YACHTING KEY WEST RACE WEEK  2001 - FINAL  RESULTS

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: January 25, 2001

WRAPUP: THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE COUNTRY WAS FAVORED
- - - A Record Fleet Makes History in Key West

KEY WEST, Fla. -- This onetime playground of American presidents, Ernest Hemingway and Jimmy Buffett, among others, never looked better to refugees from a severe East Coast winter, who made the most of their hiatus to the 14th Yachting Key West Race Week for five balmy days of racing Jan. 15-19.

"The timing was impeccable," said Bodo von der Wense of Annapolis, Md., who sailed his Mumm 30 Turbo Duck to first place in a 31-boat fleet. "There couldn't have been a better time to leave home."

His neighbors would concur. Eastern entries won nine of the 18 classes. Five champions were from Southern states, two from the Midwest and two from overseas. Although California floated 25 boats among the record turnout of 326, none left with championship hardware.

That said, San Diego sailors were the tactical brains behind the international brawn in the Farr 40 class, where the amateur owner-drivers are required to steer but most of the 37 recruited the planet's prime talent to goad and cajole them around the windward-leeward courses. In the top three, Robbie Haines called tactics for George Andreadis' Atalanti XI from Greece, which repeated its 2000 victory and claimed the Yachting Magazine Trophy as Boat of the Week. Close behind were two California boats with World Sailor of the Year Mark Reynolds whispering in Philippe Kahn's ear on Pegasus (Santa Cruz) and Peter Isler advising Revolution's Brack Duker (Marina del Rey). Still another San Diegan, Vince Brun, sailed on Alexandra Geremia's fifth-place Crocodile Rock (Santa Barbara).

The overflow turnout, tallying boats from 15 countries, five continents and 32 states, required Event Director Peter Craig to expand his operation from three to four courses, which were spread east to west over 10 miles along the southern coast of the Keys. Often over the first four days each experienced its own peculiar weather conditions - generally, light to moderate winds with challenging shifts that could make or break a regatta with eight races and no throwouts. Only for the last race on the final day did a healthy southeasterly arrive with 13 knots building to 20.

Ken Read, who sailed Makoto Uematsu's dark green Farr 40 Esmeralda to victory in IMS, called it "a Key West day." 

Besides Atalanti XI, only two boats successfully defended 2000 titles: George Collins' new Farr 52 Chessie Racing in PHRF-1 and John and Jeff Sampson's S2 7.9 Rugger (Detroit, Mich.) in PHRF-10.

Atalanti XI: Boat of the Week/Yachting Magazine Trophy
This is annually awarded to the winner of the class that had the closest and most competitive racing for the week. Dual criteria uses time and distance for all races sailed and the series points. Both criteria are factored based on class size. As the week neared its end, it was apparent that the winner would come from the 37-boat Farr 40 class, which had a different winner and leader every day and emerged first in time and distance and third in series points. PHRF-2 was second overall and Melges 24 and IMS were next in a tie.

Atalanti XI was the only Farr 40 to win two races - the first and last - but, typical of the class where no error went unpunished, it also suffered a 22nd and a 23rd. What seemed like the turning point came in Race 6 when 17 overly aggressive boats were cited for crossing the start line before the gun. One was Pegasus, which appealed the call as a case of mistaken identity - and won. 

That and a win in Race 7 gave Kahn's craft a six-point lead over Atalanti XI and Revolution entering the final race the next day, but class form held true. Haines guided Andreadis to a clean start, tacked right into a wind shift and never looked back, while Pegasus dissipated its points edge with a ninth-place finish. 

Andreadis said it was far more difficult to repeat. "Last year we had a 19-point lead. This year we had a couple of bad races that put us back in the standings, but we kept on trying."
Pegasus' consolation in a contest within the class was to claim the U.S. Farr 40 slot over Jim Richardson's Barking Mad on the three-boat team in the Admiral's Cup in England this summer.

Strabo: Key West Trophy/PHRF Boat of the Week
While one-designs comprised two-thirds of the record turnout, PHRF ruled 10 of the 18 classes, and the top performer was Marty Fisher's J/145 Strabo from Annapolis, Md. in PHRF-2. It was a four-boat dogfight for the first half of the regatta as Strabo mixed it up with Robert Siegel's Farr 43 PAX NZL (Stamford, Conn.), Mike Rose's J/125 Raincloud with Jay and Jody Lutz aboard (Houston, TX) and Cita Litt's bright yellow Schock 40 (Newport Beach, Calif.).

Strabo, the scratch boat, took the gun in every race except the last, when it was over the line and had to re-start, then finished behind Cita but was seventh on corrected time. That was its worst finish overall. "It was a pretty hard week," Fisher said. "It really surprised us to do so well in light air. It's a new boat and we didn't know what to expect."

In PHRF-1, Chessie Racing, distinctive for the fire-spouting dragons on its hull, took enough time from Bill Alcott's Santa Cruz 70 Equation (Detroit, Mich.) and Doug Baker's Andrews 70 turbo sled Magnitude (Long Beach, Calif.), the scratch boat, to shade those rivals by three and four points, respectively.

Three of the smaller PHRF classes were settled by one or two points: Jeffrey Gale's B-32 Abbey Normal (The Bahamas) over Richard Harris' SR 33 OB Ragamuffin (New Orleans) in PHRF-6, Richard Hallett's Custom 27 Family Wagon (Casco Bay, Maine) over Norm Dean's Soverel 33 Whacko (Boston) in PHRF-7 and Alan Townsley's C&C 34 Savage (Palisades, N.Y.) over Warren Hudson's Frers 33 Eclipse (Boston) in PHRF-8.

One-Design Drama
The Melges 24s formed the largest class: 59 boats from seven countries and every corner of the country. The winner came from the heartland and birthplace of the class -- Zenda, Wis. - and Harry Melges, driving Zenda Express, made it look easy. Melges won five races, and without two hiccups on day two (10-14) he would have had a total runaway.

"The second day we just got caught on the wrong side of some big wind shifts," said Melges, who also won in 1995. "It was fairly light air for Key West and a couple of days we had some big lumps. It was difficult to keep the boat moving fast. Getting off the starting line and hitting that first big shift was key."

Close friend and double defending champion Brian Porter was second, 26 points behind. No other boat won more than one race.

Mumm 30: Bodo von der Wense, 60, son Nick, 27, and their regular Annapolis crew won the first race and stayed on top all week. "Nick and I are co-owners," von der Wense said. "It's an owner-driver rule. I drive the starts and upwind and he drives downwind. I think it's the first win for a non-pro in the Mumm 30 fleet."

Phil Garland, co-owner of Hall spars, was runner-up on Trouble but never a strong threat, although von der Wense admitted to caution at the end. "We tiptoed through the last race. The one thing we didn't want to do was get involved in a protest, [but] people were gunning for us. It was amazing. It was, ooh, here's another one."

1D35: Owen Kratz of Houston, with fellow Texan and Olympic silver medallist Paul Foerster calling tactics, seized the lead from Sledd Shellhorse's Avalanche (Lake Wesley, Va.) in Race 6 and shadowed their rival the rest of the way. Joss won only one race to Avalanche's three but had no finish worse than seventh. "Coming into the week our goal was to be consistent," Kratz said. "I don't know that I've sailed with anyone better than Paul."

J/105: Bob Johnstone, sailing Tern V, one of the sprit-mounted racer-cruisers he helped to develop, didn't win a race. "We should have won one but we overstood a mark," he said, laughing. But conservative sailing paid off. 

"[In] one of Dave Ullman's books [he wrote] about not hitting corners and not hitting the ends of the [starting] line. So we decided, OK, we've got an eight-race series with no throwouts, so we decided to go for mid-line starts, or part way down the line, and we were generally successful. Also, we wouldn't try to be smart about where we were going. We assumed we didn't know anything and would just try to stay in front of most of the boats rather than get hung out to a corner."

In the last race, defending champion Andrew Skibo on Plum Crazy (Ocean City, N.J.) could have won by putting one boat between himself and Tern V. "It turned into a race between Plum Crazy and [James Doane's] Flame (Naples, Fla.)," Johnstone said, "so we tried to help out Flame by jibing on Plum Crazy's wind. Flame won -- by half a boat length."

J/80: Kerry Klingler's boat from Larchmont, N.Y. was so new that it had only its sail number, 352, for a name. But it won the first four and last two races. However, it wasn't entirely no sweat. During Race 4, Klingler said, "The spinnaker shackle must have caught on something, and the next thing we know the halyard's at the masthead and the chute's in the water. We eased the main 6 or 8 inches and Michael Quaglio climbed up the luff slugs. Then as the chute got hoisted we realized we'd wrapped the halyard around the headstay. So we took the chute down again and reset it, then I jibed back at the fleet and I said, 'Hey, guys, we're behind but we're not that far behind.' " They recovered from 12th place to win again.

J/29: Talk about sweating it out. Brandon and Cindy Flack's Samson (Stonington, Conn.) wound up tied at 29 points with Bruce Lockwood's defending champion Tomahawk (Ludlow, Vt.). Samson had a cozy six-point lead before the last race, then suffered its worst finish (ninth) to Tomahawk's third. Samson won on the tiebreaker of two wins to Tomahawk's one. 


And the other winners were . . . 

Lewmar Marine Trophy/Top IMS Owner-Driver (Group 1) - Ennio Staffini, Uarshek II (Farr 49), Annapolis, Md.
International Team Trophy - Team Italy
Mascalzone Latino (Farr 40) Vincenzo Onorato Naples, Italy
Maga Joanna (Mumm 30) Paolo Parente Naples, Italy
Typhoon (Melges 24) Tony Wattson Newport Beach, Calif.

Team Italy won for the third year in a row with 121 points; USA Great Lakes was a close second with Voodoo (Richard Grunsten), Virago (Stuart Townsend), and Zenda Express (Harry Melges) totaling 126 points.

Boat of the Day
Monday -- Premiere Racing Day     Atalanti XI (Farr 40) George Andreadis, Athens, Greece
Tuesday -- City of Key West Day     Full Throttle (Melges 24) Brian Porter, Lake Geneva, Wis.
Wednesday -- Mount Gay Rum Day     Avalanche (1D35) W.S. Shellhorse, Lake Wesley, Va.
Thursday       Fast Lane (J/29),     Jay McArdle, Milwaukee, Wis.
Friday -- Yachting Magazine Day     Cita (Schock 40-PHRF2) Cita Litt, Newport Beach, Calif.

Hard-Luck Boat of the Week
Larry Bulman's Farr 49 Javelin (Annapolis) never made it to the first mark of the first race. A port-starboard collision with Irvine Laidlaw's CM 60 and two-time IMS winner Highland Fling (Isle of Man, UK) ended its regatta minutes after it started. The appropriately named Javelin was on port tack in an open-and-shut protest filed by Fling's driver, Eddie Warden-Owen.

"Our bow looks like a shark's mouth," crew member Jeff Scholz said. "It's a shame because it's the first big regatta for the boat." Laidlaw was knocked off his feet but not seriously injured. His boat was patched up, granted redress for average points and continued.

Event Sponsors and Suppliers
Sponsors and Suppliers of Yachting Key West Race Week 2001 include Mount Gay Rum, Lewmar Marine, SailNet.com, B&G Electronics, Grand Banks Yachts, the Kenwood Cup, Sam Adams, Saucony and Vascodagama.

Since 1998 the Florida Keys & Key West, their Tourist Development Council, local businesses and the community have been major supporters of Race Week, embracing this early winter regatta which attracts sailors from around the world. 


Publicity: Rich Roberts, richroberts@compuserve.com   Phone: (310) 835-2526

Race Dates for Yachting Key West Race Week 2002 are January 21 - 25, 2002

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