of the fleet that started 10 minutes ahead of us and finished over 3 minutes ahead of the 2nd place U20. Garett and Mahalynn had flawless sail/boat handling....quick sets, perfect douses and great trim in breezes from 12-20 knots.

We're back out on the race course this weekend for another couple days of racing. Garett's out of town so Mahalynn and I are going to race doublehanded in preparation for the upcoming 3 Bridge Fiasco...a popular single/double handed mid-winter race with nearly 100 boats on the line.

This is FUN!!!

Team Stella - Racing At Last!

Team Stella has competed a couple of times since my last entry. Stella's first race out of the barn was the Great Pumpkin Regatta hosted by Richmond Yacht Club. We managed 9 boats so earned a one design start.

Crewed by myself, Garett and Mahalynn, we had a great time. We're the rookies of the group and finished middle of the pack, but saw some good speed in a couple of the races. We have a pervasive problem with the rudder and keel humming badly anything faster than 7 knots so we are working on that issue to get the boat up to her true potential.

Day one was a three race, windward/leeward buoy series. Day two was a reverse pursuit around both Angel Island and Alcatraz, either way. The predominant path was to round clockwise. We opted for a counter-clockwise approach, which probably would have worked VERY well, had we not sailed into a huge hole behind Angel Island. As it turns out, the top finishing boats on the water all went the same way we did, albeit further North to skirt Angel Island's wind shadow....lesson learned.

We put Stella through her paces on that race. We got to Alcatraz late and were welcomed by a huge ebb tide and puffs to 25. We pounded around the corner of Alcatraz, took a couple of hard broaches but ended up having a ball and really learned just how hard you can beat up a Ultimate 20 :-)

This is CERTAINLY the funnest group of people I've ever been graced to share the water with. These guys know how to sail fast and party hard!



U20 East Coast Championships


Our next adventure was to race the East Coast Championships on Lake Norman, NC. We hoped for 30 Ultimate 20's on the start but a few boats just couldn't make the trip. We ended up with 24!! Don Corey, a legend within the U20 class, was kind enough to loan us his #1 boat (thanks Don) and we couldn't have been more pleased. This boat was perfectly well setup with a NEW set of Doyle Boston sails...simply awesome.

We had a great practice day on Friday, sailed 3 races on Saturday (yup, middle of the pack again :-( and 2 VERY light air (read; nada for breeze) races on Sunday. One thing we learned is that San Francisco sailors are spoiled with all of our breeze. We need to sail in light air more often as that's what the rest of the world predominantly sails in.

As a result, we're entering the St. Pete NOODS in February on another loaned boat "Running with Scissors" (great name eh?....thanks to Steve Rose, another 2 boat Ultimate 20 owner). We're campaigning Stella down to the San Diego NOODS in March.

We're working hard to get ready for the April Pac Sail Expo show and hope to have some exciting news about the Ultimate 20 and YES, the Antrim 25....keep your ears open.

Finally, I leave you with this great shot of Team Stella in tight quarters at the mark rounding, ECC's

Well we managed to find a used U20 locally. After scouring the entire country one showed up in Santa Cruz! The market is so hot for these we pounced on the boat.

Stella is hull #156. I raced against her when I was crewing on Trent’s U20, #27 UFO at the Ultimate 20 North Americans at Lake Huntington. Actually, Stella was on charter to the class president and he HIT us. We were on starboard tack and he just got a bit overpowered and couldn’t duck us. He did his penalty turns and all was good, except on of UFO’s lifelines got broken. Easy fix.

First thing I looked at when I was buying the boat was the bow, where they hit us LOL, no marks.

Stella came well equipped with an older set of Boston/Doyle sails, galvanized trailer, and all the class-required gear except for a motor. We bought a Torqeedo electric and it powers the boat around great.

We thought long and hard about putting a bottom on the boat immediately so that we could leave her in the water at South Beach. We opted, instead, to put the boat over at Treasure Island Sailing Center where we’ll drysail her throughout the winter.

Only had one race on her so far, the Leukemia Cup. Had a great showing, leading the fleet for a bit…ended up 7th. LOTS of fun.

The U20 has gone through a few production companies. It started out in the Ron Moore boat shop in Santa Cruz, and then Santa Cruz Yachts (builder of the Sc-27’s and Yukon Jack) took a stab at building them. US Yachts built the majority of them under the USI logo. Production moved to Abbot boatbuilding in Canada but a fire gutted the plant destroying all but one boat. Luckily the molds were spared.

Recently the production moved to
/index.php">Columbia Yachts in Santa Ana, CA. Yes, this is the rebirth of the original Columbia Yachts founded by Dick Valdes in the late 50’s. His son, Vince has reformed the company and is building the U20 alongside his own Sportboat, the Columbia 30 and the awesome Antrim Class 40. Vince uses state of the art infusion and I have to say, these boats are looking perfect. The weight is dead on class minimum, they are strong, light and gorgeous. Columbia has worked hard to bring the production into the new millennium with infusion. Now that this learning curve is behind them, look for some ramped up production, given a somewhat more robust economy

We’ve sailed all the sportboats in production and have to say, the U20 is the perfect blend of speed, comfort (has a cabin that’ll sleep 2 comfortably) durability and price. The owners group is fanatical about this boat. The resale is ridiculously high with used boats generally selling for more than they were bought. Construction on these boats is historically at the top of their class and Columbia has improved on that already lofty performance. Get this, in the 08 U20 North Americans, an amateur team on hull #6, yes hull 6, beat out a pro team skippered by none other than Brad Boston himself (6 time North America Champion). A testament to a well built boat. You’ll not see this in virtually any other class in sailing. It really is the “Ultimate 20 Footer.”

If you want to sail one, let us know. We’re ALWAYS looking for a reason to get out there.