CC RIDER Cruises off into the Sunset
(San Diego, CA- Sept. 26-27)- May the best cooks win, or so it seemed for the crews participating in this year's J/Fest West in San Diego. This year’s theme was all about the crew. So Saturday night all the skippers donned chef’s hats and aprons, tended bar, flipped burgers and waited the tables. A great time was had by all.
Forty-two J's sailing one-design in J/120s, J/109s, J/105s and J/80s participated in this year's J/Festival on the waters off fabled Point Loma, San Diego. As this time of year it's hard not for the Weather Gods to cooperate and deliver less than stellar conditions. As one might expect, the "brochure conditions" were good enough to get in five races over the two days.
In the ten boat J/120 class Chuck Nichols crew aboard CC RIDER sailed an extremely consistent series to win their division by five points, counting a third as their worst race and winning tow of five races. Second was John Laun's CAPER with a 1-1-2 but fell off the clifff relative to Chuck's crew when they picked up two fifths in the first and third races. Third on the podium was Jed Olenick sailing DOCTOR NO (remember the TV show?? Awesome, eccentric time traveler, wasn't he??).
The nineteen boat J/105 class was the largest class in the event (as seems to be the case nationwide in most major events)! DC won (yea, not THAT one) with his wife Sharon and crew aboard...Dennis and Sharon Case are perennial favorites whenever they put together the full court press and pull out all the stops to put on their best efforts-- their efforts did not go unrewarded, getting first place by six points over Bennet Greenwald's PERSEVERANCE. JAVELIN was only one point back and the crew aboard Doug and Pam Werner's boat wished they could have bought back their 6-5 combo in races 3 and 4!
The nine boat J/80 class was a closely fought battle between Bob and Nick Caldwell's SLEEKIT and Curt Johnson's AVET. At the conclusion of racing, SLEEKIT won by two points based on the ability to win the last race while AVET could just manage a third. Mark Hunter's IN-APPROPRIATE was eight points back in third overall.
The J/109 teams, while having just four boats in their fleet, more than made up for their relatively low attendance with the rollicking good times they had ashore. Nevertheless, no one could take away from Tom Brott's ELECTRA winning every race. Great job guys...next time not only will the skipper be the cook/bartender, but the whole crew!! Perhaps that will slow them down, eh? John Shulze's LINSTAR was second and Jim Vickers was third with JOYRIDE.
Craig Leweck from Scuttlebutt had an enlightening and fun interview with Jeff Brown, leader of J/Boats efforts on the West Coast and creator of the J/Fest events on the West Coast. Please read more of the interview here:
http://www.sailingscuttlebutt.com/news/09/0928/
