Results

October 3-6, 2002

Long Beach Yacht Club

Scott Sonnier and Crew Win 
US SAILING’s U.S. Offshore Championship

October 7, 2002 (Long Beach, CA/Portsmouth, RI)—First Scott Sonnier and his sailing crew eluded Hurricane Lili, then they got a boost from the Navy to overtake Claudia and win their second U.S. Offshore Championship for US SAILING’s Lloyd Phoenix Trophy, which concluded Sunday, October 6.  Rolex Watch U.S.A. sponsored the event, which was held at the Long Beach Yacht Club (Long Beach, CA).  

Hurricane Lili hit New Orleans the day after the sailors from the Southern Yacht Club flew out of town last week. Claudia is Claudia Wainer, who appeared to be the event's first winning woman skipper until after the sailing was done and the title turned on a protest involving two other teams.

Long Beach Yacht Club hosted the event for 10 teams from across the country, which competed over three days on Catalina 37s in the Long Beach outer harbor, sailing in the shadows of cargo-laden container freighters and barges parked in limbo during the waterfront labor dispute. There were two buoy races each Friday and Sunday and a 24-mile distance race Saturday.

Doug McLean's Alamitos Bay YC team led going into the last two races Sunday but stumbled to fourth and sixth place as Wainer, sailing for LBYC with an all-male crew, and then Sonnier came on strong. Wainer won Sunday's first race in 12 knots of breeze going away, then finished a conservative fifth to Sonnier's first in the last race to finish with 13 points to Sonnier's 14---pending protests, as sailors say.

The protest stunned Wainer, who won the 2001 Schock 35 class nationals and has won the prestigious women's One-Design Championship on the same waters the last three years. It involved an incident between San Diego YC's Ross Ritto and the U.S. Naval Academy's Mike Stapleton at the first windward mark in Sunday's first race.

Wainer had already gone around well in front when Ritto risked crossing Stapleton on port tack within a few feet of the mark. It was close, and Stapleton, who had the right of way on starboard tack, later filed a protest that he had to alter course to avoid a collision.

The jury agreed, which disqualified Ritto from second place behind Wainer and moved everyone else up a spot. That left Sonnier tied with Wainer at 13 points, and the Louisiana team won the tiebreaker---in Wainer's case, a heartbreaker---for having won two races to Wainer's one.

"It was a tough way to lose," Wainer said. "We sailed our hearts out and won on the water."

"That's sailboat racing," Sonnier said. "Sometimes you can't control your destiny."

Ironically, Sonnier added, a protest against him cost his team a chance to win the same event at Long Beach two years ago, although they had won it at the Naval Academy in 1997.

"It's good to win it on both coasts," Sonnier said as he rushed to catch a plane home.

Sonnier finished only fifth in Saturday's distance race. "That was our downfall," he said, before the protest changed the result.

The long race, won by McLean in winds to 14 knots, was meant to be run westward past the Long Beach and Los Angeles harbors, but because of so many ships anchored in that stretch it was switched to an easterly course toward Huntington Beach. That made it essentially a bit of upwind sailing to exit the Queen's Gate harbor entrance, one long spinnaker run down the coast and a long port-tack upwind leg back to the finish.

Sonnier and McLean split Friday's races in lighter winds.

Results (5 races):

1. Scott Sonnier, Southern YC, New Orleans, (1-3-5-3-1), 13 points (wins tiebreaker).
2. Claudia Wainer, Long Beach YC, (2-2-3-1-5), 13.
3. Doug McLean, Alamitos Bay YC, (3-1-1-4-6), 15.
4. Mike Stapleton, U.S. Naval Academy, (6-4-7-2-7), 26.
5. Jeff Mackay, North Cape YC, LaSalle, Mich., (4-6-9-5-3), 27.
6. Ross Ritto, San Diego YC, (7-5-2-DSQ-4), 29.
7. Marda Phelps, Seattle YC, (9-9-6-7-2), 33.
8. Eric Will, Sodus Bay YC, N.Y., (5-8-10-6-8), 37.
9. Robert Kellogg, Portland (Me.) YC, (8-10-4-8-10), 40.
10. Lindy Thomas, Chicago YC, 10-7-8-9-9), 43.

Thanks to Rich Roberts for his report on the U.S. Offshore Championship.  He can be reached at richsail@earthlink.net.

The U.S. Offshore Championship is a fleet racing competition in offshore keelboats on a closed course, except for one long-distance race. Teams representing each of the US SAILING Areas are seeded through Area eliminations or by sailing resume, plus one U.S. Naval Academy team. Each team must have competed in at least five regattas in IOR, IMS, PHRF, MORC or Portsmouth Numbers rating systems in its respective Area during the current season. Since 1994, racing has alternated between the Naval Academy in the Navy 44s and Long Beach Yacht Club in Catalina 37's. The Trophy is on display in the Robert Crown Center at the United States Naval Academy. Previously, the only two-time winning skipper was Charlie Scott representing the NASS.

Conrad Banks is the U.S. Offshore Championship Chairman and can be reached at conrad@longbeachroofing.com. For more information about this event, visit http://www.ussailing.org/championships/Lloyd/.

Lloyd Phoenix graduated from the United States Naval Academy, class of 1861. He served in the Civil War and witnessed the battle between the Monitor and the Virginia in 1865. After resigning and going into business he became a yachting enthusiast and Rear Commodore of the New York Yacht Club. In his most famous yacht, the 171 ft. schooner, Intrepid, he won the Club’s 1909 "The Cruise" Trophy which was discovered in 1960 in a storage locker by Shirley Engle, wife of Capt. Aubrey D. Engle, CO of the Naval Station. Capt. Aubrey arranged for the Naval Academy Sailing Squadron to put up the trophy in honor of Lloyd Phoenix as a means of improving relations with the civilian yachting community by bringing sailors from Chesapeake Bay yacht clubs to compete with a midshipmen team in the Luders yawls.

When the USYRU Offshore Council sanctioned a national championship for offshore yachts in 1985, the Trophy was offered by NASS for the first match, which was held at the U.S. Naval Academy in the Luders yawls. Former USYRU (now US SAILING) Executive Director, John Bonds, who had been Commodore of NASS, was instrumental in the reformatting of the event and its coming under the custody of USYRU as a national championship.