SAILING : With Vietor, It’s OK Wins the Class A at Long Beach

David Vietor, a former America’s Cup campaigner from Beverly Farms, Mass., recovered from a California wake-up call Sunday to sail Lewis Beery’s It’s OK! to first place in Class A of the eighth Trimble Navigation/North Sails Race Week at Long Beach.

Vietor’s second-floor room at the Clarion Edgewater Hotel headquarters rolled like the high seas when the first heavy earthquake struck at 4:58 a.m. He remembered what to do from his days at Stanford University.

“I knew I should get outside, but then I realized I didn’t have any clothes on,” he said. “Then my wife called to tell me there’d just been a major earthquake.”

It’s OK! needed to win Sunday’s final, 18 1/2-mile race and have Robert Butkus’ Dubois 40 Victory from Cabrillo Beach Yacht Club place no better than eighth. Despite a poor start, the It’s OK!, an Andrews 43 from Balboa Y.C., played rapidly changing wind conditions perfectly on the first leg, picking two major shifts correctly and changing headsails for varying wind strength twice in five minutes until the usual strong southwesterly filled in midway through the race.

It’s OK!, with Andy Rose calling tactics, then stayed close enough to Sy Kleinman’s 58-foot Swiftsure to correct out in front on handicap. Victory finished ninth and was second on handicap.

There were 143 boats in seven classes, including 30 J-24s prepping for their North American championships in Long Beach on July 10. The Gary Harden-Chris Snow Chimera from San Diego Y.C., steered by Pease Herndon of Westminster, won with two first places and two seconds, ahead of Pete Duvoisin’s Bruiser from the Privateer Y.C. in Chattanooga, Tenn.