Long Beach, Calif.—Art Melendres’ Cal 25 “One Time” took top honors in the Cal 25 Regional Championship Sunday under sunny skies and changing breezes of 5-13 knots in this classic regatta hosted by Long Beach Yacht Club.
But contrary to the boat’s name, he finished first more than one time dominating the weekend with four first-place finishes in the five-race regatta.
Melendres’ team is a family affair with four out of the six crew members related. Art, son Scott, daughter Monica Oviedo and nephew Chris Lopez. The team is rounded out with longtime friend Pat Graham and the newest member James Yano.
“I owe this all to Scott and the crew,” Melendres said. “He called great tactics and we work well together because it’s a family boat. We kept grinding all weekend and we got it.”
When asked if all went as smooth as it appeared over the weekend, Melendres smiled, “Well, we weren’t sure we were going to be able to hoist our main [sail] Saturday morning. When we got down to the boat we couldn’t hoist the main halyard. But we worked it out.”
While Saturday was blue skies and consistent wind all day, Sunday dawned with thick overcast and fluky light winds from the south that couldn’t seem to make up their mind what they wanted to do. The race committee postponed for about 30 minutes and then started the fleet in south-southwest winds of only 5 knots.
But as the cloud cover broke up, the breezes started to fill and the sharp skippers and tacticians picked up on the wind shifts as the traditional Long Beach southwesterly settled in.
Second place went to Brad Willingham and his partner Scott Cloud on “Discovery” who experienced highs and lows throughout the weekend.
“Our high was beating our arch-nemesis ‘One Time’ in the first race Saturday,” Cloud said. “Our second high was leading them again in the second race… but our low was when in that race our jib halyard blew and we lost our lead. The best part of the weekend was overcoming the weird winds.”
Finishing third was Felix Basadre and Rick Sottile’s “Tiburon”. Basadre observed that everyone seemed to have a good time even with the changeable wind.
“We had a great weekend,” Basadre said. “Our high point was leading at the first mark on the last race of the weekend. There was good completion and we all had a really great time.”
Scott Melendres talked about Sunday’s light air, “We need to work on our light air sailing. We’re going to the Nationals this year in Annapolis and it’s usually light air sailing there. This was a good practice for us.”
Reflecting on his win and the weekend, Art Melendres added, “This is a great fleet. They race you hard but clean and it’s a privilege to race with them.”
| Final Results |