Viper 640 Class News – April 25, 2016
WORDS FROM THE PREZ
Viper Road Trip Anyone? Join me!
It’s mid-April and all across the US and Europe, Viper fleets are starting to get their warm-weather schedules buttoned up. Yes, it’s the opposite for our brethren Down Under, but they’ve had six months of warmth that most in our colder climes have envied.
In all the major Viper hubs (northeast, mid-Atlantic, Great Lakes/eastern Canada, Gulf Coast, Pacific Northwest, and both northern and southern California) there are scores of Viper regattas on the calendar. Now, part of the beauty of the Viper is that it is easy to rig/derig and a snap to travel with. That being said, look at our Events pages on the Viper website (HERE) and pick out three or four regattas that ARE NOT right in your own backyard, and make plans to sail in some of them. There is contact information for all regattas on the site and this is a great way for Viper sailors to renew old friendships and make new ones.
So you don’t want to take your boat on the road; well here’s an alternative that’s pretty attractive. The Gulf Yachting Association is holding a four-regatta sportboat series to coincide with some of their major Capdevielle regattas. Many of the GYA clubs and individual members are now Viper owners and are longing for someone with Viper experience to come and sail with them in one or all of these open regattas. Interested? Contact Class Administrator Buttons Padin (epadin@padesta.com) and he’ll hook you up with a GYA ride. I know he and Dan Tucker will be down there as part of the Opening Regatta in May. Maybe you should join them.
Have a great summer Viper season and hone your sailing chops and let’s all take that big trailer ride across the Atlantic to our first International Championship in Bermuda, November 16-19.
GYA Viper/Sportboat Championship and Interclub Series
May 20-22 – GYA Opening Regatta, Fairhope Yacht Club
July 9-10 – Meigs Regatta, Fort Walton Yacht Club
July 30-31 – Weatherly Regatta, Gulfport Yacht Club
Dec. 3-4 – Sugar Bowl Race of Champions, Southern Yacht Club
Sail fast,
Jimbo
Dr. Jim Sears
Viper 640 Class Association President
HAVE YOU PAID YOUR 2016 VIPER 640 CLASS ASSOCIATION DUES????
If you’re racing in Viper regattas and haven’t paid your 2016 dues yet, you’ve not playing by the book. Your Class Dues are due at the beginning of the year and they keep the Class operations going. Some of you, when paying your 2015 dues, opted for auto renewing your dues…which was great in concept and greatly appreciated…but PayPal auto renews them on the anniversary of your payment–not the beginning of the calendar year. We are in the process of correcting that. In the meantime, if you have NOT paid your 2016 dues, please do so today.
Simply pull out your credit card, take a deep breath, and click HERE.
REGATTA RECAP
LAWRENCE CRISPIN SWEEPS MIAMI VIPER REGATTAS
March 14, 2016 – EFG Viper Pan-Am Trophy
Congratulations to Lawrence Crispin, Hector Cisneros, and Luka Crispin for turning in a stunning sailing performance in Miami. After convincingly winning the EFG Winter Cup (March 6-7), this trio from the UK’s Stone Sailing Club carried their momentum into Bacardi Miami Sailing Week. They dominated the 28-boat fleet with an impressive score line of 1-8-1-3-2-2-3-5 over the eight races sailed for a final score of 17 points. This put Crispin seven points ahead of Tyler Moore sailing with his wife Jane and Tim and Karen Fallon who won four races-including the last three-and finished in second. Read More
GHOST PANDA WINS 2016 VIPER 640 ATLANTIC COAST CHAMPIONSHIP AT CHARLESTON RACE WEEK
Team Ghost Panda, with Peter Beardsley, his wife Rachel, Jay Rhame, and his fiancée Rachel Daugherty, handily won the 2016 Viper 640 Atlantic Coast Championship. The Championship was sailed as part of the Sperry Charleston Race Week from April 15-17. This is the first Atlantic Coast Championship win for the crew, which sails regularly out of the Larchmont (NY) Yacht Club.
Ghost Panda posted a dominating scoreline, with all firsts and seconds through the first two days. Keeping the Panda crew on its toes was Zeke Horowitz, also from Larchmont Yacht Club and the College of Charleston Yacht Club with Brendan Healy, Katie Gluskin, and Seppie McAdams as crew. Horowitz’s four bullets kept him in the hunt, but a couple of deeper results meant that Ghost Panda only needed to finish within four points of Horowitz in Race 9 on Sunday to avoid needing to sail the final race of the 10-race series. In third was Michelle Lee’s Coming in Hot with College of Charleston coach and Laser ace Mitch Hall at the helm and John Colarusso and Alexis Scott joining Michelle on the rail. Read More
DUSTIN JOHNSON, KENT MORROW, AND TREVOR DiMARCO WIN TULIP REGATTA
April 2-3, 2016 – The Northwest Viper Fleet converged on Anacortes, Washington for the Tulip Regatta, a contest far more spirited than the name implies. In addition to fervent competition between Vipers, Saturday’s racing saw a battle between a prevailing southeasterly breeze and a punchy thermal from the west. Sunday saw sunny skies and morning zephyrs from all around the compass eventually submit to a relatively stable northeasterly. Above average race management allowed the Vipers to duke out seven hard fought races in winds that ranged from four to fifteen knots. Read More
ALEX STEELE WINS 2016 HELLY HANSEN SAN DIEGO NOOD REGATTA
March 18-20, 2016
Timbo Carter: “So, Steve. We need crew for San Diego NOODs. Know anyone?”
Steve Bloemeke: “Yep. Got the perfect person in mind. Let me reach out to her husband, Craig Leweck and get her mobile number. They live down there and it will be great if she can make it.”
And so it went. Lisa Leweck, who Steve has known since, well, many decades having grown up racing in the infamous Southern California Naples Sabot fleet (which has spawn numerous Olympic and World Class Sailors since the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s). Craig and Lisa have won Snipe Nationals and have dominated in every class they have set their minds to; however, Lisa has been on a 4-year sabbatical from sailing and, while she wanted to sail with us, she was concerned she would hold us back from being too rusty. With Tim’s and Steve’s Viper experience and background, it would be a snap breaking her in, and given the simplicity of the Viper, we assured her that we would have fun and hopefully do well in the regatta. (The spinnaker thing was a bit of novelty though!) Read More
UPCOMING REGATTAS
May 14-15 – Santa Barbara Skiff Festival – Santa Barbara Yacht Club, Santa Barbara, CA, USA – Registration and information HERE.
May 14-15 – Anacortes Regatta and Demo Day – Anacortes Yacht Club, Anacortes, OR, USA – NoR and information HERE. Registration on-site Saturday morning.
May 21-22 – 2016 Gulf Coast Championship Regatta – Part of the GYA Opening Regatta – Fairhope Yacht Club, Fairhope, AL, USA – Registration and information HERE.
May 28-30 – International Paints Poole Regatta – Poole Yacht Club, Poole, Dorset, UK – Registration and information HERE.
May 28-29 – Larchmont Yacht Club Memorial Day Regatta – Larchmont Yacht Club, Larchmont, NY, USA – Registration and information HERE.
For information on regattas during June and beyond, click HERE.
TIPS FROM THE MIDDLE OF THE BOAT – Recovering from a knock-down
One of the best parts of the Viper 640 Class Association is how its members freely share tuning
and boat handling tips with each other. Here’s some input from Luke Lawrence. BTW, he’s a pretty credible source having been the middle person for Brad Boston’s winning 2015 NA’s campaign with Curtis Florence, and sailed for years with Wendy and Phil Lotz in their Viper Arethusa, winning all manner of prizes.
The question posed to Luke regarded how he manages to recover from a knock-down really, really quickly, whereas many others find getting a capsized Viper back on its bottom challenging. Here’s Luke’s Tip:
Once flipped and everyone is on the high side. (Advanced)
1. Bow guy trims the jib to windward about 80% of the way.
2. Middle guy grabs lazy spinnaker sheet (under butt by now as he sits on the windward rail) and pulls it so it rides a bit up headstay. The lazy spin sheet pulls the spinnaker from under the jib, around the headstay, until clew is halfway to the side shrouds from head stay on the high side of the boat. (This is a bit counter intuitive but it works. Note: the spinnaker halyard is NOT released.) At this point the boat is heeled 80-90 degrees for 5-10 seconds after the wipe out.
3. Bow person jumps down from the rail onto the boom or mast (gently) and grabs the tack line, sets his/her feet on the hull somewhere, hangs onto the boat, and blows the tack. (Do not blow tack standing on the mast or boom.)
4. Once the tack is blown, the middle guy MUST pull the leach of the kite further around the headstay toward themselves from the sitting/hiking position. This will “reverse the flow on the kite” and BAM! The boat immediately pops up and, because the jib is backed, turns 90% downwind from the wipeout position.
5. Kite sheet stays pegged in on what was the old windward side (aka the high side when capsized) and trimmed a bit from initial half-way mark.
6. As the boat stands up, the bow person pulls the tack back out.
7. Once the boat is stable, either fill the kite and gybe the main, or do a simple skiff gybe of the kite, blowing it back to its original side, and carry on.
Notes:
In the breeze, a very small direction change with the tiller and a full commitment of weight to either side on behalf of the crew is the key the getting going again! Practice makes perfect!
Also, you can practice the escape maneuver simply by sailing downwind without the kite being filled and practice heading up to fill, and the fill the kite and throw the main across.
With Phil and Wendy Lotz, we had this move down to about 12-14 seconds. If you have a great bow dude it should be under 10.
Best,
Luke
Editor’s note: not everyone is fortunate enough to have a super strong middle person and, for those boats, the alternative is still to trim the jib to windward but to have the bow person lower the spinnaker halyard about 10 feet and recleat it. The Viper should then self right itself…perhaps not in 15 seconds, however.
