SAILING : New Sled Design Might Revolutionize the Class

Roy Disney’s Pyewacket has had the ULDB 70 season championship wrapped up since summer, but the Long Beach-to-Cabo San Lucas race under way might be a preview of next season.

The 23 entrants include the newest sled, Mike Campbell’s Victoria, which is barely a week in the water since its launching at Dencho Marine in Long Beach but appears to be sailing away with the race. After only two days, Victoria held a nine-mile lead Monday over the next boat that started last Saturday and had blown past all but one of the smaller Friday starters. Donald Smith’s Falcon, from Oklahoma City, retired because of a broken rudder after reporting a position barely five miles ahead of Victoria.

America’s Cup syndicates like to talk about “breakthrough” designs; this might be one for the sleds. Victoria, named for Campbell’s wife, was a team effort of Long Beach naval architect Alan Andrews and Dennis Choate’s builders.

Andrews, who created successful International Measurement System racers It’s OK and Cantata II, among others, designed the hull, keel, rudder and sail plan for Victoria. He thinks the boat will benefit from a change in the International Offshore Rule that allowed him to smooth out some of the notorious midship design “bumps” in the class.

“We’re one of the first efforts to take advantage of the reshaped midsection,” Andrews said.

Even Pyewacket, new this year, was restricted by coming out of the same Santa Cruz 70 mold that produced its predecessors. Andrews hopes Victoria will be followed by an equally successful string of Andrews 70s. A second is being built for Dick Compton of Santa Barbara.

The only drawback is that time didn’t allow Victoria to be measured for IOR, so she isn’t competing in IOR-A class with the other eight sleds. She is sailing with a simpler Performance Handicap Racing Fleet handicap. However, she is really sailing for first place overall, and by not worrying about the IOR-A rule was able to dispense with 1,500 pounds of internal ballast--making her, technically, an illegal sled.

Her crew includes 1988 Olympic bronze medalist John Shadden of Long Beach and two-time Congressional Cup competitor Steve Steiner--like Campbell, members of the host Long Beach Yacht Club.

The leaders should finish the 820-nautical-mile race Wednesday. Winds, usually light for the event, picked up Sunday to allow Victoria a 24-hour run of 268 miles, exceeded only by Antonio Elias’ Ole with 283 to lead the sleds.

Sailing Notes

AMERICA’S CUP--The top skippers are trickling back to San Diego after a series of world-class events, although some--among them Nippon Challenge’s Chris Dickson--went to Japan for the Nippon Cup after winning his third world match-racing title in four years off Bermuda. At Miura, Japan, Il Moro di Venezia’s Paul Cayard, with his Cup crew on Abracadabra, placed third in the fifth and final International 50-Foot Assn. event and took the title over Britain’s Juno V, skippered by 1988 Olympic gold medalist Mike McIntyre. Cayard had won three of the previous four events and said he was sailing to cover his series lead over Juno, which placed fifth. But it was notable that Italy’s second boat, Mandrake, sailed by Il Moro’s American coach, John Kolius, won the event with finishes of 1, 4, 3 and 2.

Despite winning the Liberty Cup and placing second to Dickson in the World Cup, Peter Isler of La Jolla didn’t earn enough points to move up from sixth in the latest match-racing rankings. All of those above him--in order, Dickson, Australia’s Peter Gilmour, New Zealand’s Russell Coutts and Rod Davis and Britain’s Eddie Warden-Owen--are involved in Cup campaigns, Warden-Owen as the New Zealand coach. Isler, the only American competing regularly on the circuit, is a Cup commentator for ESPN.

Dickson, Cayard, Dennis Conner and France’s Marc Pajot will race 52-foot Formula One boats in San Diego Bay Saturday and Sunday. Regulars in the series, including Conner, Britain’s Harold Cudmore and two German crews, will race the boats Nov. 29-Dec. 1 in the final event of the season series, after races in Scotland and Germany. . . . Conner will hold an exhibition of his artwork beginning at 6:30 p.m. Thursday aboard the RegentSea at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Marina del Rey. For $2,500, supporters will receive a set of four silk screens titled “Touch the Wind.” For $5,000, a supporter also gets a ride on Stars & Stripes. . . . The Long Beach Yacht Club will be the site of a fund-raiser for America next Friday at 6:30 p.m., with syndicate head Bill Koch attending.

NOTEWORTHY--Larry Klein, who is campaigning a Soling for the ’92 Olympics, talked to competitors before the South Bay Yacht Racing Club’s third annual Matchless Match Racing Regatta. His lecture went overtime, but the racers voted to delay their first day of racing an hour to hear more. Then 20 boats in four classes went out and raced for two days, with these winners: Poquito, Bill Pistey, California YC, in Cal 20s; Jawbreaker, Yurrin Dornberg and Sean Kennedy, SBYRC, in Santana 20s; Damn Yankee, Ralph DeLuca, Santa Monica YC, in PCs, and Citius, Doug McClean, Del Rey YC, in Martin 242s. Organizers believe it to be the only match-racing event with multiple classes on the West Coast. . . . Winners in the 1991 Ullman PHRF Championship Regatta received their trophies during PHRF’s annual membership meting at the Long Beach Yacht Club. . . . Competitors in the 1992 Miami Olympic Classes Regatta will get a 58% discount on fees if they enter by Jan. 15. Details: (310) 983-8790.