This grandiosely named event occurred September 25th and 26th in sunny San Diego, California with a warm-up regatta the Friday before, and there were three boats from Puget Sound there. Learning from Chris Winnard that there would be a large contingent of Viper 640s in attendance, including his boat from Seattle and Kris Overbee from Tacoma, and that there would be one-design racing for those with enough entrants, I was ready to tow my newly-acquired Viper the 25 hours each way to participate. Regular crew AJ Paulsen was eager to attend, and Mike Visser was on the short list too, but he bowed to familial responsibilities making room for Geoff Raymoure to ably fill out the crew roster.
AJ and I went down making only stops for food and fuel and arrived late Wednesday, with Geoff arriving by air shortly after us. Our early arrival was fortunate because we had a significant hurdle to overcome right off. The mainsail had jumped ship somewhere on the way down. That was an expensive lesson learned, one that I had avoided in my previous towing jaunts with the boat. But an open transom and an unsecured sail, though rolled and in its bag, made for a surprising discovery upon going to rig the boat in San Diego. Seeing the West Coast representative nearby, I caught his ear, and really only a few minutes later with a couple of phone calls he had secured me a used sail to borrow from a LA area Viper sailor not attending. Turned out it was in our hands the next morning and it was in reasonably good shape! I love this class.
We spent the next day rigging and meeting the Viper builder Rondar Raceboats principal, Paul Young, which was very helpful. He took care of a few minor new boat issues for me, gave us some history of how Rondar got involved with the Viper 640, imparted some tuning advise, and then turned us loose. We got out on the water for a little charity sail for a local youth organization taking a couple of young folks out for a fun faux race. Then back for the barbeque at the welcoming host of this whole event, Coronado Yacht Club. Relaxing back at the hotel that night enjoying some pure agave tequila we felt ready for the warm-up regatta the following day. Then Friday came.
Calling this warm-up event disastrous is too strong, but not much went right. Which turned out good in that we seemed to get most of the bad joo-joo out before the real event over the weekend. It was a mass start with mixed fleets so staying away from the bigger boats was a late-realized key. Midway through the day we discovered we had rigged the spin halyard inside the forestay essentially choking down the chute about three feet below its normal hoist point, not fast. No one pointed it out to us either. Imagine that. The last bit probably contributed to the panel-wide rip in the chute we discovered midway through the day. This led to us not flying the spinnaker the last race for sail preservation. Wouldn’t you know it, we were the first boat around the windward mark in the most wind of the day and woefully watched half the fleet plane past us for the downwind leg.
Thankfully, better was in store for us, and we were able to have Winnard repair the sail overnight. Definitely nice to have a sailmaker in the fleet. Besides, the weather was perfect, 75ish, not a cloud in the sky, pleasant breeze of 6 to 12, and tight, competitive racing. We were ready to go the next day for the main event.
Saturday and Sunday came and presented us with the same perfect weather, only slightly warmer, and with equally tight racing. It was still mixed-fleet racing with no separate starts or scoring for the one-design participants among the big boats. But at least there were 14 Vipers there, the largest single contingent of any on the big boat course. We performed markedly better with a best finish in class of a 2nd with a couple of 3rds and I think a 5th and then like two 7rds and an 8th leaving us at the end 6th in the Viper fleet, 2nd of the boats from Puget Sound with Chris Winnard handily winning the event. I had really been hoping to be in the top five, but we got darn close and were competitive and all had a great time.
All of us having jobs to get back to, as soon as we hit the docks, it was express boat derigging time and we got road ready in about an hour, in time to drop Geoff off at the airport and beat it out of Southern California before a significant heat wave. Though a bit worn from three plus days of sailing, the coddling cockpit of AJ’s Tribecca convinced us we could make it straight through again, which we did, arriving to the moist embrace of the Northwest the next day. Didn’t lose anything on the way back up by the way.
And what do I see back in Olympia? A newly-arrived used Viper just acquired by Kyle Reese, owner of the Olson 25 Showtime. Good times. One-design Viper sailing on Puget Sound is on its way!
Rafe Beswick, Dragonfly