Cheval First to Finish San Diego Yacht Race

Before dawn Sunday, spectators waited here for the first yacht to arrive in the 21st Marina del Rey to San Diego race.

No sighting. They had breakfast. No sighting.

Finally, more than 24 hours after setting out, Hal Ward, an eye surgeon from Arcadia, and his 12-person crew on the 70-foot yacht, Cheval, reached the finish line.

Cheval, in its maiden voyage, had set out from Marina del Rey at 11:10 a.m. Saturday.

After arriving in San Diego, Ward and crew then waited for more than three hours before other competitors began to arrive. Some of the 130 boats were not expected to arrive until as late as 11 a.m. today. At that time, official results will have been compiled.

“Never 10 knots,” said Ward when asked about the faint breezes.

Chevel, despite crossing the finish line first, fell short of victory in the corrected-time overall category. Corrected-time refers to a handicap system, whereby larger boats have time added to their totals. Thus, even though Andy Schmidt of the Coronado Cays Yacht Club guided his 30-foot boat to the finish more than four hours after Ward, he was in first place in corrected time, pending today’s tabulations.

Ward, from the California Yacht Club in Marina del Rey, finished first among the 14 entrants in the prestigious Performance Handicap Racing Fleet-A category. He accomplished that largely because of a breakaway near Oceanside, where his yacht had been even with two others.

As slow as the race was, Cheval beat by six hours the previous best non-corrected time.