- SoCal Kicks Off 2013 Season at SCYA Midwinters February 19, 2013
I trekked out to Long Beach for the second straight year for SCYA Midwinters. Does two years make a habit? Maybe, and as SCYA Midwinters shows, not all habits are bad. The forecast was “terrible”, so naturally that meant Santa Ana winds in the morning caused brief Race Committee panic, and a nervous Timbo wondering whether there’d be any sailing at all. I thought Southern California people were supposed to be relaxed? The seabreeze filled, though “only” to 10-12 knots in the afternoon. The sea lions were angry and the winds were shifty, and the temperature was “too warm” in the mid 70s. Did that stop anyone from serving hot chili after racing? No. Did we “only” manage four races? Yes. #CaliforniaSailingProblems.
The SCYA Midwinters is a funny event — despite the reputation of Southern California as a year-round sailing destination, ...
...read more - Better Know a Viperer: Tim Carter February 4, 2013
Can you tell that Viper season is nearly upon us? Hopefully the flurry of activity in the class forums and on the front page of the website in the past week has given some hint. The season always starts first in Arizona and Southern California, and you can’t talk about Viper sailing in those places without mentioning Class Treasurer Tony Chapman and Technical Committee member Tim Carter – both have been major influences on the west coast Viper scene, and Timbo’s efforts as a Viper sparkplug has resulted in a big surge in Viper activity in SoCal, along with his home club of Alamitos Bay YC in Long Beach, CA hosting the 2014 Viper North American Championship. To learn more about the man they call “Timbo,” step inside the latest edition of Better Know a Viperer… (above photo copyright Dennis ...
...read more - Windy City Vipering! February 1, 2013
The Great Lakes Viper fleet is growing — we know the “Great Lakes” is an obscenely large geographic region with sizable travel distances, but it’s also home to some of the best sailing venues in North America: Kingston, Detroit, Sarnia, and now, Chicago. Two Vipers entered The Windy City this winter: the legendary Viper 55 moved from North Carolina to Chicago Corinthian YC, to be driven by the enthusiastic Nick Kofski, and brand new Viper 194 was acquired by former Goose Island Beer Co. chief operating officer Tony Bowker — we love all of our Viperers, but when they have excellent beverage connections, it’s possible we love some very slightly more than others. Needless to say we are really thrilled to have both of these guys in the class (especially Tony and Goose Island).
In an effort to grow the fledgling ...
...read more - Happy Birthday, Arizona (Yacht Club) February 1, 2013
The Arizona Yacht Club Birthday Regatta held January 18 – 20 saw 10 Vipers on the line with more than half of the boats from out of state. The road warrior award clearly went to Rafe Beswick, who towed his boat more than 1500 miles from Olympia, Washington to get away from the gloomy weather of the northwest and enjoy the sunny and clear Arizona weather.
Each day there was good breeze in the morning from the north, which would settle down as the day progressed. An early start of 9am on Sunday saw the best races on the final day, with the wind in the high teens for the initial races.
Dr. Jimbo Sears started of the 2013 West Coast Circuit in the same manner he finished in 2012, holding a lead throughout the weekend. Brad Milligan with his regular crew ...
...read more - 2013 Class Membership January 11, 2013
Happy New Year to Viper 640 sailors everywhere! With the turn of the calendar comes the time to join or renew class association membership for 2013. If you missed the blast e-mail from the class earlier this week, here’s why you should be a part of the class association…
We all share the fun and excitement of sailing the Viper 640. If you already have renewed your 2013 Viper Class Membership, thank you! As an existing owner or sailor, we hope you join the Viper Class Association. As a new owner, we would like to introduce you to the Viper Class Association and hope you join.
The role of the Class Association is to help all Viper owners get the best from their boats and enjoy the “Viper Experience” both on and off the water.
In particular this means that we:
Facilitate communication among ...
...read more - Better Know a Viperer: Lee Shuckerow December 24, 2012
With the holidays here, we decided to bring back the Better Know a Viperer series as a present to everyone in the class and to give folks something to read if they’re tired of watching Christmas specials and college football bowl games. The only natural choice to break this spell was Viper 640 supercrew Lee Shuckerow. While a co-owner of Jackpot, Lee is most often found in the front of the boat, where he has crossed the finish-line ahead of teammates Brad Boston and Eric Vigrass in each of their three Viper North American championship titles. To find out what makes Jackpot tick and to address rumors that Lee doesn’t know what the tiller looks like, we sat down with Shuck over a pitcher of Labatt’s…
Name: Lee Shuckerow
Location: Detroit, Michigan
Viper currently (or past) owned: Jackpot, Sail number #119. We have ...
...read more - Turkey Day Tuning Clinic (and regatta results) November 28, 2012
Alamitos Bay Yacht Club is host to one of the largest annual small boat regattas on the West Coast, the annual Turkey Day Regatta. I remember doing this regatta as a youth in Lasers in freezing cold weather in 30kts of breeze and knew the conditions would dictate the event. Local Viper rep Tim Carter has been asking for a clinic for sometime and Turkey Day seemed like the perfect time to get something going. It has been a fun and successful year racing the Viper for myself and it was now time to give something back to the fleet.
Phillip Toth, who recently started working at the Ullman Newport Loft, and I set forth a plan to host a Turkey Day Tune Up on the Friday leading up to the regatta. I focused on tuning and technique and Phil brought ...
...read more - First Annual Larchmont Viper Demo “Regatta” November 7, 2012
The last Viper regatta on Western Long Island Sound for 2012 had no entry fee, no recorded scores, no trophies, the smallest turnout of the year, and had boat owners in a panic derigging boats to avoid a hurricane that was closing in on the area. Yet it might have been the most successful regatta of the season.
Most Viper owners have taken sailors out before either formally or informally to demo the boat — it’s a win-win, you get to go sailing, maybe the person coming out is a friend who sails in other classes or who hasn’t done much sailing, or is a prospective owner who is thinking about getting a boat and joining your fleet (even better than taking a friend sailing!). As an experiment and to promote fleet growth in the area, we wanted to see what ...
...read more - Better Know a Viperer: Jim Sears October 25, 2012
Several people have requested that this guy be profiled for a while now…not just *that guy*, but the f***ing new guy, Dr. Jim Sears. Jim may not be the new guy anymore now that he’s had his Viper for two years, and he certainly doesn’t sail his Viper like the new guy, taking podium places up and down the west coast in 2012, including a first at Long Beach Race Week, second at Mardi Gras Race Week, and third at Pacific Coast Champs. Jim is talking about bringing his west coast style (and Viper) to the east coast this winter, starboard tackers beware. If his mug looks familiar, you’re watching too much daytime television (though in Jim’s honor, if you’re watching, don’t change the channel). As far as we know, Jimbo is the only Viper sailor who is also an ...
...read more - Better Know a Viperer: Dave Nickerson October 22, 2012
Dave Nickerson is the Viper 640 class’s Technical Committee chairman. Dave, along with his Tech Committee colleagues Ben “Carbon Mongoose” Steinberg, Tim “Timbo” Carter and Professor Bob Matthews, are the keepers of the sword, inspecting Vipers with rulebooks in hand and ruthlessly burning tow lines that are a millimeter too thin and declaring that the brilliant and complicated spinnaker halyard retrieval takeup system that you spent all summer designing isn’t class legal. Still, there are benefits to knowing the Class Cop, and in Dave’s case, the knowledge acquired during his hundreds of hours of boatwork spent upgrading and perfecting one of the oldest Vipers on the racecourse can be transmitted over a beer post-race. The Tech Committee are also the guys who think about improvements to the class rules to keep the boat modern and fun to sail. Dave’s also ...
...read more - Better Know a Viperer: Garrett Johns October 16, 2012
Garrett Johns is the secretary of the Viper class. At the risk of insulting those of you who have the Class Constitution memorized, “the Secretary shall be responsible for taking minutes of meetings, maintaining records including a record of class members and class registered boats. The Secretary shall ensure that the Executive Committee pursue objective 4.4 and promotes the exchange and dissemination of information among class members. This shall include the maintenance of an effective Class website.” So really, you could say that if it wasn’t for Garrett, we wouldn’t have the “Better Know a Viperer” series. Now you know who to shoot, but we wouldn’t recommend doing that, as Garrett is the tallest of the class officers (not counting Class Governor ...
...read more - Tips for the Perfect Turkey October 13, 2012
Keith Magnussen (above, Sailmaker at Ullman Sails and West Coast Viper Rock Star) and Phil Toth (Aussie Olympic Star contender, below) will be hosting a Viper tuning and boat mechanics clinic at ABYC on Friday before the Turkey Day regatta in November. Friday November 16th. They will have a coach boat and videos.
Keith writes “This is a great opportunity to come practice and learn everything we know about tuning and how we sail the boats and best of all it is free.
Please RSVP to Keith so he gets an idea of who wants to come.
Keith Magnussen
kmagnussen at ullmansails (dot or period) com
Ullman Sails Newport Beach
Mobile: 714-206-1002
Office: 714-432-1860
The Turkey Regatta is hosted by ABYC, the site of 2014 Viper North American Championships….and as their website says….”This is the big daddy!”
The only question is “Why don’t we have a Turkey Day Regatta on ...
...read more - Better Know a Viperer: Tony Chapman October 10, 2012
We continue the “BKAV” series on the Viper class officers with treasurer Tony Chapman, a/k/a “the Road Warrior”, “the guy with the funny teal Viper”, or just “the British guy with the bandanas.” Tony is one of the mainstays of the Viper fleet in Arizona — yes, there are Vipers racing in the desert. When the temperatures reach 100 degrees in the summer, that’s the signal for Tony and others to hit the road to California, Seattle, and in Tony’s case, the east coast. Tony endeared himself to the class by trekking 2500 miles in 2009 for Charleston Race Week and the NAs in Stamford, Connecticut, and made it to the 2011 NAs in Sarnia (where he finished a strong fifth overall) and 2012 in Marblehead, bringing two other Vipers with him on a triple stack. If you haven’t met ...
...read more - High Performance On and Off the Water October 8, 2012
27 Vipers made the annual pilgrimage to Western Long Island Sound’s American YC for the HPDO (aka, the “High Performance Dinghy Open”). Despite the lead appendages, Vipers have been a mainstay at the HPDO for several years, with 35 Vipers in attendance in 2010 and 27 Vipers in 2011. The 2012 edition had 31 Vipers signed up until some late cancellations dropped the turnout slightly. Saturday’s conditions started with a steady 13-18 kts from the southwest for the first three races, all of which were won by 2012 ACCs champ Jason Carroll and his team on Viper 160 Argo despite several general recalls, Z flags and even the appearance of the black flag for the second and third races. The breeze clocked hard to the right in race 4, skewing the course significantly. The breeze stayed up as the clouds ...
...read more
