The little sailboats that could take top slots at Collier Regatta

by Jason Dietrich

Nearly three dozen crews participated in the the biggest ever Ninth Annual Tom Collier Memorial Regatta at King Harbor. The weather cooperated beautifully last Saturday, favoring with clear skies, small swells and steady eight to 10-knot winds favoring the smaller boats.

The Tom Collier Memorial Regatta is named in memory of Tom Collier, a King Harbor Yacht Club sailor who died of cancer. Collier, who was 30 years old at the time of his death, was an avid boater and participated in sailboat races up and down the California coast. Proceeds from the race have been going to Cedars Sinai for the nine years boaters have been lining up in his memory.

In the race, skippers pilot their craft around a series of buoys in a 12-mile course roughly the same shape as a sailboat. Inverted start races like Tom Collier rate sailing vessels according to their speed. The slowest boats, tiny lightnings and Cal 20's, which measure about 20 feet and have a removable centerboard instead of a keel, are allowed to start first. Bigger, heavier, quicker sailboats follow them and speedy multi-hulled trimarans and catamarans usually start last. With their handicaps, all the boats should finish at the same time under model conditions.

"Just as every golfer has a handicap, so does every sailboat," said regatta organizer Jeanne Reinhardt.

But determining the proper order to start the boats in is an art requiring an intimate knowledge of higher mathematics and different classes of boats, especially since single-hulled and multi-hulled boats are rated on different scales. Race officials did their best to keep it even, spreading out the first and last boats by over an hour.

At the finish line, the keel-board boats and multi-hulls were able to beat out the faster large sailboat with the help of handicaps, steady wind and the absence of some of the stiffer competition. The "Grand Illusion," a world-class 70-foot Santa Cruz racing yacht that has dominated the race in recent years, was racing elsewhere last Saturday.

"It's been a long time since a small boat has placed well up in the pack in the first five finishers," said Brin Owen, a race official.

Even with their handicaps, smaller boats are often at a disadvantage in the Tom Collier. Often at this time of the year, the bay breezes pick up in the afternoon. The smaller boats start as early as 12:30 p.m. don't get the full effect of those winds through the whole race. By the time the larger, faster boats start, the wind has often picked up a little giving them an advantage not accounted for in the handicapping.

"It's tough for them to protect their early start and keep their lead through the race. This time there was a steady win and the little guys were able to hold on and protect their position," Owen said.

Scott Finkboner from Mission Bay Yacht Club in San Diego had the first boat to cross the finish line and had the best time at 2:29.12 p.m. Saturday turned out to be Finkboner's lucky day. He also won the grand prize in the raffle drawing -- four days in Manzanillo, Mexico. Finkboner's 18-foot lightning finished half a minute ahead of King Harbor Yacht Club's Karl Wagner in his multi-hulled, 19-foot Hobie, which crossed the line at 2:29.44 p.m. Another Lightning, captained by Jim Sears out of the Rouge Yacht Club took third place with a time of 2:29.59 p.m. Fourth place was taken by Danny Wassenaar's 19-foot catamaran which finished at 2:30.35 p.m. and Bob White from King Harbor took fifth at 2:31.06 p.m.

But the most impressive finish was by last year's winner, Brandon Wallace, from Mission Bay Yacht Club. Sailing a high-speed catamaran, he came in a sixth with a time of 2:31.45. His craft was the last to start, taking off 61 minutes after the first boats. Wallace finished the race in less than half the time of some of the slower craft with big handicaps.

"He passed everybody. It looked like he was going about three times as fast as the other boats," said race organizer Mark Folkman.

From the judge's boat, it looked like Wallace was about to pull a come-from-way-behind victory.

"When those boats start, they go so fast it's amazing. But something happened between the last mark and the finish to slow him down. Other wise he would have won," said Reinhardt.

Of the 35 boats that set out, only 33 finished. One of the smallest boats, a 14-foot Lido ended up capsizing.

"It was okay, they got it back upright. No harm, no foul. They had a bit of bailing to do," said Owen. ER