January 19, 2000

A SECOND LIGHT-AIR DAY TESTS FLEET IN KEY WEST

--Some leads fall, some stretch as fleet faces final two days of competition

Key West, Fla. January 19, 2000 — Some contenders at the 13th annual GMC Yukon Yachting Key West Race Week can almost start chilling the champagne. But for others, trophy determinations are still a huge question mark — and are likely to remain so until Friday's final race. Today's light-air conditions did not help their cause.

After two races in 3- to 7-knot winds today, leaders in some classes have seen a new order emerge as this 261-boat fleet enters its last two days of racing. But leaders in other classes have not experienced a roller-coaster swing in standings: They started this regatta strong and stayed that way. This is a true feat in the schizophrenic wind conditions that began as heavy-air practice days and dwindled down to today's light and fickle southerly breeze.

Two boats have sailed without a flaw in their standings, taking perfect strings of first-place finishes throughout the week, including John and Anthony Esposito's J/29 Hustler (City Island, N.Y.) and Jeff Sampson's S2 7.9 Rugger (Detroit, Mich.).

"We’ve been very fortunate this year," said John Esposito. "We’ve had excellent corners and gained on every mark rounding — and we’ve won four out of five starts." But Esposito does not think any of his competitors are ready to hand him a class title; so far, Alan Townsley’s C&C 34 (Palisades, N.Y.) has four seconds and a third to their credit, and they are only six points behind Hustler with three races remaining.

Sampson and his crew on Rugger are also cleaning house in PHRF-8. Their four- and seven-minute wins in today's two races have established this Detroit, Mich., boat as a consistent winner in all conditions, even though their S2 7.9 is new to them. "Everything just kind of worked for us. We had good starts and hit all the right shifts," said Sampson. .

But strings of bullets are far from a reality in the large one-design classes competing at Race Week. In the 26-boat Mumm 30 class, the only boat that has not yet added an individual finish outside the top 10 is class leader Bodo von der Wense and his crew on Turbo Duck.

A record of 1-3 in today's races has established an eight-point lead for von der Wense and his Annapolis-based crew. "Turbo Duck is sailing an unbelievable regatta, they’re really doing a nice job," says Scott Nixon, a competitor on Mumm 30 Prime Time.

The Lake Geneva, Wisc.-based crew aboard Brian Porter's Melges 24 Full Throttle are on top of this ultra-competitive class with 46 boats. An 8-1-1-2-8 series puts this team in first overall, three points ahead of Harry Melges and the Zenda Express crew (Zenda, Wisc.). Dockside after the race, crewmember John Porter says, "Today we had tough, tough conditions. To succeed you had to be in the right spot going the right way all the time. If you weren’t you were left behind."

With finishes of 12 and 8 today, Farr 40 class leader Vincenzo Onorato (Savoia, Italy) has lost his lead in the Farr 40 class to George Andreadis' Atalanti XI from Greece, with Olympic medalist Robbie Haines calling tactics. But Andreadis and his crew have not taken their front-running position by default: this tiller-driver Farr 40 has come on strong in the light air, with a 1-1-2 in the last three races for a radical shift into the lead.

In today's light winds, many classes stretched far apart by the time they reached the finish, with increments of minutes rather than seconds separating them. But that was not the case in the J/29 fleet, a one design (racing with a slight 6-second-a-mile PHRF spread) that dates back to the early 1980s.

The J/29s kept the intensity cranked high today. At the finish of the second race, 11 seconds separated the second- to fourth-place finishers. Bruce Lockwood’s Tomahawk may have been third in that tight pack, but with a win in Race 1, this J/29 from Vermont was crowned the Boat of the Day.

Wind conditions taxed tacticians' brains and every sailor who struggled in hot sun, current (estimated as strong as one knot on the Melges course), and fickle wind. It was not a day of choice conditions for racers — or for the committee running races.

"Today was not a race manager's dream. . . It was light — and it got lighter," said Event Director Peter Craig after reaching the docks. But race managers on all three circles got two races in; Craig and his crew on the Division I course shortened the last race to three legs, as the single-digit breeze dwindled toward afternoon's end.

Title sponsor GMC Yukon and event founder Yachting Magazine are joined this year by event sponsors and suppliers Boatscape.com, The Florida Keys & Key West, Mount Gay Rum, Lewmar Marine, Champagne Mumm, Grand Banks Yachts, The Historic Seaport, Samuel Adams, Fiji Natural Artesian Water, Saucony, Kenwood Cup, Historic Seaport, and the Ocean Key.

Race Week is produced by Premiere Racing of Marblehead (Mass.). Competition concludes Friday, January 21. Top-3 standings in each class follow. Fleet results and feature reports will be posted on www.Premiere-Racing.com.

Cynthia Goss, Press Center

Telephone: (305) 295-6373

Email: CynthiaGoss@compuserve.com

Website: www.Premiere-Racing.com

1. Highland Fling (Isle of Man, England) 2-1-1-1-2 -- 7

2. Scream (Annapolis, MD) 3-4-2-4-4 -- 17

3. Rima (Newport, RI) 1-5-3-7-1 – 17

1. Chessie Racing (Gibson Island, MD) 4-1-1-1-1 – 8
2. Fatal Attraction (Norfolk, VA) 1-4-2-2-3 – 12
3. Uarshek (Annapolis, MD) 2-2-3-7-5 -- 19

1. Atalanti XI (Coconut Grove, FL) 3-9-1-1-2 -- 16
2. Raging Bull (Bristol, RI) 5-5-7-5-1 -- 23
3. Mascalzone Latino (Italy) 4-1-8-12-8 – 33

1. Tabasco (San Diego, CA) 1-5-4-2-11 -- 23

2. Roxanne (Indian Island, NC) 3-2-5-11-6 – 27

3. Smiling Bulldog (Ithaca, NY) 4-4-9-8-3 -- 28

1. Speed Racer (Sarasota, FL) 3-7-1-2-1 -- 14

2. Ceres Group (Lake Geneva, WI) 2-2-2-1-11 – 18
3. New Wave (Clearwater, FL) 6-1-7-3-5 – 22

1. White Trash (Mobile, AL) 1-3-1-3-2 – 10
2. The Wall (St. Petersburg, FL) 5-2-24-1 – 14
3. Brainstorm (Stamford, CT) 2-1-5-2-5 – 15

1. Snake Eyes/T.L. Ballard (Annapolis, MD) 1-1-3-1-1--7

2. Frigate/H. Albert/R. Reedy (Mandeville, LA) 3-2-2-2-3--12

3. Abbey Normal/J. Gale (Hopetown, ABACO) 4-4-1-6-2--17

1. Ultra Violet/D.&D. Prucnal (Pasadena, MD) 1-1-2-5-4--13

2. Wild Thang/T. Podgorski (Grosse Pointe, MI) 8-7-3-1-1--20

3. Nemesis/G. Longenecker (San Diego, CA) 2-2-5-6-5--20

1. Tomahawk/B. Lockwood (Ludlow,VT) 1-4-4-1-3--13

2. Titillation/P. Anderson (Deltaville, VA) 4-1-3-5-1--14

3. The Fish/J. Tovey (Rochester, NY) 10-5-2-3-2--22

1. Syzyey/J. Lutz (Houston, TX) 1-1-1-6-1--10

2. Monster Lady/M. Kald (Pt. Washington, NY) 2-2-3-1-3---11

3. Kicks/D. Balfour (Austin, TX) 3-3-2-4-4---16

1. Hustler/J.&A. Esposito (City Island, NY) 1-1-1-1-1--5

2. Savage/A. Townsley (Palisades, NY) 2-2-2-3-2--11

3. Scrambled/G. Fisher (San Diego, CA) 5-4-4-2-4--19

1. L’Outrage/B. Gardner (Annapolis, MD) 4-3-2-1-3--13

2. MIR III/I. Slezic (Ontario, CANADA) 2-1-1-12-2--18

3. Liquor Box/C.Simon/B. Buckles (Key West, FL) 3-2-6-6-4--21

1. Rugger/J. Sampson (Detroit, MI) 1-1-1-1-1--5

2. Challenge/D. Johnson/C. Nielson (Racine, WI) 2-4-3-3-3--15

3. Fresh Kill/K. deHam (Seabrook, TX) 3-3-4-4-2--16

1.Turbo Duck/Bodo von der Wense (Annapolis, MD) 2-8-3-1-3 -- 17

2.VilledeSt-Raphael/Dick Jean Pierre (FRA) 14-1-1-3-6 -- 25

3.Trouble/Phil Garland (Barrington, RI) 3-5-12-9-1 -- 30

1.Full Throttle/Brian Porter (Lake Geneva, WI) 8-1-1-2-8 --20

2. Zenda Express/Harry Melges (Lake Geneva, WI) 4-6-6-3-4 -- 23

3. RockN’Roll/Argyle Campbell (Newport Beach, CA) 2-7-11-5-2 – 27

1. Plum Crazy/Andrew Skibo (Ocean City, NJ) 1-2-2-3-3 -- 11

2. Flame/Doane Ltd. Partnership (Naples, FL) 3-1-1-6-2 -- 13

3. Phantom/Geoffrey Pierini (Perth Amboy, NJ) 2-3-3-4-5 -- 17