Coronado YC Sailor Leads in Junior Championships

Sixty-four junior sailors, ages 13 to 17, from across the country completed the first day of the five-day U.S. Yacht Racing Union/Rolex Junior Sailing Championships Monday in perfect sailing conditions in the waters off Newport Beach.

“(The) wind was eight to 10 knots from the south,” said Don Edler, Flying Junior and Laser Race Committee chairman, of Monday’s course conditions.

The races, which featured 28 boats in three classes, started at noon. The competitors took about an hour to navigate the three-to-four-mile course in each race. Each class sailed the course twice, trading vessels for the second race in each class.

At the end of Monday’s competition, the leader in the Laser class was David Houser of Coronado Yacht Club in San Diego. In the Flying Junior class, which is sailed by two-person racing teams, Jesse Andrews and Gately Ross of the American Yacht Club in Rye., N.Y., tied Bill Hardesty and Paul Ware of Mission Bay Yacht Club in San Diego for the lead.

Orange County’s only entry in the championships, Newport Harbor Yacht Club skipper Jory Twist, with crew Rush Hambleton, Ryan Hamilton and Ben Benjamin, were in third place in the Etchells 22 class. The leader of the four-person team class was skipper Scott Elting with crew Carter Perrin, Sam Pyne and David Thomas of the Houston Yacht Club in Texas.

Meg Gaillard of the American Yacht Club in Rye, N.Y., jumped the gun in the first race in the Etchells 22 class, then had to restart and settle for sixth place as Elting sailed home first. Gaillard, however, won the second race to stand second overall, with eight races remaining.

Winners, who will be determined after the final race Friday, will become part of the 1990 U.S. junior sailing team.

Times staff writer Rich Roberts contributed to this story.