Race Week

known locally for his "Be Current" tidal-current prediction tables and charts, and the handy CBYRA-designated government mark matrices with distance and bearing between them -- has announced his new 1992 series.It has some unique new twists that make the familiar, good product even better.New this year is the early season Annapolis-area Region III format, which provides the useful information in two volumes.First, itcovers all events from the Naval Academy Sailing Squadron's Spring Race on April 25 to the Miles River Yacht Club's Annapolis-to-Miles River and Maryland Capital Yacht Club Miles River Race Back on May 23-24.

For a hot time in a cold town, there's no place like Nome, Alaska. During Iditarod week in March, the gold camp community on the Bering Sea packs in more activities per capita than most cities. It's a safe bet that Nome is the best place in the United States for folks from 21 to 85 to be for fun.Several action scenes go on simultaneously: the glitz and sweat that end the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race (this year's race started Feb. 29 and will end sometime this weekend); around-the-clock partying in the bars by workers from Prudhoe Bay to Dutch Harbor and all frontier settlements in between; and the excitement, rivalry and clan-gathering at the Iditarod Basketball Tournament, which runs today through Saturday.

This year's total of 225 boats registered made CBYRA's annual Annapolis Race Week for 1991, held over the Labor Day weekend, the biggest ever in the 25-year history of the event.The record number of competitors and the large numbers of sailors from both ends of the bay and just about everywhere in between offered a chance for exciting competition against new and old rivals and helped encourage heavy participation through the regatta.Frustratingly light and shifty winds coupled with a foul current in Saturday's first contest of the three-race series confounded many sailors in both fleets.

ANNAPOLIS -- Skipper Mike Ironmonger's Gem, from St. Mary's College, won its third race in three tries yesterday on the final day of the Chesapeake Bay Yacht Racing Association's annual three-day Annapolis Race Week.Gem completed its domination of the PHRF A Class on a day when radically shifting winds helped cause some upsets.Davidsonville sailor Henry Judy was leading the J/35 class on Outrageous after Sunday's races with two first-place finishes, but the yacht was disqualified from yesterday's race after a protest hearing.

SOLOMONS -- With Hurricane Bob safely north of the Chesapeake Bay well before the start of racing yesterday, the third annual Audi-Yachting Race Week at Solomons Island was off to a nearly perfect start, with moderate and relatively steady breezes and flat water to assist the fleet of 71 starters around the course.Although heavier air from the passing storm had been expected, winds were 17 to 18 knots out of the northwest at the 10 a.m. start, and dropped off gradually into the 8- to 10-knot range while shifting gradually to the west, persistently favoring the left side of the beats on the flat triangular course.

SOLOMONS ISLAND -- When the first starting gun goes off over the waters of the Chesapeake Bay at about 10 a.m. today, the third annual Audi-Yachting Race Week at Solomons will be off and running for five days of racing.Seventy-one yachts, ranging in size from three J/24s to North sailmaker Jim Allsopp's Holland 50, Ichiban, will be competing for daily and series class trophies as well as two coveted overall performance trophies: the Audi Quattro and Yachting Magazine Chelsea Clock awards.

It's still the biggest, and plans are well under way to make it the best ever. Annapolis Race Week, under the overall auspices of the Chesapeake Bay Yacht Racing Association, is set this year for Saturday through Monday, Aug. 31 through Sept. 2.Race Week chairman Howard Kluttz says he expects a similar turnout to last year's 200-plus boats, making Annapolis Race Week once again the largest multi-class, multi-race keelboat event on the Chesapeake Bay.This year especially, it's a be-there-or-be-square event not to be missed by any self-respecting handicap or cruising one-design sailor, with starts for four PHRF splits, three IMS divisions and MORC, aswell as J/35s, J/30s, J/24s, Pearson 30s, Alberg 30s, Cal 25s and Catalina 27s.As it has been managed for the past seven years, the classes will be divided among two separate fleets, each with its own course area, and race management will be by seven individual clubs: Annapolis Yacht Club, Eastport Yacht Club, Magothy River Sailing Association, Naval Academy Sailing Squadron, Sailing Club of the Chesapeake, Shearwater Sailing Club, and West River Sailing Club.

With or without Mother Nature's astounding and terrifying pyrotechnics last Sunday, the fourth annual Northern Bay Race Week was a brilliant victory for Shady Side sailor Paul Parks and his team on his J/35Sundog.The three-day contest was staged off the mouth of Middle River for a fleet of nearly 80 boats sailing in five classes.Sailing with Parks and his wife, Cathy, to a perfect all-ace record through a wide range of conditions were Tim Mangus, Tee Thieler, Rob Simkins, Scott Haerbig, Bob Cornelius, Mark Goode and George Barnes.

As the first few boats in the PHRF A class crossed the finish line in rapidly building wind in yesterday's third and final race of the fourth annual Northern Bay Race Week, a violent squall forced the race committee and most of the fleet of nearly 80 boats to abandon competition.The series was cut to the two races that had been completed Friday and Saturday.A lesser squall earlier in the day forced committee chairman Larry Martin to postpone starting the race, which finally began shortly after noon in unsettled, broadly shifting winds.

Despite a dying breeze on the 10-mile windward-leeward course set between Hart-Miller and Pooles islands on the Chesapeake yesterday, all but one of the 79 starters in the first of the three races of Northern Bay Race Week got over the finish line in good order."