The Harbor Report: The 2012 Ahmanson Cup is a success

Editor’s note: Len Bose wrote this installment of his Harbor Report column before leaving town to take part in his 25th Newport to Ensenada race, sailing aboard Linstar, John Schulze’s J 109 Linstar.

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On the weekend of April 21 and 22, the Newport Harbor Yacht Club held the 2012 Ahmanson Cup. This year, NHYC took more of a grass roots approach to the event by running a random leg course with pursuit starts. Thirty-five local boats took part in the race.

Bob Kettenhofen and his team from Dare have all but wrapped up the series with two first-place wins. The race for second is close with David Team and his Trans Pac 52 Rebel Yell in the second pole position, followed closely by Team Tres Gordo Andrews’ 49 It’s OK and Manouch Moshayedi TP 52’s Rio.

Then there is the giant killer, Robert Plant and his Hobie 33, Still Crazy. It can hold back those much larger boats in the final race of the series, scheduled for NHYC’s Opening Day on May 5 and possibly take hold of that second place trophy.

These first two races of the Ahmanson Series were scored in the Newport High Point Series and, with the large attendance, the leader board was almost turned upside down.

Roy Jones’ J 133, Tango, still holds onto first place with 44 points, the Richly family’s Amante is in second with 36 points, and Kettenhofen’s Dare moved up to third with 33 points.

David Team and his Rebel Yell jumped into fourth place with 32 points.

I am still hoping to receive my funding request from the city of Newport Beach for the annual parking permits to give to the winners of this event.

When I was interviewed the funding I was asked about what type of financial impact does this series have on the city .

Let’s look at the attendance of last week’s race of 35 boats with an average of 10 people per boat and two days of racing. That translates into 700 sandwiches made at our local delis and markets.

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In other harbor news...

On April 25, I gave a talk to the OASIS Senior Center’s Yacht Club about Balboa Yacht Club’s summer beer-can races. What a huge turn out this group gets at its monthly meeting. There must have been close to 70 people in the room.

If you did not know, the OASIS Yacht Club has a Catalina 34 and Hunter 32 in its fleet and is out sailing almost everyday. If you would like to join or are an experienced beer-can skipper, please contact them and volunteer to take a group out, on one of their boats, for this summer upcoming races.

Odds are very good that you might find some very reliable crew members for your boat this summer. I need to give a big shout out to Bronny Joy for providing me with her beer-can photos. These are fantastic and you can find all of her work at Joysailing.com.

I also wanted to give my readers a heads up that the dredging of Newport’s Lower Bay has started. There is a ton (no pun intended) of information about what, when, who and how this will all be done.

Chris Miller, the Harbor’s resource manager and his staff will again do an outstanding job of completing this task and providing up to date information on this project.

If you would like to receive updates via email, send your request to Chris at cmiller@newportbeachca.gov. Make sure you read them before you get in your boat and take a bay cruise.

Of course, if you would like to be kept up to date with everything that’s going on in Newport Harbor, you are always welcome at lenboseyachts.blogspot.com/ for the whole scope. Sea ya

LEN BOSE is an experienced boater, yacht broker and boating columnist.