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Daily reports: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, Final
The 2002 Star World Championships gets under way this weekend at Marina Del Rey, California. This year's World Championship will be the first qualifier for the 2004 Olympics and has attracted many of the best names in sailing with the top 5 nations earning an Olympic slot. International teams started arriving in LA over a month ago to begin practicing and compete in a series of warm up regattas leading up to the Worlds. 114 teams from 20+ nations have entered the regatta. California Yacht Club will host the event. Nautica has signed on as title sponsor as they did in 2000 when the Worlds were held in Annapolis and their support is very much appreciated. If results from the warm-up regattas are any indication, there could be a crop of new names at the top of the leader board this year. CYC hosted the King Of Spain regatta last weekend and was won by the relatively unknown Irish team of Max Treacy and Anthony Shanks. More surprisingly is that most of the big names such as Reynolds, Cayard, Brun, and current World Champion, Fredrick Loof finished deep in the fleet. Also stepping up to the front is Aussie Ian Walker (yes, the Aussie, not the Brit) who just stepped off a Volvo boat into the class. Walker won the Baxter Bowl Held at Newport three weeks ago, beating and surprising many of the class's top sailors. One story that will be interesting to watch is how the teams from each nation perform against their fellow countrymen. For some time, several of the teams have taken for granted that they would represent their nation at the Olympics. This is most apparent with Colin Beashel from Australia and Torben Grael from Brazil. Well that is no longer the case. Brazil has gone to a winner-take-all Olympic Trials selection process similar to the USA. This change in policy has brought out several teams hoping to challenge Torben. Among them is Alan Adler, a former Star and FD World champion, Gastao Brun, a former Soling World Champion and Vince's brother, and Torben's own brother Lars, a two-time Olympic medallist in the Tornado class.
Australians to look for, in addition to Ian Walker, include Ian Murray of Sydney 18 and America's Cup fame is also campaigning for an Olympic slot. Murray has made a major commitment to the class and has traveled to most of the major regattas around the world for the last year earning increasingly better results. Rod Hagebols, a transplanted Aussie living in San Francisco has also shown excellent results in an old boat pondering some to speculate that he could seriously compete for an Australian Olympic berth if he were to so choose. Outside of the really big names of Cayard and Reynolds (Brun will not be racing), some of the other California teams can also be expected to put up a good showing. From San Diego, Rick Merriman and Bill Bennett have been extremely tough and at times shown moments of brilliance including winning the Lipton Cup in Santa Barbara three weeks ago. 2001 North American champion George Szabo and crew Austin Sperry are serious about doing well. Robbie Haines sailing with his son Brian had an excellent result at the District's and are looking for more. From LA, Jim Buckingham and Joel Kew are currently sailing very well and so is Jeremy Davidson with Jessica Costa as crew. The San Francisco fleet is sending a very strong group led by Howie Shiebler and Rick Peters who finished second to Cayard at the Districts and third at the King of Spain. Peter Vessella and Brian Fatih are always tough and finished fifth at the King Of Spain. Former US team member Steve Gould with crew Jon Rogers will be a wild card, Gould having come out of retirement for the regatta. Finally, from Santa Barbara, Doug Smith and Marty Dalton are capable of surprising some people as he did when he finished second at the Baxter Bowl this year. Other teams to look for are US Team member John MacCausland and crew Sean Delaney from New Jersey. Augie Diaz and Christian Finnsgard from Miami finished second at the King Of Spain and sailed exceptionally well. Kiwi Gavin Brady was runner up at last year's Worlds and really wants to win this year. Former world champion Ross McDonald with crew Eric Jespersen will do their best to put Canada at the top.
Equipment will be an interesting area to watch this year. The standards in the class have been Folli Hulls, Emmetti masts, and Quantum sails. This year those standards will be under increased pressure and new innovations are likely to surface. John MacCausland has joined the team at North and has been working with them to develop some new sail shapes and materials. Mader and Lillia have both introduced new hull shapes recently and this will be the first major regatta where there will be enough on the water to get a good comparison. The Lillia boat, designed by Torben Grael, has a controversial new bow profile which makes it look more like a modern America's Cup boat. In masts, Emmetti continues to be the supplier of choice for most top teams. For the District Championship and King of Spain regattas, California Yacht Club's race committee performed flawlessly and it seems that we wont see a repeat of the fiasco that happened with the Annapolis Worlds due to substandard race committee work. Unfortunately, CYC seemed unprepared to handle so many boats and sailors off the water, the main problem being that club employees didn't seem to be informed that they were hosting a major event and sent several teams away when they appeared at the club gate or told sailors that they weren't allowed to work on their sails because all open areas had been reserved for private parties. These hiccups will hopefully have been corrected by the time racing starts on Sunday. -VanFalk
I finished off the last article complaining about how the CYC organizers were dropping the ball off the water. I would like to begin this one by saying that somebody listened and things have vastly improved in the last week. The CYC definitely have their shit together and things look to be running very well so far. The last few days have been reserved for measurement and registration. The CYC volunteers had their process down pat and all sailors were able to get through measurement very quickly. If anyone had an issue, the club’s volunteers were more than willing to do what it took to get it resolved. Without volunteers, there is no way anyone could pull off a regatta of this size, and the folks here deserve a pat on the back. As a side note, it sure is nice having a clothing company sponsor the regatta. Most big regattas you get a T-shirt, or polo shirt if you are lucky. This year Nautica is outfitting every competitor with a T-shirt, ball cap, polo shirt, and fleece vest or sweater. Not too shabby! There is not much to report in terms of sailing because it hasn’t started yet. Saturday will be the practice race and Race 1 is scheduled for noon on Sunday. What I will report on is the intrigue of the class politics and results form the annual class meeting this evening. The Olympic classes tend to be very political and secretive in nature, none of them more so than the Star. The Star class is very protective of its Olympic status and it seems will do anything short of giving a blow job to keep it. The two most debated items at this year’s annual meeting were the weight limit and oversized World’s fleets. The Star is now on it second weight limit in three years and is currently debating the merits of a new rule. The bickering seems to be between the Americans and the Europeans as to which rule is better. Regardless, I feel the weight rule is very beneficial and some of the guys are barely recognizable anymore having lost 70+ pounds in many cases. My God, we are actually beginning to look like athletes! Ultimately the debate comes down to the ratio, not the total weight. The current ratio favors heavier skippers where previously it favored heavier crews. The new proposal swings things back I favor of heavier crews. The difference between them is miniscule. Why can’t we all just get along and leave things be for a few years? It looks ridiculous to be changing weight rules every year and gives the impression the class does not have things in order. The class leadership agrees with me and recommends that members vote the proposal down, but the new resolution has the backing of some powerful American members. We’ll have to wait and see how far this gets.
The second contentious item is the out of control number of entries at the Worlds. There have been more than 100 entries at the Worlds each year for the last few years and quite frankly this is too many. It sounds great to have so many boats, but in reality it is a nightmare. Anything more than 80 on a single starting line is chaos. ISAF, represented by his Majesty, Paul Henderson made it very clear this evening that it is out of control and wants something done about it. (It won’t be soon enough before he retires!). The problem here is that the class leadership is recommending a proposal that would send even more entries to the Worlds in future years. Come on people, everyone agrees we need to get the numbers down, why are you recommending a resolution that will increase the number? This is just idiotic. Among other decisions that were made was the location of the 2004 Worlds (2003 will be in Spain). Buenos Aires has been campaigning for the 2004 regatta for some time, however Paul Henderson screwed them and he screwed them good. Even though BA had the strongest bid and put years into their effort, Henderson, using the weight of his ISAF position, convinced the class leadership to pick Rome instead. The Italians put maybe a month into their proposal, but with the class President being an Italian and Paul Henderson wanting a European Worlds to encourage Europeans to send more teams to the Olympics, the poor South Americans became the unwanted step children. Henderson better watch himself because some of those Latin tempers are definitely flaring this evening. (Did I already say it won’t be soon enough before he retires?) Van Falk
In my last report I railed against how Paul Henderson was exerting his infulence and trying to loom over this year's Worlds. Today rightousness prevailed and Henderson had to eat crow. One of Paul Henderson's beliefs is that the Star Worlds should be reserved for professional sailors and Olympic level athletes only. Today amateuers proved him all wrong. Steve Gould and crew Jon Rogers from San Francisco won the practice race of the World Championship. I mentioned in my last article that this team was a wild card and could put in a good showing. Gould and Rogers lead the fleet from start to finish around every mark beating a host of professional sailors. If Paul Henderson thinks the class should be the exclusive playground of the pros, what about the amateurs like Gould/Rogers who beat the pros at their own game? These guys deserve more credit than to say they were a fluke. Second place was taken by Ian Walker (the Aussie, not the Brit) and Gavin Brady ended up third. The conditions were pretty bad with rain welcoming the sailors in the morning. By the time the race started, the rain had cleared, but the wind didn't fill in until later in the day. It was one of those days that you would prefer to stay in bed, drink coffee and read the paper. Van Falk
The 2002 Star Worlds kicked off today. Winds were very light from the South and shifted to the West during the day. The weather was quite ugly and it was one of those days you wish you could stay in bed. The race committee got lucky today with the winner making the time limit with only four minutes to spare. Overall the RC did an excellent job given the conditions and the fleet was able to start without having a general recall. Star Class President Ricardo Simoneschi protested the RC claiming the race should not have started in those wind conditions. The International jury has thrown out the protest. Simoneschi was simply being a cry baby because he finished 74th. The final entry list stands at 104 boats. Almost everyone is or was a champion of some class and it shows in the sailing. Make a mistake, and you can kiss 20 places good bye. With the patchy wind there it was easy to pick up or lose lots of boats on each leg. George Szabo and Austin Sperry of San Diego won today’s race. Szabo was the beneficiary of an isolated gust that sent him into the lead on the last leg. Second place went to the Irish team of Mark Mansfield and Killian Collins. Third place was taken by Torben Grael and Marcello Ferreira. The second placing California team was Cayard/Haenel in 7th. Of the other California teams, Jeremy Davidson and Jessica Costa were 35th, practice race winners Steve Gould and Jon Rogers were 36th. Mark Reynolds had a bad day and ended up 78th. The forecast looks pretty grim and some guys are scrambling to change travel plans thinking that we will have to use lay days next weekend. Van Falk
Today we sailed the second race of the Star Worlds and Brazil rules the waves. Torben Grael won the race and Alan Alder, both from Rio, placed third. Reynolds made up for his disastrous 78th with a 5 today. The conditions turned out to be very nice with the wind around 12 knots. It looked to be a repeat of the first race drifter when we left the docks but got lucky that it filled in right before the start. The sun actually appeared for awhile, the first time since the regatta started. The RC had a tough time getting the race off due to some overanxious competitors, but that was resolved on the third try by flying the I flag. You realy have to have good boat handling to control the boat on the starting line with so many other boats around. One of the German teams were inexperienced and lost control, hitting us and knocking us back from what would have been a beautiful start to the third row. At that point there is no coming back. The racing is damn tough. Even deep in the fleet we had two world champions with us and they are fighting just as hard as we are to move up. There is no relief. You just keep getting pounded and pounded. You end up pissing some people off and we were sworn at in four different languages yesterday. Lanes never appear. Clear air?..Forget it! Even as tough as not having clear air is the chop. 103 boats produce alot of chop when confined into a small space and add in a couple of dozen spectator boats and you get a beating.
One of the best parts of this regatta has been watching Star #25 racing. The boat was found destroyed under a treee in Colorado last year and has since been completely restored. The owner claims she is competitive, and in fact qualified from her local fleet, and has brought her here to race. Several people, mostly Paul Henderson and class president Ricardo Simoneschi, have complained that the boat shouldn't be racing because it is not a serious contender. That's bullshit. Boat 25 qualified to be here, and measured in. Those guys have just as much right to be on the water as Paul Cayard does. The fact that a person can qualify for the Worlds with old equipment and race against the very best in sailing is what makes this class great, and that seems to be lost on some of the Poobahs. CYC continue to do a great job on the water and off. The problems of launching and retrieving the boats have been almost eliminated and volunteers are actually getting the trailer for each boat as you hook up to the hoist, this service shouldn't be discounted when you consider the hill you have to negotiate at the hoist here. My only compliant now is that the club is closed today. Yes, most clubs are closed on Monday, but usually not when you are hosting a major World Championship. It looks like to we are going to have to find someplace else to drink tonight. Van Falk
Three races down, three to go. We are oficially at the midway point of the regatta. Torben Grael is leading the event followed closely by the French and Cayard in third. When looking at the point totals, any of the guys in the top ten still have a chance to win the regatta. Last night we had the mid-week awards ceremony which was actually quite fun. Entertainment was provided by a Mexican band composed of 15 gorgeous young women. They had the attention of all the sailors, and not becuase of their talent, although they were good musicians. Food was what else...Mexican. Prizes were awarded for the top three finishers of each race. The only American teams to take home silver last night were George Szabo and Austin Sperry of San Diego for winning the first race, and Steve Gould and Jon Rogers of San Francisco for winning the practice race. In terms of the national battles I previewed, it hasn't turned out to be much. Beashel is dominating the Australians and Grael is doing the same to the Brazillians. One interesting point is that each of the three Brazillian teams could end up in the top ten. Of the equipment battles, Quantum seems to still be the dominant force, however the British using the new Norths have been doing well, but they are the only North boat in the top ten. Emetti masts are on all of the top ten boats. 8 of the top ten boats are built by Folli, however of there are only four new Lillias in attendance and two of them are in the top ten. Van Falk
We sailed Race 4 today. The wind Gods cooperated and provided perfect wind, around 12 knots, for Star Boat racing. The wind was directly from the West providing a very difficult chop to negotiate. The fleet managed to get the race started without a general recall for once. Reynolds immediately jumped to the front and headed to the left side of the course, about 1/3 of the way up, tacking and banging the right corner. He never looked back. What was interesting about this race was how close the fleet manageed to stay around the entire length of the course. In most of the races the fleet will have a tremendous separation by the end, but today the last boat was within spitting distance of the first boat. The close racing has made for quite a few hairy mark roundings. Gavin Brady's brand new boat was holed, started taking on water and had to be escorted to safety by the RC. The British team of Percy and Mitchell have moved into the lead by one point over Torben Grael, if you count in a throwout. What is striking is how poorly the British team sailed in the practice regattas, and in fact their speed is still not very impressive. What is impressive is how well they are able to negotiate the large fleet and make lanes appear when they need them. Big fleet sailing is an acquired skill and if you have it, you can make things happen. The British are doing that. Van Falk
Tonight, a major yachting award was won at the 2002 Nautica Star World Championships. Howie Shiebler and crew Rick Peters of San Francisco won the Star Worlds Raingutter Regatta. Shiebler and Peters beat Jeremy Davidson and Jessica Costa in the finals to take home a matching pair of new Nautica wathces. To make it to the finals each team had to beat about 30 other wooden toy boats. Upon winning this prestigious event the German crews "hijacked" the winning yacht to perform a design analysis....Ok, You get the picture. This was the after race party. The winning boat is still missing though. On the water, we had an absolute beautiful day of sailing. The sun came out for the first time all week and the wind filled in to about 12 knots+. Unfortunately, as with the last few days the chop was very difficult to negotiate and made sailing the Stars like being in a washing machine. Long boats + low freeboard + big sail area + waves = very wet sailing. As most of you may have heard in the legitiamte press the regatta is down to three likely contenders. Torben Grael, Ian Percy, and Xavier Rohart. Paul Cayard and Rick Merriman, both of California, are in fourth and fifth and each have a remote chance of winning. Most folks are betting that Grael will pull it off as long as he doesn't have an OCS which he is prone to do in the last race of a regatta. Van Falk
The British team of Percy and Mitchell won the Star Worlds today. They came out under alot of pressure to do well and won the final race to clinch the title. What is amazing about their win was that they did not have superior boatspeed the way that Reynolds or Cayard have. These guys won the regatta by sailing phenomenally well in the large fleet and being able to use the fleet against their competition. In every single warm up regatta they finished mid-fleet and even worse, but in the Worlds fleet of 103 boats they managed to win. Torben once again finished second in the regatta, with the French team of Rohart and Adde in third. The California teams had a good showing with Cayard and Haenel in fourth, Merriman and Bennet in fifth, Reynolds and Liljedhal in ninth, and Shiebler and Peters in tenth. The awards ceremony was alot of fun with each team taking home a participation trophy. The new world campions also recived a ceremonial dunking in the yacht club pool. At the award ceremony it was announced that the regatta web site had recieved a whopping 3.5 million hits. In terms of the equipment battles, I was misinformed and North did have a better regatta than originally thought. The standard Norths were used two of the top 10, Grael and Bennett, and the winners used a custom suit from North UK. Quantum was used by all of the other boats. Emetti masts were used by 9 of the top ten. Folli hulls were used by 8 of the top ten including the winner. Lillia had one hull in the top group, sailed by Grael, and Mader had one hull in the top 10. The Mader hull was the old style, not the new boat. CYC did a phenomenal job in pulling off the regatta. The RC work was flawless, and the social events were alot of fun. We got lucky that the wind gods cooperated and they were able to complete the regatta as scheduled. Next year's Worlds will be in Cadiz, Spain and the organizers there are going to have a very tough time matching the experience of this year's event. Van Falk |
