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Last week we published a story by Sportboat on his take on the state of the Antrim 27 class. It ruffled a few feathers (which we don't mind in the least), and some of them belong to the A 27 Class President, Steve Saperstein. Here is his rebuttal - Ed The owner who wrote the article, 'Another Dying Fleet', is accurate in one sense - participation in the Antrim/Ultimate 27 fleet did not grow last year. It has stayed near the same over the last two years. If you were to believe the author, however, you'd think that the fleet had all of the local boats racing in one design a few years ago and they have since disengaged. This just isn't so. We have peaks of one design participation. For example, the Summer Keel in 2002 had 8 boats. The Nationals in 2001 had 10 boats (two from out of town) and in 2002 we had 7 - all local. There were 7 boats that sailed Vallejo this year and I believe that we had 8 boats for the Resin Regatta in 2002. We have qualified 5 boats in the last three years in ODCA scheduled racing and have maintained our one design status with the YRA through 2003. If you were to look at the boats in San Francisco, you would find that almost all of them are sailing actively. Two or three are doing OYRA and two or three prefer to race on Lake Tahoe during the summer months. The author who goes by 'Sportboat' sails short-handed events exclusively. 'E.T.', needed most of this summer to prepare and recover for Pacific Cup. If I don't count these boats, our fleet had near full participation in many one-design events this year. In the coming year we will not have conflicts with OYRA and it is not a Pacific Cup year. This, alone, should add at least two more boats to the one design fleet. There are also boats that are on the market and we see interest in these from active one-design sailors for these and for new boats from the factory. Every indication is that we will have an increase in one design participation in 2003. My perspective is that these are great one-design boats, but I am one who loves one design racing. For me, there is nothing that compares to planing down the bay at 18 knots on a fire hose reach for 3 miles with a large grin pasted on my face, getting to the leeward mark and finding that all the boats seemed to be overlapped! At the recently held Nationals the boats were all tightly bunched together throughout the weekend and the scores show that. I have been racing one design for 25 years in big and small boats and it doesn't get any better than this. I invite anyone who loves going fast and loves to have tight, competitive fleet racing to show me a boat that is better than the Antrim/Ultimate 27. I would hope that you, the readers, will not give credence to the views from someone who hasn't raced one design in a few years. Ask the crew members and owners of these boats instead and I assure that you will receive an enthusiastic affirmation of the quality, fairness and excitement of head to head racing in these boats. If anyone has attempted to hasten the supposed demise of this fleet, the author, 'Sportboat', needs only to look in the mirror. In spite of his article, more boats will be out next summer, enjoying the speed, competition and test of skill that this well designed and thrilling boat brings to its owner and crew. Steve
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