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--Excerpted from Race Week News, a daily publication of GMC Yukon Yachting Key West Race Week

Hot! Hot! Hot!

 By Dave Gendell and Brian Trotta

 Key West (Fla.)  January 19, 2000 — A hot and fickle southerly defined Wednesday’s racing and bridged the gap between the week’s two weather systems. And while all three circles were able to complete two races yesterday, it was a hot and grueling stretch—complete with the kind of early morning southerly a sailor might find in August on the Chesapeake or on Long Island Sound or on Buzzards Bay. After Monday’s wild scene, Wednesday came like a familiar day on the water for many sailors: the overhead sun, the current, the slow and quiet effort to get to the next puff…

 But this time, a smoky, salty, hot seabreeze did not sweep in to save the day.

 Negotiating the current and carrying pace from puff to puff were keys to a solid Wednesday performance. The strongest current was on the Division 3 circle where sailors seemed to agree with PRO Ken Legler’s estimate of a full knot in the second race. The other two circles saw slightly less current but it was a major factor, especially when considered alongside the breeze, which averaged about five knots. 

 Seabreeze or not, the regatta rolled forward in earnest. Places were shuffled, more than a few teams took to the awards stage last evening to accept trophies for the first time this week, and some clear regatta leaders began to emerge.

 With two races in a booming northerly, a long contest in its ashes, and two current-ravaged marathons in a southerly under their belts, the 261 crews assembled at Key West have sailed in a true “variety pack”.

 As any successful Race Week veteran can tell you, mastering a class in Key West is a challenging proposition. Mastering a class in Key West in schizophrenic conditions seems nearly impossible.

 And while there are several teams with skinny point totals after three days and five races, only two carry a string of bullets into this morning’s races.

 John Esposito and the crew on Hustler might want to think about getting the brooms ready for Friday’s return to the dock. The J/29 scored two more convincing victories in the 12-boat PHRF 6 class. With winning margins of three and eight minutes, Hustler is in command of the class.

 Esposito said Friday would be an expensive night for him should they complete the sweep. ``I promised the guys that if we ended up with all firsts I’m going to buy the alcohol all night.’’ Still, Esposito says he didn’t come to Key West thinking he could win as easily as he has.

 ``We’ve been very fortunate this year. We’ve had excellent corners and gained on every mark rounding and we’ve won four out of five starts.’’

 And Esposito says he doesn’t think any of his competitors are ready to just give him the class title. So far, Alan Townsley’s C&C 34 has four seconds and a third to their credit and are only six points behind with three races remaining.

 Jeff Sampson and his crew on Rugger are also cleaning house in PHRF 8. Their four and seven-minute wins in Wednesday’s races have established the Detroit boat as a consistent winner in all conditions, even though the S2 7.9 is new to them.

 ``Everything just kind of worked for us. We had good starts and hit all the right shifts.’’ And those 5- and 10-degree shifts came often in the moderate southerly, Sampson said.

 A pair of third-place finishes kept another S2, Wisconsin-based Challenge, in second place, 10 points behind Rugger. But Challenge will have to fight to stay there, Karl deHam’s Wavelength 24 Fresh Kill is one point behind in third and Rhumblefish sits only two points farther back.

 And other frontrunners have emerged. Irvine Laidlaw’s CM-60 Highland Fling carry a 2-1-1-1-2 in the nine boat IMS-1 class, and a ten point lead over the Farr 52 One Design Scream and the CM-60 Rima. The Rima team overcame a seventh place finish in yesterday’s first race to win the second race by a one minute, 47 second margin over her sistership.

 George Andreadis, Robbie Haines, and the crew of the Farr 40 Atalanti XI solidified a lead in the 27 boat Farr 40 class. “They were gone in the first race, just way ahead,” says one competitor. Atalanti XI posted a second in the second race and hold a seven point lead over Richard Marki’s Raging Bull team who moved into second after adding just six points to their total with a 5-1 yesterday.

 George Collins’s Santa Cruz 70 Chessie Racing continues to race up PHRF-1 wins and has now won four consecutive races after opening the regatta with a Monday morning fourth. “We’d like to have another crack at that first race,” joked Chessie tactician Chris Larson.

 Fatal Attraction, Gray Kiger’s Farr 39 ML has not won a race since Monday morning but her crew’s consistency leaves them in second, four points behind Chessie. Fatal actually crossed Chessie at one point in Wednesday’s first race. “The racing is very close and we’re not taking any chances,” says Larson.

 For his part, Fatal crewmember Dave Scott, a Whitbread and America’s Cup veteran, says, “They (Chessie) are up there in another universe. It’s hard to race against a competitor that is that far away.” Chessie owes Fatal Attraction 93 seconds a mile.

 But course management is also an issue. Chessie is typically ahead of the Farr 40s while the class is usually just ahead of Fatal — and Fatal has been part of the one design class’s mark-rounding pinwheels. The big boat also had an advantage yesterday in the afternoon current as she rounded the weather mark well ahead of her competitors and was able to extend her lead sailing with the current.

 Tom Ballard and his crew on the Annapolis-based SR 33 Snake Eyes repeated their Monday feat of a pair of bullets. Only a third-place finish in Tuesday’s light air race now mars their record.

 ``We made absolutely no mistakes with the crew work in light air today,’’ Ballard said.

 Ballard said they likely would have been deep in the fleet in Wednesday’s second race if not for an alert crew member who spotted a green crab pot go under the boat and never come out. With less than 10 minutes to the start, the crew tried backing the boat down but still did not find the missing float. That meant only one thing: someone had to go over the side. Ballard said the crewmember went down with a knife and found the pot line twisted around the boat’s keel. A few quick swipes with the knife and Snake Eyes was back to full speed.

 And Ballard said he needed every tenth of boat speed in the final leg of the second race. Snake Eyes rounded the last leeward mark about 30 seconds behind Abbey Normal, Jeffrey Gale’s B32. After five tacks in which Ballard says he ``nailed every shift,’’ Snake Eyes came away with a 54-second corrected time win.

 The Lake Geneva, Wisc.-based crew aboard the Melges 24 Full Throttle are on top of the ultra-competitive class. An 8-1-1-2-8 series puts the team in first overall, three points ahead of Harry Melges and the Zenda Express crew. The Full Throttle crew is comprised of Andy Burdick, John Porter, Dave Navin, and Brian Porter. Dockside after the race, 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.”

 The Full Throttle team is unanimously enthusiastic about the Key West experience. “We love sailing here,” says Burdick. “Sailing a Melges 24 down here in January, that’s about as god as it gets. That’s a good group of sailors out there.”

 A 1-3 in Wednesday’s light air racing has established an eight point lead for Bodo von der Wense and the Annapolis-based crew of his Mumm 30 Turbo Duck.

 “Turbo Duck is sailing an unbelievable regatta, they’re really doing a nice job,” says Scott Nixon who is part of the Prime Time crew.

 After three days of racing, Ed and Molly Freitag’s Mumm 30 Prime Time is certainly a candidate for the improvement award. The team started the week with a 25-22 in Monday’s heavy air. The stepped up with a fourteenth on Tuesday before posting a 15-2 yesterday.

 Current College Sailor of the Year Mark Ivey is sailing his first big boat regatta aboard Prime Time. “I’m having a great time,” the Huntington Beach, Calif. native says through a smile. “This is an amazing event.”

 “Mark’s doing a really nice job for us,” reports fellow St. Mary’s College alum Nixon.  “We’ve already had him up the rig a couple of times so he is getting a fast education.”

 One-design classes draw sailors with the promise of close racing, and the 11 boats in the resurgent J/29 fleet lived up to that reputation in a second race Wednesday that saw the second- and third-place finishers separated by only two seconds. Bruce Lockwood’s Tomahawk was the third boat across the finish in that exciting race, but nailed down the Boat of the Day award anyway with a first-place finish in the morning contest.

 Tomahawk now sits a scant point in front of Paul Andersen’s Titillation, who’s all-female crew marked the middle of race week by proclaiming Wednesday as Mini-Skirt Day. The eight women wore skirts that ranged from a daring black spandex number to a modest denim model that just might have passed the Catholic schoolgirl test.

Andersen said he was spared from also wearing a skirt because he ``doesn’t have the figure for it.’’ Crewmembers agreed and quickly discarded a suggestion their skipper wear a Speedo today.

Despite posting their worst finishes of the regatta, Dave Prucnal’s Antrim 27 Ultra Violet remained seven points in front of the Carrera 290 Wild Thang in PHRF 5. Another Antrim, Jack Vines Rasta Dog finally got on track in the 10-boat fleet, scoring a ninth and a sixth, after retiring in the first race and skipping the second.

Vines, who recently moved to Orlando, said the boat is brand new and he is still working out the bugs after a Sunday practice session that saw the bow pulpit get ripped out of the boat. ``In our first race we had the speed, but we just couldn’t point. Then we changed the whole rig tension for the second race and went from being the worst pointing boat to the best.’’

The puffy and shifty Hump Day conditions contributed to some churn in the One Design 35 results. A 2-11 was enough to move John Wylie’s California-based Tabasco crew from Tuesday’s deadlock for first place to a four-point lead heading into Day 4. Philip Kubat’s Sotet Lo crew moved from sixteenth to tenth overall in 24 hours on the strength of a one-minute, two-second victory in Race 5. Avalanche won yesterday’s first race.

After remarkably consistent 2-1-1 finishes, Ivan Slezic’s MIR III found themselves in an unfamiliar place in PHRF 7’s morning race. The Toronto boat was dead last, more than 7.5 minutes behind winner L’Outrage. But Slezic recovered quickly to post a second in the second race — though by then the damage had been done. With two days of racing left, Slezic sits six points behind class leader L’Outrage and only three points ahead of Liquor Box.

Buddy Melges and Ceres Group’s misfortunes in yesterday’s second race (an eleventh place finish in the 14 boat PHRF-2 class) became an opportunity for the Speed Racer crew. They won that race, after taking a second in the morning contest, and they zoomed into first overall in the sportboat-dominated class. Speed Racer is a Florida-based Henderson 30.

Greg Smith’s team aboard the Olson 30 White Trash may have posted the third-best result in the class on Wednesday in the 11 boat PHRF-3 class, but that and an onshore jury decision was enough to extend their overall lead in the class by one point. The margin now stands at four points, with Gordon Schiff’s Mumm 36 The Wall is in second.

Slow but tactical racing was the rule in the hotly contested J/105 fleet. Today’s racing saw new highlights for the Wonder Wagon team, who had been sitting comfortably in fourth until today.

A great deal of separation occurred in the fleet as the 105s slowly made their way upwind, with crews to leeward to keep the boats slightly heeled for speed. Damian Emory’s Eclipse rounded first, but the crew of Rick Wright’s Wonder Wagon made major gains as the race wore on.

“The wind went 15 degrees left on the first beat, and 15 degrees left on the second beat, allowing us to cover,” said ‘Wagon tactician Jamie Malm.  Eclipse crossed the finish line first with Wonder Wagon on her heels.

The Race Committee next sent the fleet on a five-leg race, and Wonder Wagon again had a solid finish, taking first. Malm pointed out that it was important to pick the best shifts to tack on, because the boats are slow to tack in the four-knot breeze. 

“I told Steve Hammerman yesterday that my face wouldn’t be a silhouette he could make out in the distance,” and Martin Kald of Monster Lady was partially correct. Kald and his crew were able to break the string of horizon-job firsts held by Jay Lutz, Steve Hammerman, and the rest of the crew of Syzegy.

“We forced Lutz to be more intimate with the rest of the fleet,” commented Kald, as he watched Syzegy come downwind to finish seventh in the fleet of 12.  Kald’s team had crossed the line in a true horizon-job, with a 2.5 minute lead over second-place Bruce Avery and the crew of Your Name Here.

The day’s second race saw Syzegy go back to her winning ways, earning a first with a comfortable margin.

J/Boats’ Amy Gross-Kehoe contributed the J/80 and J/105 reports.

For more information

Cynthia Goss: (203) 453-2731, Fax (203) 453-3026,  CynthiaGoss@compuserve.com

Peter Craig: (781) 639-9545, Fax (781) 639-9171,  PremiereRacing@compuserve.com

NOTE: To follow hometown sailors from your area, please contact Cynthia Goss at the numbers above until January 13. As of January 13, contact the Race Week Press Center at 305-295-6373 (telephone) or 305-295-9254 (fax).

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