Ullman Sails Long Beach Race Week and the Ullman Inshore Series wrapped up Sunday afternoon with the usual pool party and awards presentation at LBYC. Over 140 boats competed and after three days of racing in tough conditions I was spent.
I was lucky enough to race on a Viper 640 with Tim Carter, who is the West Cost Rep, and his friend Bryan Milne from Canada. Ullman Sails is working hard to get into the class and we were testing out a brand new set of sails. The Viper is such a fun boat and the group of people campaigning them make the class even more desirable. Just remember that you do not take out all the keel bolts when raising the keel or you will spend your
time after the regatta figuring out how to raise it out of the mud. If you need some advice on this please ask the owners of the newest Viper as they have now had some experience with this.
The regatta was sailed in extremely tough conditions and the usual Long Beach theory of going right did not pay off on Friday. We had good starts, played the shifts well and had fantastic boat speed. Even though we had never sailed together we clicked right away and grabbed two bullets on day 1. The second and third day proved much tougher and all the boats were improving with every race. We managed to still have a lead on Saturday but the spread from first to fourth was only 3 points, super tight racing. Sunday was a different story for us. We missed some shifts and could not change gears as well as the other boats. It came down to the final race as we were tied on points with Robert Miller from El Paso, the only boat with a gun rack on it. They managed to get a better start and sailed in clear air to left side of the course and were first around the weather mark. Unfortunately for us we could not fight back and they deservedly won the race and consequently the regatta.
Gary Mozer on his J105 Current Obsession 2 claimed top spot in an impressive fashion while using a full Ullman Sails inventory.
The 11 boat Far 40 class was very tight with a deadlock between the top two boats, David Ross's Piranha and Jeff Janov's Dark Star. In the end Dark Star, with tactician Dave Ullman. sailed the more consistent regatta and ran out winners with a ten point lead over the second place Piranha.
The fast 50 fleet was impressive and also saw some sparks. Ed Feo's Locomotion got involved in a collision at a leeward mark rounding with the 1D48. Locomotion took the 40% penalty and managed to recover with a strong second day to win the fleet. Locomotion uses a full Ullman inventory.
LBRW was also the conclusion of the Ullman Inshore Championships. Wasabi, Entropy and Lucky were the winners of their respective classes. Each owner received some beautiful artwork of the three boats that won the previous year. There is even an Anarchy logo painted into the scene!
Sunday's pool party and trophy presentation was epic and the pool was used to give some of the winners a splash. I think I saw someone go in every day and thankfully this year I avoided it. No need to buy a new cell phone again.
Check out the full list of results http://www.lbrw.org/
