Marina del Rey Fleet News

Piranha Takes Fall One-Design and Sews Up 2001 Fleet Championship

On one of those October days in Southern California that makes you wonder why anyone would live anywhere else, the luck was with Piranha as it posted three bullets on a day in which it never led at the first mark. Amazingly for MdR, the left side paid off upwind over and over again, but most of the passing was done on the downwind legs.

It was a different story on Sunday as Piranha match raced Outlier in the first race leaving the door open to Gladiator (now "Team XM") which walked away with the win. In the final race, Outlier eventually took the win in a race that had again been led by Gladiator.

With only two races left and several points in the bank, Piranha has locked up the 2001 Fleet Championship after losing it to Outlier on the last leg of the last race in 2000 with a broken halyard. The two boats have now won the Fleet Championship in seven of the last eight years and Piranha becomes the first four time Fleet Champion.

CYC FALL ONE-DESIGN
Boat	Race Scores					Total
Piranha	1	1	1	4	2	9
Ripple	2	3	2	2	3	12
Outlier	4	2	4	5	1	16
Team XM	3	4	5	3	4	19
Twister	5	5	3	1	6	20

Piranha Wins Sunset Series "12 Pack"

Sad to think Summer has again coming to an end. By winning the last race, last year's winner of the Jim Long Memorial Trophy, Ripple, passed Outlier for second place. It has been a great summer in which, the fleet (7 boats have turned out regularly) has enjoyed some of the nicest race conditions of the year on Wednesday nights. #3's or heavy #1's and bathing suits have been the norm and with the addition of a new weather mark 2.5 nmi. offshore and all the boatspeed we've been finishing nice and early. Seven knots in the channel wing on wing is great! See you tonight.

Wednesday Night 12 Pack Series
Boat	Race Scores														Total w/both TO's
Piranha	3	1	2	5	1	1	1	3	3	1	2	2	2	2	21
Ripple	1	3	6	2	6	2	2	2	1	5	1	5	6	1	31
Outlier	3	5	4	1	2	6	5	1	5	2	4	1	1	7	34
Gladiator	3	4	1	3	4	4	4	6	4	4	6	4	5	4	44
Power Play	2	2	3	6	7	7	6	5	2	8	5	3	4	5	50
Limerick	3	6	5	4	6	3	6	4	6	6	3	6	7	3	55
Twister	3	6	7	7	3	5	3	7	6	3	7	7	3	6	59

*Scores in races 3&4 have been adjusted for Gladiator's finish (they were scored in PHRF A).

Strong Fleet Turnout for Leukemia Cup (Photos to follow)

A glorious day of racing on a summer day was enjoyed by a 7 boat fleet that helped raise money for the Leukemia Society. Continuing a nice windy summer home in MdR, the wind ranged from 7 to 15 knots and it was a sunny day. In race #1, Outlier wiggled away on the first weather leg and was never challenged while the fleet beat up on each other. Piranha took White Fang high approaching the leeward mark, but Fang still go the inside - but forgot they needed a headsail and gave the position right back again. Minnesota Fast sailed a solid race to third on the water - but gave their position back by sailing through the restricted finish line. Nice race to watch from Outlier! In race two, Piranha led at the weather mark by sailing just inside layline on the right side and tacking close to the mark while the whole fleet sat on each other overstood. Outlier took the lead back at the leeward mark on the strength of a big South shift, but lost it looking for more on the upwind leg as Piranha stayed in phase to pass them back. By the second lap, Ripple had moved ahead of Outlier to take second, only to give it back before the race was over. Outlier and Piranha ended tied with the tiebreaker going to Piranha for the day. Likewise, White Fang and Ripple were tied with third going to Ripple.

1st - Piranha 2,1 (3) 2d - Outlier 1,2 (3) 3d - Ripple 5,3 (8) 4th - White Fang 3,5 (8) 5th - Limerick 4,7 (11) 6th - Minnesota Fast DSQ,4 (12) 7th - Twister OCS,6 (13)

Whiplash Invades MdR and wins Midwinters

The big joke around the club this weekend was that Whiplash DH and Board member Jeremy Davidson is being demoted in favor of owner Ray Godwin. Sailing under the Midwinters owner-driver rule, Ray took the helm and led the Whiplash team to two bullets on Day 1 and secured the win with a third on Day 2 of the regatta. Tactician Scott Dickson of Ullman Sails no doubt helped out a little, but the bottom line is that Whiplash took on Fleet 3's best and took home the hardware - making the trip around the corner worthwhile!

Nine Schocks on the line was a good turnout for the class despite Power Play being a last minute scratch as their new mast was not installed in time to come play. They will be out for the W.D. Schock. In conditions best described as erratic, probably the key for Whiplash was picking up a 40 degree shift on the first leg of race #2 when they were struggling with a #3 in 11 knots of wind and launched into first at the weather mark. The fleet was very close on many mark roundings and sail handling by the crews was often the difference between position changes. Unfortunately (especially from the writer's perspective) the committee only got off three of the scheduled five races in wind that ranged from zero to 15 knots true and from 42 to 200+ degrees true. At least we didn't get rained on as the storm passed through in the night! Many boats had their moments of glory: Outlier edged out a close victory in race #3 and newcomer Alice Leahey on Limerick (nee Ricochet) sailing as helmsman for the first time ever on the new boat even turning the first weather mark in the top 3 in race #3! Hard luck cases of the regatta were a) Strategem - While in second place at the leeward mark, they made a bid for the 2002 Wooden Spoon by test the hydrodynamics of the .5 oz. spinnaker and finding that the sail failed the test. b) Skippius Maximus on Gladiator - while sailing downwind in the lead toward the last leeward mark, light conditions on the corner they chose dropped them from 1st to 5th in one mile. c) Piranha - While launched in race #4 as the wind was filling in nicely, the RC decided it was a good time for everyone to go home and abandoned at a time when the positions would have given Piranha the regatta win.

Fleet 3 now has 5 days of one design racing under its' belt heading into the Class Championship Season which should help us do well on the circuit. For now, the local season is about half over with five days of racing left on the schedule.

2001 SCYA MIDWINTERS - CAL YC
BOAT	#1	#2	#3	TOTAL
Whiplash	1	1	3	5
Outlier	4	2	1	7
Piranha	3	3	2	8
Ripple	2	5	4	11
Strategem	7	4	5	16
Gladiator	5	6	6	17
Twister	6	7	8	21
Limerick	8	8	7	23
White Fang	9	9	9	27

Piranha Wins 5th Champagne Series:

The third and final day of the Champagne Series served up absolutely incredible weather -- for golf! In a drifter with winds which died and floated down out of the canyons, we endured a race which took almost three hours for the first boat to finish. Ripple lead from wire to wire and grabbed second for the series which was already sewn up by Piranha before the day began. This makes five of the last seven years in Team Piranha has won the Champagne Series, punctuated by a win by Troublemaker in '99 and by Pipeline in '97 when the series was not on our fleet schedule.

On day 2, we had some great, close racing. Ty and Jim showed up so we had a nice turnout of six boats.

The breeze was pretty good, some boats even had a heavy 1 up for race 2, although the day was a little shifty. Dave and the Piranha team dominated and even though the racing was close enough so that we all had a couple of chances to try and stop them, they proved unstoppable ending the day with 2 bullets.

2001 SBYRC CHAMPAGNE SERIES
SCHOCK 35 CORRECTED FINAL RESULTS		Series-Eligible Entries:		#1	#2	#3	#4	#5	TTL
Piranha	87780	David Voss	OYC	2	1	1	1	5	10
Ripple	97866	Jeff Janov	CYC	4	4	2	3	1	14
Outlier	87694	Dick Schmidt	CYC	1	2	5	4	3	15
Gladiator	97209	Mark Skipwith	CYC	3	3	3	2	4	15
Minnesota Fast	97524	Jim Maslon	DRYC	DNC	DNC	4	5	2	23
NON-SERIES ENTRIES
Twister	97350	Ty Hokanson	SBYRC	non	non	3	5	non

In a 20 boat PHRF class, they finished first and second in the Malibu and Return race yesterday to open the 2001 racing season. Ty and crew finished at 5:08 pm with White Fang 3 minutes 18 seconds back. According to Ty: "Yeah you were right. There was not a lot of wind. We had a lot of really fast boats in our fleet. Farr 40's Andrews 45, Frers 50 Syd 41 Schock 40. The race started in really light breeze. The turbo a class started with us you, know those small boats like Sorcery, Andrews70's and Pendragon. Twister started on port tack at the pin, and lucked out. The Schock 40 was just a bit early so Twister let them in. The Schock 40 had to turn up to avoid Locomotion Andrews 45 and was OCS. That left just enough room for Twister to squeeze through. The Andrews 45 could not get to and Twister was launched! Good thing because Sorcery (that little red boat of 83') was on starboard! Its kinda, no, a lot of fun to sailing over the top of an Andrews 45! The wind went up and down mostly down from 0 to 5 knots. We were going from the Lt1 to dazy to 1/2 oz. a lot. Twister hit the outside and that was the place to be! White Fang made a big charge 1/2 way to Malibu. So the Two Schock were leading most of if not all those super high $ boats. White Fang eased and went inside slightly while Twister stayed as high as pos. The wind filled from the outside and Twister gained on Fang, and on the boats on the inside. The trip home was better with the wind building. Twister reeled in and pasted Glama! The Tripp 40 Voodoo was slowly moving up. They were amazed as we, they could not get by. The wind built and then the fog rolled in. Voodoo was less than a boat length away and disappeared in the fog, Yikes! Fang was lurking and again made a great come back, but we could not see anything. Visibility went to about 10 ft. At 7 to 8 knots it was exciting! If that's not bad enough there was an offset mark to round. Twister with NO GPS, elected to play it safe and take down the kite and slow down to look for the mark. DRYC did a great job, the mark was right where they said in the inst. it would be. Twister found it and lead the Tripp 40, a boat length back was Fang. Pretty close considering we could not see them! The boat just ahead of Twister was Bay Wolf a Santa Cruz 50. Who said Schocks can't hang with the Big Boys! Twister and White Fang, 1st 2nd in Class, and were 5th 7th the to cross the line in the 92 boat fleet!