Story By Rich Roberts 

While a bunch of other Farr 40s were settling the class’s world championship at Porto Cervo, Sardinia last weekend, the West Coast fleet was having a spirited frolic of its own where Acura presents Ullman Sails Long Beach Race Week.

“We would have loved to been at the Worlds,” David Voss said, “but we had great competition here with a lot of people of that caliber.”

Voss sailed Piranha, from California Yacht Club, to first place in what was reckoned to be the most competitive one-design class to win Boat of the Week honors, and he and his crew did so in a full range of winds from 8 to 20 knots through seven races in three days.

“The conditions were fabulous,” Voss said. “It was the first regatta where I’ve crossed the finish line when we were winning but I was disappointed that it was over. We were having so much fun in that last race in particular that I was sorry to see it end.”

Other special awards:

Mark Surber of Coronado YC won PHRF Boat of the Week honors by sailing Derivative, a J/125, to first place in PHRF-1;

Alamitos Bay YC, co-organizer of the event with Long Beach YC, won the Yacht Club Challenge with a three-boat entry of skipper Chuck Clay’s chartered Catalina 37 and Bruce Golison’s borrowed Etchells, Cahoots—both winners in their classes—and Nik Vale’s Demonic in the Open 5.70 class;

Art and Scott Melendres’ Cal 25, One Time, from Long Beach YC won the Kent/Golison Family Trophy for sailing with the most kinfolk on board: Art, son Scott, daughter Monica Oviedo and nephew Chris Lopez.  Voss said his victory was especially satisfying because of the quality of competition.

“There were people like Dave Ullman and Steve Beck on Temptress, Mark Gaudio doing tactics on Far Niente, Matt Reynolds on White Knight, and of course we had tactician Erik Shampain, who had just won the Coastal Cup [overall on the Hobie 33 Plant Shampain], the Detroit Nood on a Melges 24 and was Etchells world champion [on Bill Hardesty’s crew [in 2008].  

“Our mainsail trimmer was Eric Doyle, the key strategist for BMW Oracle in the last two America’s Cups. It’s worth mentioning that after the first five races there was no boat that had won more than one race.”

Voss is the ongoing executive director of the West Coast Farr 40 class, which he said “is not an inexpensive boat, but when everybody else is suffering declining participation our fleet is growing. We’ll now have 10 active boats in Southern California, and three years ago we had none.” 

The competition is keen but the attitude is amiable—even though Piranha had to recover from a 40% arbitration penalty on the first day. But there were no hard feelings between the Piranha and Skian Dhu teams, Voss said.

“We were having drinks with the tactician and crew a half-hour after we took the penalty,” he said, “and I was standing there with the owner and tactician planning on having the two crews get together for dinner [during the Big Boat Series] in San Francisco.” 

Voss also said he learned something new about sailing in Long Beach.

“We saw what [Skian Dhu] did to win the first race Sunday so we did it in the second race: start at the favored left end of the line, go up a couple of hundred yards and come across because there was more wind on the left side of the course. The traditional ‘go right in Long Beach’ in the big breeze did not work at all on Sunday. Since they filled in the Pier 400 and Pier J [to the west], the far right corner doesn’t have the same velocity. We won going left-center.” 

The regatta was the climactic event of the Ullman Sails Inshore Championship Series, following Ahmanson Cup at Newport Beach, Yachting Cup at San Diego and Cal Race Week at Marina del Rey.