Spectacular Ullman Sails Long Beach Race Week

Ullman Sails Long Beach Race Week © Long Beach Yacht Club

The 19th edition of Long Beach Race Week concluded on Sunday with a full complement of races sailed in eleven divisions, including six one-design classes and five PHRF fleets.

Throughout the three solid days of racing conditions, the breeze rarely dropped below 14 knots and settled in the 16-18 knot range for the most part, blue skies prevailed, and temperatures were in the 80s...YES, t-shirt, shades, and shorts racing!

J/70 Class

In the J/70 class, Ryan Eastwood's CAKE squeaked in to take first in class with fourteen points by posting a 1-4 on the last day. Meanwhile, Ryan Cox's DJ blew it on the last day with a 6-2 and finished second with 15 pts! In third place was Mexican Eduardo Saenz on NIMBUS with twenty points.

J/109 Class

John Arens, racing on his San Francisco-based J/109 REVERIE, took first in class finishing with thirteen points, three points ahead of second place BLUE CRUSH skippered by Bob Little. Jeff Shew, who won in class in 2023, took third on FUZZY LOGIC with 16.1 points.

"It felt great today to come out in the first race with a bullet. It took a lot of pressure off and it just established that we could hang with this group!" Arens laughed. "The racing was extremely competitive; all the boats were capable of winning any particular race - BLUE CRUSH and FUZZY LOGIC both had very strong reputations coming into this having previously won the class here so we are just blown away that we were able to come down here and win. The environment here is just amazing; we're sailing in the sun, it's warm, we had a San Francisco breeze with So Cal weather; the race courses were great, the race committee did a great job, and was always on point. Our strength was being able to go to weather well and today we were just fast and high. We'd love to come back - my crew want to keep a boat down here!"

J/111 Class

Winning the J/111 class was John Staff's OBSIDIAN team (Bruce Cooper, Paul Chyz, Brendan Watson, Michelle Shanks, Alex Demmler) from California Yacht Club. They were closely followed in second place by John Spadaro's MADMEN from Hawaii Yacht Club and third position went to Dan McGanty's J-BOSS for California YC.

PHRF B Fleet

It was a clean sweep of the podium for this fleet by three J/teams. Winning was John Snook's J/120 JIM with 8 pts, followed by Heinz Butner's J/112E RAPTOR II in second, and Robert Dekker's J/105 CUCHULAINN in third place.

PHRF A Offshore

Taking the silver medal in this fleet of "hot rod" offshore racers was Dan Murphy's J/125 JAVELIN from California Yacht Club.

PHRF B Offshore

After starting strongly with a 2-2, the last day proved to be a bummer for Mark Stratton's J/122 CHEEKY. By finishing 4th, they lost an easy silver medal based on a tiebreaker on 8 pts each with another boat, settling instead for the bronze medal.

PHRF C Offshore

J/Teams nearly led a sweep of this fleet. Winning was Scott McDaniel's J/105 OFF THE PORCH, followed by Nick Jones's J/99 CIRRUS in third place, and Chris Raab & Dale Williams on the J/105 SWORDFISH in fourth place.

Bruce Cooper, the owner of Ullman Sails Newport Beach and title sponsor, commented, "The racing was again super tight and super exciting with the big wind change in race 1 today, the westerly built and came in beautifully, which we were expecting. A big shout-out to the race committee and all of the volunteers and sponsors who make this a truly world-class regatta. We look forward to seeing everyone next year!"

More information at www.lbrw.org