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Sailing

Young sailors band together for team title

By DAVE ELLIS
Published January 25, 2006

The Optimist Dinghy Southeast Team Racing championship was sailed last weekend off St. Petersburg near the Municipal Pier. The action was close enough for parents and other spectators to follow and cheer their teams.

Team racing in sailboats is a growing facet of the sport. Some enjoy the social aspect of helping teammates to a good result. Others find the fast action and reliance on good boat handling fun.

Four Optimist Dinghies make up a team, sailed by kids ages 8-15. There were eight teams in the Gold Fleet and three in the Silver for newer sailors.

The races are short and intense. The goal is to have the total points for your team add up to 17 or fewer. The best possible result is to take the first four places, resulting in 10 points. The Southern Yacht Club team from New Orleans was victorious. Their club was destroyed by flood and fire during Hurricane Katrina, but junior sailing continues.

Second went to the Long Island Sound team and third to Clearwater's Team FOR with members Michael Booker, Cameron Hall, Mary Kate Hall and Jason Kuebel. This team has won top team racing regattas around the country the past two seasons. But the light air conditions did not treat them kindly in this event. There were kids who did not come as a team but wanted to race. Two arbitrary teams were formed, called Team X-A and X-B. New father Kenneth Andreason coached them.

MIDWINTER REGATTA: Brad Funk of Bellaire Beach placed second in the 52-boat Vanguard 15 Midwinter Regatta on the Florida east coast. USF sailing team member Kevin Reali was fourth. Conner Blouin sailed his 420 to victory at the same venue in the 21-boat regatta for that college boat class.

DISABLED WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP: Western Australia is the site of the ongoing Disabled Sailing World Championship.

In the 2.4 meter, Brandon's Roger Cleworth was tied with world champ Nick Scandone at press time. Their position in the fleet needs to improve a bit to qualify the United States for the Olympics. There will be other qualifying regattas, including Florida events.

The U.S. representative in the Sonar is St. Petersburg's Jen French, crewed by Jean-Paul Creignou and Brad Kendall. The strong winds in Australia are quite a contrast to Tampa Bay.

KEY WEST RACE WEEK: Many keel boat sailors consider this event to be the best.

Competitors ship their craft from all over the world for a week of sun, wind, excellent competition and legendary parties.

There was only one day the wind dropped to a gentle breeze while another day produced winds over 30 knots with some classes opting not to sail.

The Melges 32 class was dominated by Michael Carroll's New Wave. Skippering was Marty Kullman of St. Petersburg with crew Carroll, Ron Hyatt, Jay Kuebel, Alex Shafer, Phil Smithies, Andy Burdick and Josh Willis.

The largest class was the Melges 24 with 60 boats. Local sailor Jeff Linton was tactician on the winning boat skippered by California's Dave Ullman.

Linton said this class is made up of mostly professionals at the top of the fleet. The slightest mistake leads to loss of position.

Leaning hard against the lifelines with head, arms and legs to windward is essential. If there is no bruise on the chest from the lifeline, a crew is not leaning out enough. The fraction of a knot gained by aggressive crew weight placement was essential.

Bob Dockery of Longboat Key was 22nd in the Melges 24 fleet. Steve Olinger of Treasure Island sailed his J-105 to ninth in that 29-boat fleet while Greg Petrant of Sarasota was mid-fleet in PHRF-5.

[Last modified January 25, 2006, 00:55:16]