2007 Lido 14 Class Championships

August 19 thru 22, 2007

Newport Beach, California

Update 3/28/2008.  Stu Robertson, who had been protested and subsequently disqualified in several races of the 2007 Lido 14 Class Championships has won his appeal of the jury decision.  The appeals committee, made up of US Sailing judges, studied the matter and found that the procedures for filing a protest had not been followed and therefore the protest against Mr. Robertson was deemed invalid.  The Class Association has been working for a while to restore the pre-protest finishing positions, which are presented below.  As a result, Mr. Robertson moved from 17th to 2nd place in the Gold Fleet.  The rescoring impacted a number of other teams in the Gold Flight - in one case a team dropped 4 positions.  The change in rankings, pre and post appeal, is presented to help teams determine how their ranking may have changed.

Prior Reports Follow

The regatta summed up with a nicely catered dinner, raffle prizes, an excellent presentation on America's cup sailing, and, of course, the trophies and awards for the regatta.  This regatta will be remembered for a very long time as a benchmark on the depth of talent in the teams racing, the number of teams participating, and the great social events - in short a very enjoyable regatta despite the challenging and frustrating sailing.

For photos, please visit http://www.underthesunphotos.com/undersail/index.html

Start planning for the next Class Championships which to be held on Fernridge Reservoir (Eugene, OR) in July of 2008.

Congratulations to the team of Mark Gaudio and Dave Swain for winning the 2007 Class Championships!

Both are multiple time Lido 14 champions - Mark having skippered wins in 2001, 2002, and 2003 and Dave, who crewed for Chris Raab in their wins in 1979 and 1980.

Though slightly fresher breeze and overcast skies brought great relief from the heat and light winds that racers endured over the past few days, the shifty winds were still present.  As boats would work their way up the first weather leg, they would ping-pong their way thru the moored yachts mentioned previously.  It wasn't unusual for a boat to be in a clear lane thru the mooring fields only to get a great lift that would send them right to a moored yacht - forcing a tack onto to a big header. Ouch!  Add multiple boats in you immediate vicinity and it makes for strange circumstances.  As one could not see the entire venue, it was virtually impossible (unless you were clearly out in the front) how the fleet would converge on the weather mark.  It was pretty common to find a large crowd of boats converging out of the mooring field at the same time - making for intense tactical exchanges the last 25 yards to the weather mark.  Despite these challenges, the top rated teams of Mark Gaudio/Dave Swain and Stu Robertson/Erin Frederick continued to dominate the racing.

Upon the conclusion of the regatta, it was unofficially reported that the two teams were tied in points and that Mark Gaudio had won the tie breaker by virtue of having more first place finishes.  However, protests for the day of racing were yet to be processed so the outcome was still a bit uncertain.

After the protests were heard, Mark remained the points leader while Stu Robertson fell to 17th overall after being disqualified in the day's race results for having sailed a boat that did not comply with a class equipment rule regarding removal of material from the transom.

The regatta summed up with a nicely catered dinner, raffle prizes, an excellent presentation on America's cup sailing, and, of course, the trophies and awards for the regatta.  This regatta will be remembered for a very long time as a benchmark on the depth of talent in the teams racing, the number of teams participating, and the great social events - in short a very enjoyable regatta despite the challenging and frustrating sailing.

For photos, please visit http://www.underthesunphotos.com/undersail/index.html

Start planning for the next Class Championships which to be held on Fernridge Reservoir (Eugene, OR) in July of 2008.

Championship Series (Tuesday)

Newport Beach dinghy sailing is almost always very challenging as race courses most often pass thru one or more fields of moored yachts.  This regatta is no different.  Yesterday we had qualification races that were well seeded so at any moment we were racing against just half of the best sailors - so opportunities would more quickly unfold.

Today, all the best are lined up at one time and it's very difficult to find enough lanes in the relatively small confines we are racing in (typically about 500 yards upwind thru moored boats to the weather mark).  Lots of very good sailors struggled in at least one race today and occasionally there are lots of boats getting to the weather mark in close company with others - making for painful losses for port tackers (often coming in on the lifted tack).  Forecast is for more of same tomorrow!

Four more races tomorrow to decide the championships.

Day 1 Comments from Len Bose

08-21-07 Newport Beach CA Lido 14 Class Championships. IT'S TIME, ITS NOW and IT'S BIG. The Golden Anniversary 50 years of Lido 14 Championships started yesterday. The forecast is hot and 7-9 knots of breeze. The fleet, of 52 boats, was split up in four groups with all groups racing each other once for a total of three long races. Vicki Sodaro is this year's event PRO and is working hard to run a good event with fifty-two boats in a very confined area. Something like a square peg in a round hole comes to mind.

Most of the competitors were very quiet around the dock yesterday with everyone working on their boats like the start of the Indy 500. The top seeds were walking around with confidence and smiles. While myself, wanting desperately to make it into the gold fleet was bunched up as much as walking into a gay bar. For example; my crew Dina brought our lunches onto the boat and they had BANANAS in the bag, I said "TAKE THOSE OFF THE BOAT NOW" she looks at me like 'This is going to be a long day." Then I said wait Dina; we have the number 13 as our hull number, BRING THEM ON.

With the light breeze and the number of boat the quotes where down to a minimum.

My favorites quotes are still the father & son teams with hearing the intensity of the father and the freedom of spirit of the kid. "Don't push me dad, I will get the pole up". Another was Lisa Little commenting on her skipper and husband Bob Little "I don't know why he has to be so uptight" I must have said I was sorry to Dina 12 times yesterday after asking her "Is the jib in?" - she would always reply "IT IS."

Got to get to the boat!

Day 1 - Qualification Series

In the Lido 14 Class Championships this year, competitors raced in a round robin series of races (4 groups).  The scores are added up and everyone is ranked.  The top 50% of the entrants are seeded into the Gold Flight of the Championships and the balance in the Silver Flight.

The top 26 boats will move on to Gold Flight tomorrow.  There is no carry over of scores so everyone starts with a clean slate (except in the highly unusual event that an insufficient number of races are completed in the Championship Series - at which time the Qualifying Races will be carried forward.)

Roy Woolsey, a member of the Lido 14 Class since its inception, just missed qualifying into the Gold Flight on a tie breaker.  Roy is 90 years young and has been a outstanding role model of all Lido 14 racers!