Today it was cold and frosty back home at Lincoln Shoenberger's hometown of Bridgeport, Conn. Most of his sailing buddies toiled through yet another winter day in the Northeast, mentally crossing another box off the calendar and wishing for the start of the summer twilight series while cursing their buddy Shoenberger for the fun he was having without theam. No doubt more than a few of his mates surfed the Internet to check updates and scores from Acura Key West Race Week presented by Nautica. They had to see how 'ol Linc was doing down here in Key West. Bypassing links to the regattas many grand-prix classes, they scrolled to PHRF 6 and checked in on the progress of their hometown boys.

And there the gang stood atop the smallest class of PHRF racers here in Key West. These smaller craft make up a small, but important part of the Race Week fleet. They're the unheralded kings of Division 4, and in PHRF 6 you'll find a pair of Wyliecat 30s, including Shoenberger's, a few J/24s, a trio of S2 7.9s, and then a handful of 30-footers you've probably never heard of.

And at the top of this considerably small but motley bunch after two races in gentle, but shifty conditions today is Shoenberger's Wyliecat 30 One Up, sitting on a 1-point cushion to Bob Fleck's S2 7.9. They're having one hell of a regatta Shoenberger told me after he collected more booty for top finishes. Today's cache includes a curvy glass vase (to be delivered home Stanley Cup style), and an engraved photo album marking his successful fourth day at Race Week, one in which he and his teammates knocked off a pair of seconds to top their division for the afternoon. Conditions were mellow, but equally tough on tacticians.

The true Corinthian sportsman he is, Shoenberger, a fellow who is fittingly Hemingway-esque with his rosy, sun-baked complexion, friendly blue eyes, and white, tightly cropped beard. After receiving his own award he stood alongside the stage to congratulate his fellow competitors as they stepped off the stage.

Come to find out, Shoenberger once owned a Merit 25 but was looking for something that was easier to campaign, and sail with his wife. Thus the Wyliecat 30, much more a west coast phenom. "It's not as quite execution intensive," he told me. They've only sold 18 or so, and a lot are in San Francisco. "We're basically the only two Wyliecat 30s east of Ohio," he confessed. "And we're both here [at the party tent] so we're counting this as our unofficial Wyliecat 30 east coast championship. It's some good sailing, a terrific division."

Shoenberger was here in 2005 on someone else's boat, and no doubt this first time competing at his own helm in Key West is a perfect way to spend a week in January. "It's great to get out of your own backyard, and that's why I'm here," he said. "It's great to take boat, especially to a regatta like this where you can tell on the starting line where you're never by yourself; there's always a battle for the boat or the pin, and you can't make a mistake without having three others jump on top of you."

Earlier in the week, Shoenberger says, when winds topped off at 25 knots, they broke a section of their sail track (mast track). "It's questionable whether we'll have to reef or not," he said. "We're concerned about that. Up to 23 knots we're OK without it; after that I don't know. There's only so much de-powering we can do. After that it's a little squirrelly off the wind. We found this out last fall when we death rolled it—just like a Laser when the mast smacks the water to weather--and we put the mast head 8 feet underwater, and that's nothing I want to do again here. It ripped up the boat pretty well, so we'd like to avoid that tomorrow."

He's got a tight point spread and throwouts to bring into the occasion, and the other Wyliecat in his division is stalking, so Shoenberger and his mates John Nevin, John McArthur, and Tom Jankun, have only one more day left in this truncated weeklong series, which has only two days of racing on the books thus far. With three races possible for the final day, his hope dead-nuts straight forward: "I just want wind, but not too much of it.