King Harbor Invitational

Report by Bruce Fleming

Four West Coast Wetas descended on King Harbor Yacht Club in the west-side Los Angeles suburb of Redondo Beach, early on the last Saturday morning in March, to sail together in the early-season King Harbor One Design Invitational.

Tim Corcoran had sailed here a couple times before and finally convinced a few more of us to join him here. A one-day regatta seemed like a good way to get a short break from my job(s) while not burning the whole weekend. I drove the 115 miles up from San Diego. Bob Shirley and Paul Marston drove down from Ventura, and Tim drove west from Claremont. I also had an ulterior motive: Mark Hansen, one of the KHYC regulars, is on the USA Portsmouth rating committee, and they are quite interested in taking data on our performance so that they might update our rating.

The four of us arrived early, and rigged and hoisted our boats into the steel grey water of the harbor opening onto Santa Monica Bay. Not much sun today…it looked like southern California’s “May Gray” or “June Gloom” marine layer overcast was here a couple months early. As it often happens, there were better winds earlier in the week, but we encountered light and drifting conditions on our way out to the race course, and the breeze slowly filled in to a gentle 5-8 mph as the day progressed. The best speeds of the day…occurred on the sail back in.

The R/C ran starts for each class, including a dozen Viper 640s, six to eight Martin 20s, a few Cal 20s, and a couple of Capri 14.2. Wetas started last, along with a single Hobie Wave sailed by Mark Hansen. I’m not sure the Wave was a great match for data collection against the Weta, but the RC took great pains to measure the course and keep our times. It will be interesting for some in this Weta community to find out what they learned about our performance against the provisional #s we’ve been given. I’m sorry, I don’t have the info at this time.

Race 1 started well: Tim Corcoran has been practicing, and it showed—he was aggressively positioned at t boat end of the line in the final 10, but alas, Bob Shirley shut the door on him similar to Jimmy Spithill’s treatment of Russell Couts in San Francisco a few months ago. Luckily, unlike Russell’s AC 45, Tim’s boat remained unscathed. This single Windward/Leeward course was tricky—the light wind was stronger on the left side of the course, but the preceeding classes were crowding this area as they rounded the windward bouy and popping their chutes, so we had to tack back to the right side layline before being smothered. After rounding the top mark, I proceeded on the favored starboard tack, while Paul gybed. About a quarter mile later, I gybed to cover my leading position. In the next quarter mile, a large commercial power boat arrived from the distance in front of us and forced Paul to sail high to allow the boat to go between us, so I benefitted greatly from this further separation. I think we finished Bruce, Paul, Bob,Tim.

Race 2, after a less exciting start, Paul and Bob tacked away from my bad air and sailed toward the right side of the course. I was 2/3 of the way to the top mark when I noticed that Paul had dissappeared. More precisely, his rig had disappeared! Long story short…I won the second race and Tim came in behind me. Bob kept going and Tim and I wondered if he or we sailed the wrong course. We sailed over to Paul who was wrapping up his rig. The reason his rig came down: hand-tightening the shackel on a side shroud was not enough. The cyclical loading and unloading of the rig in the bumpy conditions loosened the shackel at the ama, and the mast came down. Shackel, bolt, and shroud are now at the bottom of the bay. Bob “finished” his 2 lap race, and I’m still wondering who sailed the correct course.

Race 3 started with a flurry. Bob had sailed to the left/pin end of the line and in the final 20 seconds of the sequence I agressively sailed to that side to be sure he didn’t get too far away on the beat. I was a little surprised to see him tack to port, but this put me at a distinct advantage on Starbord. After the gun we were on split tacks up the beat. We crossed about ¾ of the way to the buoy, but I was behind by a couple boat lengths. I guess the wind was filling in on the right? After rounding the top buoy, I worked to go deeper than Bob all the way to the last gybe, finally egding into the lead about 6 boatlengths from The Zone at the lee buoy. I furled and rounded clean. I heard some frustrated words from Bob that I think were related to a crummy furl. Since this was a 2-lap race, it was another neck-and-neck sail to the top buoy again. I stretched out the lead a little by heading to the right this time, and I think Bob went left, reversing our previous tracks. Bob weighs 40 to 50 lb more than me, and stands easiliy a foot taller, yet we are often duking it out on the course in 10 to 15 kt winds. In this lighter stuff, I’m able to slowly walk away from him. In the heavy stuff, I just can’t keep the boat down the way his larger frame can. Well, today’s light conditions were in my favor.

After crossing the finish of Race 3, the RC had chase boats sailing ahead of the finishers and tossing out overzied plastic eggs for us to pick up. Calling it sailing’s version of an easter egg hunt. Each of us who successfully retrieved an egg turned them in for cool prizes at the prize-giving party, such as US Sails t-shirts. I took home 1st, Bob took 2nd, and Tim 3rd. We all know that Paul would’ve serously shuffled the numbers if his rig hadn’t come down in Race 2. King Harbor Yacht Club has a 2-story club house out on the habor jetty with a bar and lounge on the top floor, sporting a 300-degree panoramic view of the ocean from Point Magu to the north, all the way to the cliffs of Palos Verdes to the south. The folks at this club also boast one of the largest collections of reciprocal priveleges lists, with burgees of hundreds of other yacht clubs. They are a really warm, down-to-earth crowd, so uncommon in this Hollywood town. I’m looking forward to returning for another regatta some time this summer.

Aloha,

Bruce Fleming

Akahele!, #276

San Diego, California

Thanks to C.J. Krimm for the photos!

Check out more photos at http://www.wetamarine.com/king-harbor-invitational-2013.html