Morc

After three days of competition on the Chesapeake Bay, during which much of the attention was on a seeming duel between Canada's Cup rivals in the high-tech, big-ticket Level 30 Class, the winner of this year's MORC International Championship was John White of Severna Park and his team, which came up from MORC B to take top honors in the 41-boat fleet.The regatta, which ran from Sunday through Tuesday, was sailed out of Annapolis Yacht Club. It was co-sponsored by Annapolis MORC Station 15, and featured two relatively short windward-leeward races in light and shifty breeze on Sunday; three increasingly longer windward-leewards in Monday's building breezes, which increased from light and fluky in the morning to a solid 15 knots by the third race, and a single race of almost 12 miles on Tuesday, the event's longest, sailed in the strongest breeze.

Bass pros get a shot at the largest purse ever offered in the sport this week when the $450,000 Wal-Mart FLW Tour Championship gets under way on the Mississippi River near Moline, Ill.The winner of the competition, which includes the top 50 pros and top 50 amateurs from the six events on the tour leading to the championship, will receive $250,000 cash.The first seed in the pro side of the competition is Denny Brauer of Camdenton, Mo., who won the Kmart Bassmaster Top 150 tournament on the Potomac River recently.

If you sail a boat of 30 feet or less and you like exciting racing with a fun bunch of people, MORC is for you.Membership is a prerequisite for those who want to take the helm in what promises to be oneof the year's best regattas, the MORC Internationals, set for late June out of the Fishing Bay Yacht Club in Tidewater Virginia.MORC (pronounced "mor-see," not "mork") is the Midget Ocean Racing Club, an organization dedicated to good racing and good fun. The class welcomes amateur sailors of boats from the smaller end of the keelboat spectrum, generally ranging from about 22 feet to the class maximum length of 30. It accommodates both high-tech custom yachts andstock production boats.

One of sailing's big events locally comes next weekend: Shearwater Sailing Club's Hospice Cup XIV, featuring on-water action on Saturday for PHRF, MORC and J/30 racers, as well as a non-spinnaker Hospice Class for those who don't normally race, followed by a party shoreside where trophies, including Hospice Cup awards, are presented.Entries are due Wednesday (or postmarked by Tuesday) for the event, for which Buddy Melges is this year's honorary chairman. Proceeds from sponsorships of the event and all entry fees benefit seven area hospices -- Hospice of Anne Arundel Medical Center, Calvert Hospice, Hospice of the Chesapeake, Montgomery Hospice Society, Hospice of Northern Virginia, Hospice of Prince George's County and Baltimore's Joseph Richey Hospice.

Perfect sailing conditions, great hospitality and excellent race management by the Fishing Bay Yacht Club in Deltaville, Va., characterized last weekend's MORC East Coast Championship Regatta on the beautiful southern bay.Twenty-six teams sailed against each other for overall standings in the regatta, as well as in each of their three respective classes -- MORC A, MORC B, and J/29 one-design. The regatta was a little smaller than it has been in recent years, but it was just as big on pleasure, excitement and general fun.The regatta this year became something of a bi-coastal event when the coveted Stingray Point Light trophy for best overall went to the Californians headed by Hugh Grenfal on Easy Go, a Nelson-Marek 25. Grenfal dominated both the overall fleet and the nine-boat MORC A division with the well-sailed pocket rocket.

It may have been cold and damp, but conditions over the weekend wereexciting for racing, with plenty of wind to speed the fleets in the two-day Annapolis Yacht Club Spring Race.Saturday's event drew 72starters to compete on a 12.6-mile windward-leeward course in PHRF Aand B, three IMS splits and a J/35 one-design class.Although the wind was starting to lighten by the time most of thefleet was on the fifth and final 2.5-mile windward leg, stiff early race breezes between 15 and 20 knots made short work of the race despite the complications caused by unusually big waves and a strong current.

Wrapping up the "big boat" handicap division of CBYRA racers, the 1991 high point scores for IMS, MORC North and Multihull sailors now have been announced.IMS and Multihull high point scores are the result of an equation that divides the number of points each qualifying competitor has earned through his season of competition (one each forstarting, finishing and each boat beaten) by the maximum number of points it would have been possible to have earned if he had won every race he started, plus 30.The MORC North class, including sailors from CBYRA regions I-III,has a different and somewhat more complicated formula that also includes a factor relating the number of races started to the number of races sanctioned as well as the sum of high point scoring for each individual race.

Today's listing of top-rank sailors in the Chesapeake Bay Yacht Racing Association's high-point standings in the IMS, MORC and Multihull classes wraps up the Handicap Division results for 1992.High-point scores are based on a ratio of actual performance to ideal performance, with each class' scoring formula founded in the number of boats beaten divided by the number of boats it could have beaten if every race entered had been won.There are also provisions for bonus points and worst-race throw-outs, although each class within the division has procedures for exact calculations.

As the sun rose over the Patuxent River finish line Saturday morning, the Eastport Yacht Club's Race Committee was already calling this year's 12th annual Solomons Island race one of the fastest ever.The 55-mile race, which drew 176 starters, began on the Severn River Friday evening, went down the bay to round Hooper Island Light before heading up the Patuxent to the finish at Solomons. The bulk of the fleet had finished the course by the time the wind went light at about 7 a.m. Saturday, although a couple of stragglers were still heading in near 9.The 12- to 18-knot-plus southerly breeze gradually shifted westward during the night, so for most of the sailors it was on the nose the whole way, and foredeck crews had little more to do all night but block the waves splashing over the bow as they sat on the rail.

Bass pros get a shot at the largest purse ever offered in the sport this week when the $450,000 Wal-Mart FLW Tour Championship gets under way on the Mississippi River near Moline, Ill.The winner of the competition, which includes the top 50 pros and top 50 amateurs from the six events on the tour leading to the championship, will receive $250,000 cash.The first seed in the pro side of the competition is Denny Brauer of Camdenton, Mo., who won the Kmart Bassmaster Top 150 tournament on the Potomac River recently.

After three days of competition on the Chesapeake Bay, during which much of the attention was on a seeming duel between Canada's Cup rivals in the high-tech, big-ticket Level 30 Class, the winner of this year's MORC International Championship was John White of Severna Park and his team, which came up from MORC B to take top honors in the 41-boat fleet.The regatta, which ran from Sunday through Tuesday, was sailed out of Annapolis Yacht Club. It was co-sponsored by Annapolis MORC Station 15, and featured two relatively short windward-leeward races in light and shifty breeze on Sunday; three increasingly longer windward-leewards in Monday's building breezes, which increased from light and fluky in the morning to a solid 15 knots by the third race, and a single race of almost 12 miles on Tuesday, the event's longest, sailed in the strongest breeze.

Annapolis Yacht Club's Fall Series came to a close last weekend after three weeks of racing for two substantial fleets.Competing on Saturdays in a fleet of 99 were the smaller cruising one designs along with the MORC and PHRF C sailors. On Sundays, IMS I reappeared, joining two other racing/cruising IMS splits and the four PHRF A and B divisions that took to the course in a 112-boat group.Courses were windward-leeward in all cases, except the second Sunday when an Olympic course was used for the big boats.

The second round in Annapolis Yacht Club's three-week Fall Series regatta went off under sunny skies last weekend.The 85 smaller boats of the five cruising one-design divisions, PHRF C and MORC, completed a 7.7-mile windward-leeward course after a morning postponement on Saturday.On Sunday the six grand-prix IMS 1 contestants completed a 16.85-mile course while the remaining 82 big boats of the three IMS splits, the three PHRF A divisions, PHRF B and the J/35s sailed 12.35 miles.So far, the only perfect record was turned in by the weekend's biggest corrected time winner, John White of Severna Park and the crew on his unnamed DB-2, sailing in PHRF B on Sundays.

Cruel wind gods truncated the Annapolis Yacht Club Spring Race last weekend, when only the cruising one-designs and the MORC and PHRF C sailors were able to sail a complete race.That event drew 71 starters for a six-mile CBYRA minimum course on Saturday.The fleet of big boats in the upper ranks of PHRF, the IMS competitors and the J/35 fleet had to call it a day on Sunday after an extremely light-air start in a foul current.On Saturday, however, despite light six- to eight-knot air the day's conditions were sailable for a three-legged NTC windward-leeward contest, particularly for Mike McGuirk and his Gunsmoke crew, who won the J/30 class, the day's largest division with 18 starters.

Nearly 50 crews sailing in MORC, PHRF C and D, and cruising one-design classes for Catalina 27s, Cal 25s and J/30s met in the 45th annual Spring Race of the Sailing Club of the Chesapeake last Saturday for 6.3-mile contest.The next day some three dozen entries in PHRF A-0, A-1, A-2 and B chased each other on a couple of courses, the first at 7.7 miles and the second race of the day over 4.6 miles.The action was especially hot in Saturday's MORC class, when the top five boats all corrected to within a one-minute, eight-second range of one another, with victory going to Bob Dunning and his crew on Skylarkn.

The Naval Academy Sailing Squadron played host to its annual big-boat racing season opener last weekend with the traditional NASS Spring Race.Saturday's 78-boat fleet of PHRF, MORC and J/24 classes had one of the larger starts in recent memory. The PHRF ranks were swelled by a third PRHF-A split (now called PHRF A-0), in addition to A-1 and A-2, a new Sport boat class for high-performance racers and a new PHRF D division for the smallest contenders.All three of the PHRF A classes, PHRF B and the PHRF-Sport sailed a 12.5 nautical-mile course around government marks, and PHRF C and D, MORC and the J/24s sailed a 11.1-mile version.

Upsets were the order of the day at the Annapolis Yacht Club's Fall Series last weekend.In one upset, Chuck O'Malley and his team on Rude Awakening took first in the MORC race -- and the series -- with a two-second win over Bob Muller and crew on Stingray.With previous class leader Mirage, sailed by the Lewis/Salvesen Syndicate, falling to ninth in the final race after aces in the first two, if Muller had saved his time and beaten O'Malley, Muller would have won the series with a score of 7.75 to O'Malley's 8. Instead, O'Malley took the race and the series by 2.25 points.

The second round in Annapolis Yacht Club's three-week Fall Series regatta went off under sunny skies last weekend.The 85 smaller boats of the five cruising one-design divisions, PHRF C and MORC, completed a 7.7-mile windward-leeward course after a morning postponement on Saturday.On Sunday the six grand-prix IMS 1 contestants completed a 16.85-mile course while the remaining 82 big boats of the three IMS splits, the three PHRF A divisions, PHRF B and the J/35s sailed 12.35 miles.So far, the only perfect record was turned in by the weekend's biggest corrected time winner, John White of Severna Park and the crew on his unnamed DB-2, sailing in PHRF B on Sundays.

Upsets were the order of the day at the Annapolis Yacht Club's Fall Series last weekend.In one upset, Chuck O'Malley and his team on Rude Awakening took first in the MORC race -- and the series -- with a two-second win over Bob Muller and crew on Stingray.With previous class leader Mirage, sailed by the Lewis/Salvesen Syndicate, falling to ninth in the final race after aces in the first two, if Muller had saved his time and beaten O'Malley, Muller would have won the series with a score of 7.75 to O'Malley's 8. Instead, O'Malley took the race and the series by 2.25 points.

Hot competition kept things hopping on the Choptank last weekend at the MORC East Coast Championship, sailed by 35 contenders from the Chesapeake and other Eastern Seaboard ports out of the Tred Avon Yacht Club.The fleet was divided into four sub-classes -- Custom for the hottest one-offs and other high-tech racing machines, two Production boat divisions and a J/29 one-design class. Everyone, including the J/29 sailors, was scored using his MORC rating for overall fleet position in each race and in the series.