Every December (its been 13 or so) when the scratch list takes shape for Key West Race Week, my jib/spinnaker trimmer starts whining about how tough the class is. Year after year, same story, whether we we're taking a Schock 35, Tripp 26, Viper 830 or, as we have the past three years, the Thompson 30 "Wairere." I always tell him to clamp a lid on it because there are never any easy classes at Key West. This year, though, he was right. PHRF 3 was the toughest class and the closest racing we've ever seen, hands down. There was the "factory team" on the new Melges 32 "Star", the new Diode 36 "Rampart", a well-sailed Farr 36 "Grins," the two past class winners in the modified Melges 30 "Tiburon" and "New Wave," the most dialled-in Henderson 30 anywhere. Then there were some unknowns, including a couple more Hendersons, a Cheetah, the mysterious and much-talked-about JS 9000 and a Kiwi 35, which had an air of "That 70s Show" about it, but still looked pretty damned threatening with those fold-down wings to get the crew wieght out.

Plus the forecast for early in the week was for it to blow better than 30 knots. Pretty quickly there were some breakages -- the Melges 32 broke part of its rudder assembly on a practice day, but was ready to go on Monday.

The JS 9000 rig (see SA bulletin board) came down on Monday after the RC decided to not race our class and a couple others. The Cheetah also broke a rudder early in the week and sat out much of the series. It's not clear why our class did not race on Monday, since apparently the conditions weren't much different Tuesday. (Our Kiwi bowman was happy about it, he missed his 2AM curfew by about 4 hours, and was even able to put 90 min. postponement on Tuesday to good use) That wasn't all bad for us, because we had a brand new No. 3 lost by the airlines since Thursday. It showed up Monday night after eight hours on the phone to United. Racing got going for us Tuesday and the 3 was working well but we really had a serious edge downwind in the heavy stuff. We were able to hold it on a plane pretty much all the way down, and ended up with a 1-2 to take the daily trophy for 1st. But that's hardly the full story. Immediately the margins were tight.

In Race One, we beat Grins by 53 seconds. Two seconds behind them was Star, 23 seconds behind Star was New Wave, which was just 3 seconds ahead of Tiburon. The next day, in Race 3, Tiburon beat us by 7 seconds for the bullet and 1 second behind us was Star. In Race 4, Star won and we were second again, only 1 second ahead of Tiburon. Grins was 4th, just 3 seconds ahead of New Wave. You get the idea. The closest one was arguably Race 6. We had to eat a 4th. We were 12 seconds out of 2nd, 3 seconds out of third. Thirty-four seconds behind us was Tiburon.

In the end, we were tied for second on points, but Grins had two bullets to our one, and so we lost the tiebreaker and took home the small peanut cup for third. Which we probably deserved -- our gybes didn't go well most of the week and on Friday we thought the plate under the well-mounted outboard was pulled up flush, but when the crane lifted the boat out we saw that a couple of big handfuls of weeds had wedged it open, so we had sailed the whole race with what appeared to be a very large mop hanging out of the bottom. (lesson learned,a new item for pre-race checklist) Not smart. But at least nothing big broke in the heavy stuff. Anyway, you can trash PHRF all you want, but this was as close as one-design racing. I'd say Bingman and Assoc. were spot on with our class. One blown tack could easily cost a place for the week. Any member of the crew could have affected the outcome for the week by doing just one thing better, that stretch where you didn't hike as hard as you could have, or were a little slow pulling in the sheet on a gybe.

As close as things were, here were some light moments, for us mainly in the last race Thursday, which turned into a crapshoot drifter. We rounded the leward mark for the last leg, side by side with the 70-foot sled "Equation," cursing our luck and knowing that they were going to suck up every scrap of wind for miles. Partway up the course, the jib trimmer started having fun with it. "OK, you've got height on Equation but he's a little faster." He went on joking like that until Equation fell in a hole and it wasn't a joke any more. We ended up beating them boat for boat by several minutes, something that, given their 40-foot waterline advantage, won't be happening again in my lifetime.

That class always has some boats that are of keen interest to SA types, so maybe a short boat report is in order. The most interesting thing on the water was the Diode. It was pretty clear after a few races that he just wasn't in the hunt, probably at least partly becuase they're still figuring things out, though the rig looked a little short. It also is strange that the thing doesn't have a sprit on it. But it was a gorgeous boat, beautifully faired hull and just well done all the way around. Nice hull form, good deck layout. I think it can be made to really go, though not sure what that will take. Both Melges boats obviously went well, and the lack of an articulating bowsprit didn't seem to hurt the 32 much. It's unclear how much advantage these things really give, since if you look at it in terms of a standard spinny pole pivoting at the mast, maximum articulation gives you the equivalent of just getting the pole off the headstay. He had some neat synthetic shrouds that they claimed are 25 pounds lighter than rod. We'll see more of that rigging on other boats for sure.

Grins was really well finished and beaufitfully prepared, too. It had a nearly flush deck on it and was a much better looking boat than the Farr 36's that came down last year, which had ugly little horseshoe-shaped doghouses. We figured the biggest news was they started serving rum at 5:37 p.m. Sunday, right after the 3 minute skipper's meeting, instead of emptying the tent, and waiting until the traditional 6 p.m. start. Major tradition turned on its ear. This caught us off guard, and kept us from being first in line for the first time in years.

-Pete Hunter

1/28/05