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Lack of wind shortens two regattas on bay

The Dead of Winter and Windmill Midwinters were stopped when the weather didn't cooperate.

By DORAN CUSHING

© St. Petersburg Times, published January 29, 2001

Neither the Dead of Winter nor the Windmill Midwinters regattas completed a race on Tampa Bay on Sunday because of light, shifty wind.

Both one-design events struggled to finish their races Saturday because of the weather.

The husband and wife team of Colin and Karen Park of St. Petersburg won Saturday's lone Snipe race in the Dead of Winter Regatta. The Parks were back in the pack Sunday when the race committee stopped the race because of the wind. The Parks became the Dead of Winter champions based on one race.

"I think the race committee made some great choices," Colin Park said, smiling. He praised the officials for getting one race in Saturday, when the wispy breeze never topped 8 knots.

Mike Funsch and Marty Kullman of St. Petersburg finished second overall based on their second-place finish Saturday.

Racing on the Midwinters course closer to downtown St. Petersburg, the father-daughter team of Rhett and Caroline Simonds of Alexandria, Va., won three of four races to take first in the 10-boat Jet 14 Class.

"We worked together well and had speed in the light air," Rhett Simonds said.

Describing the Jet 14, a boat rarely seen in Florida, he said: "It's a great family boat. It combines a Snipe rig with an International 14 hull -- a high-performance hull -- and we race it with a spinnaker, which makes it more fun for the crew."

Sailing the boat he built two years ago, Mark Saunders of Seaford, Va., edged Jeff Linton of Tampa by one point in the Moth Class, which features homemade boats and allows great latitude in design.

"My total investment in the boat, including all the sails and the rig, is about $1,700," Saunders said. "The boats have to be 11 feet long, can't be any wider than 5 feet, and there's a minimum weight of 75 pounds, but everything else is pretty open."

Sailing a borrowed (and somewhat unattractive) boat that Linton called "an oldie but a goodie," Linton won the two closing races and said he plans to build a Moth "for about $400."

It was a battle of national champions in the Windmill Class of the Midwinters regatta. Defending champs Ethan and Trudy Bixby of St. Petersburg beat former national champions Terry and Betty Wood of Kingston, Tenn., in a tiebreaker after four races.

Despite the frustrating wind and lack of racing Sunday, Susan Bousquet of Norfolk, Va., and her husband, Joe, said they were not going home unhappy.

"It wasn't too disappointing," Susan Bousquet said. "We left 30-degree weather in Virginia."

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