Bissell Racing

Long Beach, July 12-13 – 33 Boats competed in this year’s Cal 20 National Championship.  After a qualifying round on Friday, they split the fleet into Gold and Silver with 23 boats in Gold and 10 in Silver. 

Since my ride fell through earlier in the week, I went down to the club just to check it out.  I wanted to see if I could meet some people, make some contacts in the class, and get a feel for what kind of market share we were dealing with.  Only 5 of the 33 boats had at least one North sail onboard.  Only two boats had the full North inventory.  Since I had no intention of actually sailing, the impact of my attendance exceeded my expectations.

On Saturday, as I was taking pictures and taking notes, I ran into Erik Heim who was sailing with Mark Gaudio.  Gaudio was the pre-regatta favorite since he’s won the championship 3-times prior.  They placed a lackluster 5^th in the qualifying round and were planning on sailing without their 3^rd crew member from the day before.  When it looked like there might be more breeze than what was forecasted, they asked me if I wanted to sail.  He was using a brand new North main, so I agreed.  I trimmed the main and collaborated with Erik Heim on tactics.  The experience proved to be mutually beneficial because I helped him win the championship and he taught me a lot about the Cal 20.

The actual racing took place in wind ranging from 10-18 knots throughout the weekend.  If Mark had only sailed with two, his results would probably have been different.  The first day started out in the 10 knot range.  We won the pin and went right as the leftmost boat in the fleet.  We were able to boatspeed our way into great leebow position when the boats from the right started to come across.  This gave us a great jump on everyone and we led the race around the entire track.  With a score of 1,2,2,3, we won the day by 3 points over Mark Gollison (sailing with a full North inventory).

Day 2 was windier and Mark Gollison came out on fire by notching a bullet in first race.  By sailing past Chris Raab on the final downwind leg, he won the race and tied us for the overall lead.  With two bullets, he was beating us on the tie breaker.  Just like the day before, it was a “go right” upwind beat.  Our pre-race strategy, then, was to start to windward of Gollison to protect the right.  We were able to execute by starting right to windward of him.  Then we were able to tack first for the right.  By forcing him left and going right, we rounded the first mark in the top 5 while he was out of the top 10.  We finished 5^th while he finished 12^th.  This gave us a pretty good cushion for the last race. 

Chris Raab and Mark Gollison had a very tight last race for 2^nd place.  You can see them in the picture below battling for the pin.  Gollison is bow 11 and Raab is in boat 28.  You can barely see us up by the committee boat, but we are bow 12 and sail #363.  We wanted to avoid the commotion at the pin and head right as soon as possible.  The right paid off and we won the last race by a mile to seal the deal.

When it was all said and done, we won the event by 13 points over Chris Raab and 14 points over Mark Gollison.  By winning the championship, Mark Gaudio becomes the only person with his name on the trophy 4 times.  Also of note, Dave Perry was sailing with Mike Van Dyke who won the oldest skipper award.  They finished in 7^th overall.  The top 3 boats had partial or full North Sails inventories.

Complete Results, Photos, and Press Releases can be found at www.abyc.org/event.cfm?id=299