Sailing : The Best Yacht Club in America? Regatta Attempts to Find Answer

The premise of last week’s third biennial U.S. Yacht Club Challenge off Newport Beach, organizers said, was to determine the best yacht club in the nation.

Although it’s doubtful that a sailboat race would settle so weighty an issue, host Newport Harbor YC did invite the 11 other participants on the basis of racing achievements, sponsorship and management of regattas, their members’ service to the sport, their youth sailing programs and club facilities.

Presumably, they all started in a 12-way tie, and 5 of them almost finished that way, separated from first to fifth place by only 1 3/4 points--the difference between first and third in any of the five races.

Manhasset Bay of Port Washington, N.Y., was first, but it might have been a runaway for third-place California YC of Marina del Rey except for what Cal’s skipper, Bill Peterson, saw as an unreasonably tough penalty system.

California YC finished first in three of the five races but lost its first-day victory on a protest by St. Francis of San Francisco, which had Congressional Cup runner-up and ’84 Olympic Finn silver medalist John Bertrand as tactician.

That death penalty meant 13 points, instead of only three-quarters of a point, for the California YC.

With only five races, there were no throw-outs, and Peterson said, “This regatta was lacking in not having an alternate penalty.”

One would be anything from a 720-degree turn to absolve an infraction to a less-severe 270 as used in the recent Congressional on-the-water judging system at Long Beach. Peterson suggested the 20% solution used in some regattas--that is, the offender would drop 20% in the results of that race instead of all the way to the bottom.

“We basically lost (the regatta) on a port-starboard (right of way) situation,” Peterson said.

On the other hand, Peterson said, Cal also benefitted from somehow drawing what he rated as the fastest boat in the fleet on two of the three days. All were Schock 35s borrowed from private owners and using their own sails, but Peterson’s was Shillelagh, a two-month-old boat with new sails owned by Dick and Diane O’Brien of San Diego.

“You need to have equal boats and equal sails,” Peterson said.

Overheard: Russ Silvestri, who was Bertrand’s adversary in the bitter Finn class controversy at the ’84 U.S. Olympic trials, noted after receiving his silver medal in the Olympic Classes regatta at Long Beach last weekend, “Hmm, this is just like the one my buddy Bertrand got.”

OLYMPICS--John Shadden of Long Beach ordinarily wouldn’t have missed last weekend’s Olympic Classes regatta but went directly to France for two major events this month after he and crewman Charlie McKee finished third in the 470 world competition at Haifa, Israel. In a phone call home, Shadden wasn’t sure how to feel. He was in first place going into the last race but finished eighth in the finale after a rival luffed him up and stalled him at the start.

Britain’s Nigel Buckley and Peter Newlands won with 39 points in the Olympic scoring, followed by Italy’s Montefusco brothers at 47 and Shadden-McKee at 48.

“If there hadn’t been any throw-outs (for the worst of seven races), we would have won by eight points,” Shadden said. But Shadden dramatically boosted his stock for the U.S. trials because the next Americans, Tom Kinney and Zach Orlov, were 13th, with Bill Draheim-Keith Andrews 22nd and ’84 silver medalist Steve Benjamin, with Kevin Burnham, 29th.

The U.S. women were remarkably strong. Lisa Niece-Pat Raymond were second, J.J. Isler-Amy Wardell third and Susan Dierdorff Taylor-Cory Fischer sixth behind the Swedish winners, Merril Soderstrom and Brigitta Bengston.

Dave Ullman, the three-time 470 world champion, is coaching what was supposed to be a relatively weak team. He said after arriving home in Newport Beach: “I’m very pleased. Americans won three of the six medals, and this is the first time since ’81 an American has medalled in the worlds.” However, he noted that the strong Soviet, Spanish and New Zealand teams were absent, and at least the first two will be in the European pre-Olympic regatta at Hyeres late this month. “That will be much more competitive,” Ullman said.

Tough luck Department: Hometown hope Richard Byron finished no worse than fourth in any of his six counted Finn class races in last week’s Olympic Classes Regatta but wound up fifth overall.

PROFESSIONAL--The latest press release from the promoters of the Ultimate Yacht Race lists six “registrants” in the Ultimate 30 class, 10 in the J-24 and one in the Hobie 21. The event is a three-part series scheduled for Corpus Christi, Tex., May 6-15, San Francisco July 22-30 and Mystic, Conn., Oct. 9-15. Originally, the U-30 class was to be a million-dollar, winner-take-all affair, but that was based on 50 entries at fees of $20,000 each.

John Kolius is listed as the manager-skipper of Team Connecticut but was not terribly optimistic when he was in Long Beach for the Congressional Cup last month. “You have to provide your own boat, so basically it’s a $150,000 entry fee,” he said. “I don’t think five or six are solid (entries). Sailors don’t have any money. I’m not even signed on as a skipper with the boat. I may, but we’ll have to re-evaluate how many boats are going to be there. There’s certainly no million dollars in prize money.”

Kolius looks to the day when such events will be fully sponsored and subsidized. “I don’t like the other way, where the competitors supply all the prize money,” he said.

Another Congressional sailor, Greg Tawaststjerna of Canada, is listed in the J-24 class, where the entry fees of $10,000 each will be distributed among the top 10 finishers. So far his backers have put up only a $2,000 deposit.

“I’ll show up and I’m confident I can get the money back,” Tawaststjerna said. “But just the whole idea of me putting up money is different.”

Event publicist Barby Lyon said, “There’s some iffy stuff going on. Some (entries), if they can’t get sponsorship, will pull out.”

AMERICA’S CUP--According to America’s Cup Report, a diet product firm has struck a dollars-for-pounds sponsorship deal with Dennis Conner to pay for the carbon fiber material being used in Sail America’s catamarans. For every pound Conner loses, the company will put up a certain amount of money. Conner supposedly is down 30 pounds to 215.

NOTEWORTHY--Last Sunday’s half-hour highlights show of last month’s Congressional Cup at Long Beach will be re-shown on ESPN Sunday, May 1, at 10:30 p.m. . . . John Bertrand of Anaheim Hills, an alternate entry in the Congressional, earned an invitation to the Citizens Cup in New Zealand April 18-25 by sailing a strong second to Australia’s Peter Gilmour. . . . The Carlsberg Single-Handed Transatlantic Race starting June 5 from Plymouth, England, to Newport, R.I., has 28 American entries. Since they must sail their boats across to get there, anyway, 12 decided to make a race of it, calling it the Legend Cup. They started this week from Miami and New York, will meet in Bermuda and continue April 23.