Host club hosts selection series for Congressional Cup

Long Beach, CA (February 14, 2015) – Scott Dickson and the Dickson Racing Team won the first stage Saturday of Long Beach Yacht Club’s Congressional Cup Club Sail-Off against five other LBYC match racing teams.

Racing a single round robin format on the club’s Catalina 37s the skippers and their teams saw light to moderate breeze of 4 to 8 knots all day under sunny and warm skies.

Dickson beat out second place finisher Dustin Durant and his Long Beach Match Racing team when they met for the first time of the day on the last race of the day.

“The exciting part of the day,” Dickson said, “was having six Long Beach Yacht Club teams match racing on the 37s.

“That is evidence that Southern California match racing is growing and I think you’ll find the teams enjoyed the racing very much.

“The conditions were perfect and I think this was a great opportunity for some of the less experienced teams to go up against some of the polished teams.”

Dickson and Durant will meet for the final session of the sail-off (Stage Two) on March 28. The winner of the sail-off will represent LBYC in the ISAF Grade 1 Congressional Cup match race, May 13-17. The second place finisher will receive and invitation to compete in ISAF Grade 2 Ficker Cup, May 8-10.

Both Dickson and Durant had already won all of their races as they began the last race of the day against each other.

“We had a really good practice yesterday,” Durant said. “We’ve all sailed together for quite a while now and we pretty much dominated the pre-starts… except in the last race.

“Our teamwork was great. We just have to sharpen up a couple of things and we’ll be fine.”

LBYC has been working on building match racing on the West Coast for a while now. The club’s regularly scheduled Match Racing Academies take experience fleet racers who are interested in match racing and give them classroom and on-the-water instruction.

The fall Butler Cup is a ISAF Grade 5 match race that acts as a building block for skippers and teams wanting to move up the match racing ladder.

Between the Match Racing Academies, the Ficker Cup, the Congressional Cup and all of the other match races, LBYC has 23 days of match racing scheduled this year alone.

Dickson gives a closing thought on the day, “What was evident today was the amount of sailing talent spread throughout all of the teams.”

Stage One Results
1. Scott Dickson, LBYC, 5 wins, 0 losses
2. Dustin Durant, LBYC, 4, 1
3. *Dave Hood, LBYC, 2, 3
3. *Bill Durant, LBYC 2, 3
3. *Lisa Meier, LBYC 2, 3
6. Wendy Corzine, LBYC, 0, 5

*Three-way tie for 3rd place

Event details: http://www.lbyc.org/events/publicEventDetails.aspx?id=9&tab=0

Report by Rick Roberts, LBYC