SAILING / RICH ROBERTS : Midwinters’ Scope Wide-Ranging

The Southern California Yachting Assn. calls the Midwinters “America’s largest regatta.” It may be the world’s largest--certainly the one with the largest scope.

It started with a few boats in the 1920s and hasn’t stopped growing. There were a record 1,040 entries for the 62nd event last year. The 63rd, which will be held at 11 sites Saturday and Sunday, could have more.

From San Diego to Ventura, and as far inland as Barstow and beyond to Nevada and Arizona, there will be big boats, little boats, boats without crews, boats without sails, even boats without water.

Radio-controlled models will compete in Mission Bay, Scottsdale, Long Beach and Irvine; there will a navigation contest for power cruisers and, for the first time, land yachts, which sail on wheels.

Barstow will have land sailing at nearby Superior Dry Lake No. 3. The entry fee is $10.

That’s why the Midwinters is so popular. The Midwinters’ highest entry fee is $20 for the largest ocean racers. Other fees are as little as $6.

Another hook is a generous trophy schedule that awards prizes to about one-third of the entries. . General chairman this year is Mike McMahon of Alamitos Bay YC, working with SCYA Commodore Jim Clark of Ventura YC and assisted by Jim Gordon, LAYC; Tom Parsons, South Shores YC; Gene O’Connell, Del Rey YC, and Jerry Olson, Huntington Harbour YC. Race headquarters is at Long Beach YC.

The Miami (Fla.) Olympic Classes Regatta had some familiar names that could help keep sailing the United States’ dominant Olympic sport at Barcelona this summer: Randy Smyth, John Shadden/Charlie McKee and Bill and Carl Buchan.

Smyth, an Olympic silver medalist on a Tornado catamaran with crew Jay Glaser in 1984, took 1988 off to help Dennis Conner sail his Stars & Stripes catamaran against New Zealand in the America’s Cup. Then he closed his sail business in Huntington Beach and moved to Florida, tried to make a go as a pro sailor and recently decided to try the Olympics again.

At Miami, with new crew Phil Notary, Smyth placed a tight second to ’88 Olympians Pete Melvin of Long Beach and Chris Steinfeld. Glaser now crews for his wife, Pease. The Long Beach couple was ranked first in the United States until Melvin and Steinfeld turned up their training program last year. The United States has slipped on the world list in Tornados, but Smyth’s comeback should lift it.

Shadden, a Long Beach stockbroker, and McKee, a Seattle contractor, won the bronze in a 470 dinghy at Pusan, South Korea, in 1988, then said they were retiring after their second Olympic campaign.

Sometime last year, they quietly started sail training whenever McKee could get down from Seattle for a weekend. They placed third among 29 boats at Miami; top-ranked Morgan Reeser and Kevin Burnham of Florida won.

Bill Buchan was 49 and one of the oldest sailing gold medalists ever when he won the Star class at Long Beach in ’84.

Buchan was eighth at Miami, just behind son Carl, who was a Flying Dutchman gold medalist in ’84.

The most promising recent performances have been in the FDs--historically a week U.S. class. Texan Paul Foerster and Steve Bourdow of New Orleans won the world title at New Zealand and came back with a victory in Miami.

J.J. Isler of La Jolla and crew Pam Healy won the world women’s 470 title at Brisbane a few weeks ago, but just to keep them humble they only had the third-best American boat at Miami.

Fifteen ocean-racing sailboats led by 11 ULDB 70s will start the ninth biennial 1,100-mile race to Manzanillo, Mexico, at noon today.

Five smaller boats started Thursday and were expected to be overtaken in the latter part of the race, which in normal conditions should finish next Thursday or Friday.

The race record is 5 days, 23 hours, 59 minutes, 43 seconds, which was set by Jake Woods’ Sorcery in 1986.

The race starts the nine-race season for the ULDB 70s, also known as “sleds” for their speed in downwind races.

The favorites are Antonio Elias’ Ole, which became the first Mexican-owned boat to win a Mexican race in the windy Long Beach-to-Cabo San Lucas run last November; Roy Disney’s Pyewacket, the 1991 season champion, and Mike Campbell’s new Victoria, which is skippered by Steve Steiner and was a close second to Ole at Cabo San Lucas.

Sailing Notes

AMERICA’S CUP--Il Moro di Venezia’s sparring partner helmsman, John Kolius, sailed Champosa VII to first place with a 1-1-2-5-8-2 series in the first International 50-footer event of the season at Key West, Fla. Ed Baird was Kolius’ tactician. . . . New Zealand’s sparring partner helmsman, Russell Coutts, worked on his Olympic campaign by placing seventh in the Soling class in the Miami Olympic Classes Regatta. Coutts was the Finn gold medalist at Long Beach in ‘84, just ahead of Stars & Stripes’ John Bertrand.

NOTEWORTHY--Tania Aebi, who at 21 became the youngest person and the first American woman to sail around the world alone, has three Southern California appearances scheduled. She will be at the Lincoln Middle School in Santa Monica Thursday, March 5; at the Bahia Corinthian YC in Corona del Mar March 6, and at the University of San Diego’s Shiley Theater March 7. All events start at 7:30 p.m. and are open to the public. Admission: $10. . . . Russell Long will try to top his world speed record of 38.13 knots, set at Bodega Bay north of San Francisco last year, in the high winds of the “French Trench” at Saint Marie de la Mer starting March 1.