Latest Viper 640 Class News

Eight Bells: Geoff Ewenson

It is with great sadness that we learned that we lost our friend Geoff Ewenson to a massive heart attack yesterday morning, October 14 at the very young age of 50. Since joining the Viper Class 5+ years ago, Geoff and his wife Mary have been two of the sparkplugs that have helped the Viper […]

Ghost Panda

American Yacht Club’s High Performance Regatta

October 10-11, 2020 2020 has been a challenging year for the NYC tristate area, for our country, and for the many people and families that have been personally affected by the pandemic. Viper sailing has been collateral damage to some extent compared to our usual turnouts with some folks away and others unwilling to sail […]

Great Lakes 2020 COVID Cup Regatta

October 3-4, 2020 2020 has been a tough year for everyone. Viperers, with travel limited and restrictions on social contacts outside the household, have missed what was supposed to be an event-packed season of one-design racing culminating in the North Americans on Long Island Sound. As of mid-September, there had been no one-design racing on […]

Viper 640 Snake Bytes – September 1, 2020

Time to get back to the gym! Read on…    Snake Bytes September 1, 2020 IN TODAY’S SNAKE BYTES:  Words from a Prez 2020 Mega Viper Regatta Week Viper Calendar Models Class Rules Update – IMPORTANT Regatta Reports Travis’ Troubled Thailand Travels (don’t you just love alliteration?) WORDS FROM A PREZ   The summer of […]

Team “Big Rooster” Wins 2020 Annapolis NOOD

Sailing in Annapolis in August is always challenging. Plug in the passing of a tropical depression and the current pandemic, and the conditions are properly difficult. The one out-of-town team that came for the Annapolis NOOD was Tyler and Jane Moore’s “Big Rooster” with Hampton native turned Annapolitan Austin Powers and his girlfriend Kayla Harper. […]

Marblehead Vipers keeping it fresh…

With COVID19 putting a hurt on the normal sailing season, the Marblehead Viper Fleet has been starting to return to a sense of normalcy.  Since mid-June, the 6 (out of 10) local boats who felt safe to do so, have been out sailing with the Marblehead Racing Association.  The fleet has had some great days […]

Southern Yacht Club Wins 2020 GYA Junior Lipton Challenge

Gulfport Yacht Club, August 1-2, 2020 This year’s Junior Lipton Challenge was the 75th running of this historic regatta, one of the crown jewels of the Gulf Yachting Association’s Capdevielle interclub championship series. Hosted by the Gulfport (MS) Yacht Club with their Sailing Director and Viper sailor Sam Vasquez as Event Chair, the regatta reached […]

Matt Kaplan and Harry Koeppel win Viper 640 2020 Atlantic Coast Championship – David Owen wins Larchmont Race Week

Sailed over the first weekend of Larchmont Race Week, July 11-12, nine Viper crews contended with face masks, social distancing, and light, fickle Long Island Sound winds. In the end, however, it was the host Club’s Matt Kaplan and Harry Koeppel sitting atop the leader board and taking the win with a scoreline of 3-1-2-2. […]

Viper 640 North American Trophy

Announcing 2021 and 2022 World and North American Championships

The LiveTiles North American Championship, scheduled for September 30 ,2020 at Noroton Yacht Club in Darien, CT, has been cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. “We knew that we could not expect teams from all over North America to make advance plans due to Covid-19 to travel to Noroton in September,” explained Steve Chapman, North […]

Have been meaning to write this since after the February Sarasota event, but it seems like we need some content and as weather improves and people open up, maybe now is a good time to think about your boathandling and visualize some maneuvers. Generally there are four tips of spinnaker douses in Vipers: 1. Left hand turn (i.e., port rounding), coming in on port gybe = windward douse 2. Left hand turn, coming in on starboard gybe = gybe drop, aka "a Mexican" or a "Kiwi" (not sure on the origin of the Kiwi phrase - Mexican allegedly goes back to the 1992 America's Cup when you did this takedown when the boat was pointed toward Mexico off Point Loma, and I sincerely hope for no other reason) 3. Right hand turn (i.e., starboard rounding, when there are leeward gate marks), coming in on starboard = leeward douse 4. Right hand turn, coming in on port = "Canadian" douse (i.e., a reverse Mexican. Duly noted that this is an Amero-centric version of the universe, maybe the Aussies could call it a Singapore douse?) - i.e., a weather douse with a gybe mid-weather douse. You'd think that based on which gate you're rounding and the gybe you're coming in on would dictate the type of douse you're going to do. We typically talk about this once we're approaching 20 lengths or so from the mark what we're likely to do, bearing in mind that a last minute adjustment may be required, which is easy to do in a Viper thanks to the kite retrieval system allowing for maximum flexibility. However, we've learned in windy conditions, that when you're planning to make a left hand turn and you're coming in on starboard, a Gybe Douse just doesn't work. Yes, you need to douse. Yes, you need to gybe. But the douse of choice cannot be a gybe douse - it must be a leeward douse. We've learned this the hard way too many times and it took 10 years of Viper sailing to finally acknowledge this point on my end. Why a leeward douse? Think about your goals when rounding a leeward mark: 1. Get the kite down prior to turning upwind without putting the kite in the water; and 2. Round the mark tightly so that you can exit on a high lane to be able to have clear air post rounding and to prevent anyone behind you from being able to live in a higher lane than you and prevent you from tacking. Douses take time, and that time varies by experience level, strength of middle crew and how smooth your retrieval system runs. But from the time you start a douse (i.e., pre gybe on starboard) to when the kite is fully in the boat and all crew are ready to hike and trim in sails (i.e., when you are on port and you want your bow to be turning around the mark), maybe this takes 5 seconds from start to finish with an experienced team. I'm sure there is some joker out there who insists they've done it faster, and do that person, I would like to pull out a stopwatch and see. Just call it 5 seconds though, and we've all seen douses that have taken longer due to a snarl in the halyard or some other snafu. If you don't believe me, go check out some videos on YouTube from 2019 Worlds of douse excerpts and watch how many seconds elapse on the YouTube clock timer - I stand by 5 seconds, esp. in breeze. Anyhow, while the time for a douse may not vary much, the distance a boat travels varies by boatspeed, and in 15+ kts (my definition of heavy air in a Viper, at least in WLIS - I'm sure the SoCal and Perth Viperers are rolling their eyes), you're eating up the distance. At 12 knots of boat speed, which is about what you'll be doing in 15+ knots of wind if you've called a reasonable layline, you're traveling roughly 21 feet per second. If 10 knots of boatspeed, 17 feet per second, and if hauling the mail at 13.5 knots coming in hot, 23 feet per second - so if it will take you 5 seconds to do a douse and a gybe and be in a position to be going upwind, you're starting that douse 5 boatlengths away from the mark. And at 5 boatlengths away, you're simply not in a position to gybe yet - the gybe happens in the middle of the douse typically. So it's a leeward douse in those conditions since you're starting the douse well in advance of gybing. When do you the math, it makes sense, but it's helpful to make the mental switch and get over the fact that it simply won't be a gybe douse - it will be a leeward douse, then a gybe which will allow you to get the kite down in the time period you're expecting to be able to then complete a good gybe and be able to be in position to trim sails and round the leeward mark tightly. Doing it any other way will almost certainly result you rounding the mark wide or worse, having the kite blow around the headstay mid gybe as you realize everything is happening faster than planned. So in summary, in heavy air in a Viper, there is no such thing as a gybe drop. It's a leeward drop, then a gybe. Flame away.

No such thing as a heavy weather gybe drop…

Or so believes Peter Beardsley. But you know, having been there and having tried to do that, he’s right. Click HERE and read his whole story in the Viper Forum. Thanks, Peter. Peter wrote: Have been meaning to write this since after the February Sarasota event, but it seems like we need some content and […]