April 30/May 1

Hosted by San Fernando Valley YC

Olive trees, a rescue at sea, and plenty of wind.

Reported by John Papadopoulos

Lake Piru is tucked way in the scenic San Gabriel Mountains about 50 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles.  The facilities at Lake Piru consist of a modern campground, marina, snack bar (beer on tap), and ample parking for boat rigging.  The campground spreads throughout an olive tree orchard - which was in full bloom this weekend.  SFVYC strives to provide a low key and enjoyable experience by keeping the racing simple and by hosting a margarita bar and hor's d'ouvres "banquet" at the SFVYC campground headquarters Saturday night.

The racing started off on a funny note when the majority of the Lido 14 fleet didn't "officially" start the race.  The race committee was stationed on a point of land with the starting line consisting of two marks in the water.  Most of the racers mistakenly chose to start between the on-shore committee and the nearest mark in the water.  Eric and Tiffany Bohman, of Ventura, CA, chose the incorrect line and led all the way around the course.  The race committee took the most optimistic view of the situation and decided that the two boats that started correctly weren't significantly wronged and kept the race on the books.  Race 1 to the Bohmans.

I think race two saw the Bohmans leading most of the way around with Judd Lather and his crew Ciel not far behind.  These two teams kept close to the shoreline on their way to the finish and fell into a patch of fluky and light air (hey, this is a lake after all!), only to be passed by Steve Mueller.

Lake Piru is fairly big and the racing marks are spread to use a good portion of the lake.  It can be hard to find the marks.  Race number two saw Team Bohman slightly ahead of Mueller/Papadopoulos in route to the 2nd mark of the course - which neither team could find it where it was shown on the course chart.  Someone in the middle of the fleet saw the mark first and took off in a very different direction - to the opposite shore!  The leaders eventually caught on to the moved mark and got to it without too much damage.

Race four, the final race of Saturday, was a strange reach/reach/beat course.

At the end of the day, it was clear that Team Bohman were the top performing team - so long as they didn't make any more mistakes.  Mueller was in a solid second and then a gap to the next few boats with Bob Ritchie and Mike Cheda showing some consistency.

Sunday saw more wind and the absence of the regatta leaders.  The Bohman's, parents of two toddlers, couldn't break away for a full weekend.  This left the lead role to Team Mueller/Papadopoulos.  Mueller (Morro Bay fleet), sailing his 3rd regatta in his new Lido (#6255), followed new member Mike Cheda (Fleet 2) to the weather mark but got past him on the long downwind leg.

Race 6 saw Mueller "win" the first weather mark and hold a comfortable around the next (leeward) mark.  Sailing back up to weather mark, Mueller saw a man overboard - apparently from one of the boats in the fleet.  It didn't look like anyone was coming to his rescue so Steve immediately bailed out of the race, sailed downwind to rescue what turned out to Bud Temple's (Utah fleet) overboard crew - Taylor Everts.  Bud, trying get his boat back to the scene, had his wet but healthy crew delivered to him.  Steve and John picked up the race and managed to pass a few boats while Bud and Taylor retired from the race and sailed back to the marina.  Knowing that the rescue had probably cost him the regatta, Steve requested redress for his rescue.  In the end, Steve Mueller and his crew, John Papadopoulos, were awarded first place for this race.

At the awards giving, the regatta chair took full advantage of the various twists and turns of the event to give away honorarium awards, get in a good roasting of "those top A sailors", give out participation goodies, and beautiful hand carved boat plaque trophies.

The following scores were provided after the sailors were broken down into A and B divisions and totally don't reflect the story above.

Regatta Documents

Notice of Race