The final day of the 2005 Lands' End St. Petersburg NOOD regatta ended
with a whimper, with the breeze shutting down after most classes had
finished one race, but with at least seven races sailed in each class
for the three-day event, nobody seemed all that bothered. For the first time at a NOOD regatta, an overall winner was announced,
and nobody could disagree with the race committee's decision to award
that trophy to John Bertrand and his crew on the Melges 24 Fusion M. In the seven races sailed by the Melges class, Fusion M
never scored worse than a third-place finish, an impressive feat in a
47-boat class packed with talented teams. Scott Nixon, a sailmaker from
Annapolis, was Fusion M's
tactician. "Speed kills," said Nixon. "We felt we were really fast.
We've worked a lot on sails, and after getting second at the Melges 24
pre-Worlds at Key Largo last December we decided that we were having
problems with starts, so we've been working on that." Bertrand and his
team hired Ted Kaczmarski, the head of the Annapolis YC's junior
program, as their coach, and have seen an improvement. "We were
seven-for seven with our starts," said Nixon. "It makes my job easy."
Bertrand, Nixon, and the rest of the Fusion M crew will be heading to
the Annapolis NOOD for their next event, which is the Melges 24
national championship. It's all part of Fusion M's march toward the world championship, which will be held in Key Largo next December.   Winning the six-boat Sonar class with another great scoreline was John Robertson, of the United Kingdom, on Chimera.
Robertson bound to a wheelchair as the result of a motorcycle accident
in 1994, said that consistency was the key to his win. "We got in the
front row and didn't bang any corners," said Robertson. "We also kept
in phase with the shifts, or tried to, and when the wind went light we
changed gears and softened everything up." Robertson and his crew
sailed the Olympic Classes Regatta in January, and won that regatta as
well. Next stop for Robertson is home, where he plans on training until
his next event, when he'll be heading to Sweden for another Sonar
regatta. The youngest helmsman in the regatta was 16-year old Ian Buck, of Duluth, Minnesota, who steered the Tripp 26 Mustang Sally
to a fourth-place finish in the nine-boat class in his first big
regatta. Asked if he was intimidated by the older, more experienced
drivers in the class, Buck said: "No, not so much; it's exciting, but
it's a little tough to get back on the helm after five months off."
Buck sails out of the Duluth Community Sailing Center and said that
he's already looking forward to coming back to the St. Petersburg NOOD
next February.    Manhattan Magic,
a Soverel 33, owned by Jeffrey Guice, of Ocean Springs, Mississippi,
won their six-boat class with a scoreline that would have rivaled John
Bertrand's if they hadn't broken a main halyard in Race 4, which pushed
them back to last place for the race. But Guice and his crew bounced
back and finished the event off with three straight first-place
finishes, which gave them not only the class win, but the Soverel 33
Midwinter Championship. "We had good teamwork and a great crew," said
Guice. "But we also had a little bit of luck. Today we got out on the
left side and it worked out for us." Five other classes held their midwinter championships during the St. Petersburg NOOD. In the Tartan Ten class, Jeff Sampson's Chris Hill for 3 won the Midwinter Championship, as did St. Pete Sailor Tim Snow, sailing his Blind Chance in the SR Max class. Brad Boston won the Ultimate 20 Eastern Midwinters on Honour; John Mauri's Mauri Pro Sailing was the Hobie 33 Midwinters champion; Matt Paterson and his team on White Donkey clinched the Wavelength 24 Midwinters.