- Jay Rhame, Peter and Rachel Beardsley Lead Viper 640 North American Championship After Day 1 July 6, 2018
July 5, 2018
The 2018 Viper 640 North American Championship is being sailed in Kingston, ON hosted by the Kingston Yacht Club and CORK/Sail Kingston.
IMG_7022After days of unusually high temperatures and lack of wind, when the 36 crews arrived at their boats this morning there was a brisk 10-12 knot southerly blowing giving promise that the Championship would get off to a good start. Actually, the event got off to a very good start as the Kingston Town Crier, adorned in his full uniform regalia, rang his bell and delivered a stirringly official welcome to all the competitors to Kingston, “the fresh water sailing capital of the world!”
The sailing got underway on time and four races were completed with excellent competition leading the fleet as positions shifted leg to leg; but the lead was held throughout the day by the Rhame/Beardsley ...
...read more - Jeff Grange crushes it at the Santa Barbara Skiff Festival May 21, 2018
Held at the Santa Barbara (CA) Yacht Club May 19-20, the annual Skiff Festival brings together diverse fleets of high performance boats including Viper 640s, 5o5s, and 29ers.
After seven races it was local sailor Jeff Grange with Scott Deardorff and George Witter on board who showed “how it is done!” with a score of eight points. Grange posted four bullets and three seconds out of a fleet of nine Vipers. (Editor’s note: nobody who has a second as a throw-out gets any sympathy from this sailor!) In second, was SBYC’s and Viper 640 Class Western Regional Vice President Geoff Fargo with 13 points and fellow local sailor, Pat Toole, in third with 19 points.
Full results HERE.
...read more - GREAT SCOTT! Wins 2018 Viper 640 Atlantic Coast Championship May 21, 2018
Sailing out of Eastport Yacht Club in Annapolis, MD, over the May 19-20 weekend, Peter and Rachel Beardsley (Brooklyn, NY) and Simon Karstoft Jensen won the 2018 Viper 640 Atlantic Coast Championship…Beardsley’s second ACC win. The Championship’s two days’ conditions seemed as though they were from two totally different weather worlds. Saturday found everyone dress in full kit as rain drove away the wind after a single race. On Sunday, however, everyone broke out the shorts and sunscreen for four races in light-to-moderate winds. The wind shifted steadily left with plenty of holes and oscillations. It was a true test of “changing gears” as wind velocities were up and down in virtually every leg.
Beardsley’s GREAT SCOTT! took Saturday’s sole race by focusing as much on maintaining light air boat speed as staying in phase. After days of drenching rain, the ...
...read more - Geoff Ewenson wins Sperry Charleston Race Week 2018 April 23, 2018
CRW and Sailing Inside
CRW Viper Champ Geoff Ewenson tell the tale of this year’s regatta
This was my first CRW sailing a Viper and sailing for the fun of it. Typically I am stuck sailing some big boat outside and kicking myself seeing how much fun the fleets are having racing inside the harbor. This year I decided I was no longer going to be looking from the outside in. Literally! All of my expectations were met. The sailing inside was epic and the poor sods outside complained of light, mealy winds and generally uninspired racing.
Sarah Schaill, Jonathan Colarusso and Tom Loutrel did a great job this year securing the hospitality of the Hobcaw YC as a staging area for the Vipers. This hidden gem up the Wando River made the CRW dreaded hassles of launching and hauling virtually disappear. The ...
...read more - Viper NAs Champs Marcus and Andrew Eagan and Jackson Benvenutti win 2018 Viper Winter Cup March 21, 2018
The 2018 Viper 640 Winter Cup was moved from its traditional home in Miami to the Sarasota Sailing Squadron this March 16-18 and was sailed as part of the SSS’s One-design Midwinter Regatta. 24 Vipers showed up for this multi-class event…the wind…not so much. On each of the three mornings, the easterly breeze steadily faded resulting in shore postponements every day. On Friday, the wind filled in around noon and the boats went to the course and sailed three races. Saturday’s start was even later and the second of the day’s two races was sailed in very light, marginal racing conditions. And that turned out to be it for the regatta as Sunday’s sea breeze didn’t fill in until well after the final race time.
Despite only having five races, the competition was fierce. The reigning North American Viper Championship team ...
...read more - Mike Pentecost Overall Winner of the 2018 Helly Hansen NOOD Regatta March 21, 2018
Mike Pentecost of Ranchos Palos Verdes, CA, had another big regatta over the March 16-18 weekend ending up on top of the 16-boat Viper division and then being named the overall winner of the regatta. Mike shares his thoughts on the San Diego NOOD with his fellow Viperers:
San Diego is a super fun venue for racing, with lots of great restaurants and nightlife, and excellent yacht clubs. This was my first time doing the NOOD here. I was very pleased with the 16-boat turnout which made racing exciting.
Coronado Bay is a challenging place to sail, as it is known for big wind shifts. We experienced that in the extreme, with shifts of 10° to 40° every day, in almost every race. We were blessed that the unseasonable rain predicted, didn’t hit us while we were racing.
With nine races over three ...
...read more - Sailing World – Inside the Classes features Viper 640 March 21, 2018
A great article (below) and video produced during the 2018 Helly Hansen San Diego NOOD featuring and interview with PNW Viperer Garrett Johns.
SAILING WORLD WROTE:
Sailing World’s Boat of the Year judges nailed it back in 1997 when they pegged Brian Bennett’s Viper 640 as the Boat of the Year. At a time when symmetric was about to become old school, the judges knew the 21-foot sportboat would be around for a good long while. It was solid in every measurement: “Fun and challenging to sail, a good value and appealing to a wide range of sailors,” wrote Betsy Alison at the time.
She was right.
As a testament to this enduring one-design, fleets prosper in pockets around the country. Used boats trade hands easily while new boats arrive regularly from Rondar, the Viper’s top-notch British builder. While the East Coast is ...
...read more - Max Albert and Pontchartrain YC win first GYA Capdevielle regatta sailed in Viper 640s March 21, 2018
Sailed out of New Orleans Yacht Club, the first Capdevielle sailed in Viper 640s was held March 16-18, the Mardi Gras Regatta. The team from across lake and Pontchartrain Yacht Club, skippered by Max Albert, dominated the eight-boat regatta with a “picket fence” score of five firsts in five races. In second was Gulfport Yacht Club’s team with three seconds and 14 total points, and then Southern Yacht Club, skippered by Norm Vallette, with twenty points.
After years of the GYA’s comprehensive review of one-designs to replace the venerable Flying Scot as the interclub Capdevielle boat, and the recent activity by the GYA, the Viper Class and Rondar Raceboats to quickly establish a fleet of Vipers across the GYA, this was a major event for which all should be proud.
Sailed in conjunction with the Capdevielle racing was Viper Open racing which ...
...read more - Jerwood continues to outpace fleet at Schweppes Viper 640 2018 World Championship February 22, 2018
Schweppes Viper WorldsWith One Day to Go
In perfect conditions on Perth’s picturesque Swan River in Western Australia, another four races of the program were completed, leaving just two to go on tomorrow’s final day. Today’s breezes remained relatively steady between 250 and 260 degrees, ranging in strength from ten to fourteen knots – perfect weather for Viper 640’s.
Today also showed that Nick Jerwood is after all, fallible. After racking up another two first placings in the first two races today, his uncharacteristic start in the third put him in the middle of the fleet. No amount of tacking could find a clean lane and he reached the top mark in tenth place, his worst performance of the series. Maintaining that position on rounding the second time, Jerwood then executed a gybe set, heading to the northern side of the course ...
...read more - Sarasota Winter Viper Circuit #2 – Houston YC’s Pat Gibson takes light air weekend January 22, 2018
After several years of good fortune with wind, the 2017-18 Sarasota Viper Winter Series has had a tougher start. The December event was skunked on Saturday but managed 4 light air races on Sunday, and January’s event was a near carbon copy of December. Despite great breeze for a Brad Boston-led clinic on Friday, Saturday’s wind never materialized long enough to get in a race, and Sunday saw two races in light and tricky conditions.
In Race 1, Ken Kleinschrodt and family from Buccaneer YC in Mobile, Alabama, led nearly wire-to-wire, while Jay Rhame and Peter Beardsley found enough passing lanes in the thin puffs to go from 20th at the first mark to 2nd at the finish. Pat Gibson ended up on the right side of a 5-boat melee at the finish to place third in a scrum that would ...
...read more - New Northern Honey Badger video of 2018 NAs January 15, 2018
Only Brian Johansen can pull together a video like this that takes you “behind the scenes” both on and off the water.
Video Link HERE.
...read more - Video Links to Beacon Group Viper 640 North American Championship October 31, 2017
Petey Crawford from Penalty Box did some sterling work with his camera during the NAs. Here are links to some of his video updates. Enjoy!
Arrival & warm-up:
https://www.facebook.com/brian.johansen.121/videos/10213529453723274/
Day 1:
https://vimeo.com/239988904
Day 2:
https://vimeo.com/240156415
Day 3:
https://vimeo.com/240284198
...read more - Marcus Eagan Wins 2017 Viper 640 North American Championship October 30, 2017
Ft. Walton Yacht Club, Ft. Walton, FL
October 27, 2017
After three days of close, competitive racing, Charleston, SC, sailors Tom Loutrel, John Bowden and Karl Schutte held a fragile eight point lead in the fifty-four boat fleet having finished in the top four for all except one of the preceding nine races. The top four boats at that point were separated by only 13 points in a fleet that kept turning itself inside out. Loutrel held the lead throughout the first three days and credited his success to having stayed in the pressure and in phase as the winds had osculated unpredictably.
Going into Saturday’s final two races, only 13 points separated the top four teams: Loutrel; Marcus Eagan in second, sailing for Mississippi’s Bay Waveland Yacht Club with his brother Andrew and Jackson Benvenutti; Brad Boston from Sarnia, ON, sailing with ...
...read more - Wet And Wild Day Three At Beacon Group Viper 640 North Americans October 27, 2017
Ft. Walton Yacht Club, Ft. Walton, FL
October 27, 2017
After a light-air Day Two that saw only one race completed, Friday’s Day Three of the Beacon Group Viper 640 North American Championship found the wind gods smiling on the sailors. Winds from the southeast averaged in the mid-teens for most of the day with the fourth and final race of the day seeing gusts approaching 25 knots.
After nine races, Tom Loutrel has held onto his Day Two lead with another solid performance scoring 4-4-3-3. So far in the Championship, Loutrel, from Charleston, SC, sailing with John Bowden and Karl Schutte, has finished in the top four for eight of nine races…a remarkably consistent scoreline. Loutrel now holds an eight point lead over Marcus Eagan (Mississippi’s Bay Waveland Yacht Club sailing with his brother Andrew and Jackson Benvenutti) who moved into second ...
...read more
