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FEATURED REGATTAS: May 7, 2008
Scheidt and Prada Pour It On!
By Lynn Fitzpatrick

Hold on cowboys! If you can stay on your mount for an Olympic course and lots of black whammies you are better off than one third of the fleet during the fourth race of the 2008 Star World Championships. Brazilians Robert Scheidt and Bruno Prada, who stunned everyone with their heavy air speed during the windiest day of the BACARDI Cup, turned on their jets after missing a 15 degree shift at the top of the first leg and rounding the weather mark in 13th. One of their secrets to success was having their mast back on the run and retracting their spinnaker pole before a monster of a puff took out the likes of Peter Bromby and Lee White and Luca Modena and Sergio Lambertenghi. Although the race started in 12-13 knots with puffs up to 17 knots, the whammy that took out Star veterans was up over 27 knots. Scheidt summed up the race for all of those who made it around the course, "EXHAUSTING!"

It was truly and expensive day for everybody. Sails flogged for quite a while as the RC reset the line and sent the 2008 Star World Championship fleet off on the ride of their lives. With the wind out of the NE, the air temperature was a brisk 60 degrees, the Star fleet had flat seas leaving the harbor, but by the time it neared Stiltsville the wind and waves were enough to launch boats into the air.

Some boats elected not to start and many of those who ended up with twisted rigs, holes in boats, blistered hands and sore muscles (everywhere), wished that they hadn't. Wing marks and bottom marks were absolute spectacles. The leaders were lucky because they were in a spaced far enough apart from one another that they could leave each other room as one after the other tried a gybe. Many boom tips hit the water and some of the boats rounded up. The first rig came down at the first bottom mark. 2006 Etchells World Champion turned Star sailor this year, Jud Smith and Terry Yuill's (USA) rig collapsed during a puff that hit during their approach to the bottom mark. Kostya Datsenko and Olexandr Yevseyenko (UKR) had theirs come crashing down at about the same time.

It looked as if Mateusz Kusnierewicz and Dominik Zycki (POL) were going to get their third bullet of the regatta, because they led around each mark of the course. However, it was not to be. Robert Scheidt and Bruno Prada clawed their way back from 13th at the first weather mark to challenge Kusnierwicz/Zycki on the top of the final beat by going left along with Xavier Rohart and Pascal Rambeau (FRA). Scheidt/Prada got the gun. Kusnierewicz/Zycki and Hamish Pepper and Carl Williams (NZL) had a photo finish that went to Pepper/Williams. (The real photo, however, was of Kusnierewicz falling out of the boat on the final tack to the finish). Rohart/Rambeau were fourth and many of the next several boats to cross the finish line have either qualified for the Olympics or are among the top teams trying to qualify through this championship. John Dane III and Austin Sperry (USA) were the top North Americans.

Broken forestays took out the likes of past Olympic gold medalists Mark Reynolds and Hal Haenel (USA). A broken cap stay took out Olympians Iain Percy and Andrew Simpson (GBR). A broken mast probably broke four-time Olympian Peter Bromby and crew Lee White's (BER) heart as their bid for the 2008 Games looks doomed. Hans Spitzauer and Christian Nehammer (AUS) were T-boned.

Everyone held on for dear life throughout the day. Sergio Lambertehghi (ITA) said, as he was being towed in under a tangled mess of shrouds and a top section with the top panel of their sail flogging upside down, "I told Luca (Modena) to watch out because a big gust was coming down on us along with Peter Bromby's mast. It was too late. We couldn't pull enough on to keep our mast from inverting."

Everyone has at least 'one deer in the headlamps' story to tell from today's fourth race of the 2008 Star World Championships hosted by Coral Reef Yacht Club. Comparing tales will help them to pass the time in the boatyard while they re-rig and make sure that everything will withstand the final two races of the series.

It looks more and more as if the following countries will have Olympians rather than Olympic hopefuls: Japan, Switzerland and Austria. Scores are sure to change following the resolution of today's protests and after a race is discarded later in the series. For more information on the final four to make the cut for the Olympics, please see the Olympic Profiles section of www.WorldRegattas.com.

One of only thee teams with three out of four finishes in the top ten, Diego Negri and Luigi Viale (ITA) are leading the regatta as we await the fifth race of the six-race series.