Chicago Yacht Club Verve Cup - 2003

Fast, Friendly, Fair and Fun…
By: Pete Balkus #155 Kismet

A fleet of six Ultimate 20s assembled for the 2003 Chicago Yacht Club One Design Verve Cup last weekend. In addition, two U20 owners flew in to crew, giving us participants from North Carolina, Massachusetts, New York, Ohio, Michigan, and Illinois.

The Chicago Yacht Club provided an excellent venue for the regatta with great race management, good weather and gracious hospitality. Launching and setup at the Chicago Yacht Club was relatively easy with ample parking, room for trailers, 3 launching cranes, and dock space.

Once again the Ultimate 20 fleet proved to be Fast, Friendly, Fair and Fun… Pre-Race festivities for the Verve Cup begin with an Ultimate-20 dinner at a great Mexican restaurant in Chicago. Besides providing an opportunity to renew old friendships and make new ones, the food was excellent, the salsa was hot and for some unknown reason pitchers of margaritas kept appearing on the table? Also, every time you looked around the mariachi band got bigger. Thanks Jan & Charley for a great evening!

Demonstrating that U20 skippers are indeed friendly and fair, when Gregg (Goombay Smash #149) learned that Loren Becker flew out from New York to crew for a U20 that was not able to come at the last moment, Gregg offered Loren a ride by adding a forth crew member to his boat. An outstanding act of kindness that deserves recognition. Loren “jumped ship” on Sunday to crew on Kindred Spirit when Charley came up short handed for the last two races. Pete Balkus, flew in from Boston to crew with Steve Bertelli, a new U20 skipper from Springfield.

Saturday kicked off with a breakfast hosted by the Chicago Yacht Club at 7am, followed by a skippers meeting at 8am. The forecast for Saturday was ~15-20 from the NE. High winds on Friday resulted in 2 to 4 foot residual waves and random chop on the water. This presented a challenging set of conditions as the boats beat upwind on a ~1.2 mile W/L course (twice around) approximately 2 miles offshore. Going downwind was quite a thrill as well, especially when one was able to successfully surf the 4 foot waves for a good gain.

Richard Hunt (#16) consistently demonstrated his ability to out perform the fleet in these challenging conditions with (3) first place finishes by a substantial margin. (Richard, any chance we can get you to write up a few of your tips and techniques to share with the rest of us?)

Another highlight from Saturdays racing was at the start of the second race when Steve Bertelli, new U20 owner of #183, picked up on a wind shift during the starting sequence and capitalized on it by using a Port tack start at the pin to successfully crossed the fleet with much amazement!

Conditions on the water Sunday were a bit more docile with a forecast of 5-10 from N to NW. The first race began in good breeze with the fleet fairly close together heading for the windward mark ~1.2 miles away. About the time the fleet reached the windward mark, the wind dropped to ~5 which presented a different set of challenges from the previous day. The U20s being faster that the Shields fleet ahead of us had to maneuver around the Shields to stay in clear air. The wind continued to drop on the second beat to weather with a shortened course requiring focus to keep the boat moving as fast as possible.

Upon completion of the first race at ~13:00 due to even lighter winds, we thought the Race Committee would call it a day. Instead they proceeded to set a mark at ~0.5 miles on a “windward fetch” since conditions were very light at this point. A few boats had quite a challenge making it to the windward mark and on the downwind run constant focus and coordination between skipper and trimmer were required to keep the chute filled. Next the race committee determined that a “sea breeze” was in the process of forming, so the course was reset for the second leg with a 90 offset from the first leg which provided much better pressure as the sea breeze built. Racing finished with boats reaching the dock ~15:00 for pack up and the long rides home. Thanks again Charley for the effort you put in to organize and coordinate things for this event – well done.

Congratulations to Richard Hunt for taking first overall with 5 straight first-to-finish; to Don Corey and Gregg Henning for taking second and third respectively.

U20 Verve Cup Regatta results are as follows: