U.S. Olympic Sailing Trials : Ledbetter Moves Into First in Finn Standings

The Finn sailors competing here for a U.S. Olympic berth don’t mind New England’s uncommon heat wave as much as its contributing cause--light, shifty winds of less than 10 knots during the last four of five races.

The effect has been confusion in their series, which was marked Sunday by winds of only 5 to 8 knots.

If you want to know about the weather, don’t call the National Weather Service. Talk to a Finn sailor. As participants in the Olympics’ only one-man class, other than sailboards, each must be helmsman, sail trimmer, navigator and tactician, and all of that starts with an eye for the sky.

Stewart Neff, the leader until Sunday when Navy Lt. Brian Ledbetter of San Diego took command, should know local conditions better than anyone. He lives next door in Salem.

But Neff said, “It’s very difficult to figure out where to go on the race course because the weather pattern is a stalled high-pressure system, and it’s not doing what the locals tell you it’s going to do.”

Russ Silvestri of Tiburon, Calif., in third place, called sailing here “a roll of the dice.

“I’m at the point now where I think I know what’s going on with the wind, but it’s still pretty tricky, more than most places you sail. There isn’t a lot of rhyme or reason.”

Or excitement.

“It’s boring,” Silvestri said.

He added that it’s not even paying to be conservative and sail up the middle of the upwind legs, rather than seeking wind shifts left or right.

“That seems to be the worst thing,” he said. “You have to get to one side and hope.”

Ledbetter, 24, was the favorite going in and finished a close third Sunday. The winner was Mark Herrmann of Rumson, N.J., who is in eighth overall.

Ledbetter said that he wasn’t surprised that Neff, a dark horse, was leading the series until finishing ninth Sunday.

“I thought Stew was gonna be tough,” Ledbetter said. “He’s a real good tactician. He’s smart, he’s sailed here a lot, and this is a place where you’ve gotta be smart as much as you’ve gotta be fast. It’s not like sailing in Long Beach.”

But Neff insisted, “Being a local is no advantage here. If I thought about the local conditions and did what I thought I should do, I probably wouldn’t be doing as well. You have to treat it like foreign territory.”

All of that may be moot by Tuesday, when the heat is forecast to break. Locals say the wind will return when the heat leaves.

Whatever it does, Ledbetter, with two wins, will be difficult to catch in any condition. Rivals realize he has taken charge without benefit of the stronger winds he prefers.

With the sailors able to discard their worst race in the scoring, Ledbetter threw out his 13th-place finish of last Wednesday, leaving him with a 1-1-3-3 card for 11.4 points through Sunday.

Silvestri, with a 6-4-6-1, would seem to have a good chance of catching up, considering past performance and his current position.

Ledbetter said, “In this class it’s so even that you might be called the favorite, but these guys don’t believe it. We’re still basically even, but it’s nice to have the majority of the pack back there thinking they’re out of it, and they’ll be making mistakes.

“I’ve got to keep beating the right people--Stew and Russ. I’m in a good spot right now.”

To Silvestri, it’s shaping up as a two-person race--and he’s not sure Neff may not be one of the two.

“He’s done all right in some regattas so far,” Silvestri said, “but he’s always had a DSQ (disqualification) or a (premature start) that took him out of the picture. He can get pretty nerved out.”

Silvestri knows about disqualifications. He had a crucial one when he placed first in the ’84 trials at Long Beach but was protested by John Bertrand, now of Anaheim Hills. The decision was switched seven times until Bertrand won his case two days before the Olympics and went on to win a silver medal.

Bertrand isn’t competing here, but now Silvestri’s nemesis appears to be Ledbetter, who didn’t compete in ’84 but has won every national Finn title since.

In contrast to the ’84 trials, these have been a breeze for controversy. In the four races before Sunday, there hadn’t even been a premature starter, although there was a general recall Sunday and several boats were disqualified when they failed to return to restart.