Barry and Cyndee Donaher will be importing our range of Harbor Yachts, operating out of Perth, West Australia. The new venture will be under the name of Harbour Yachts Australia, and the plan over the next 12 months will be to set up dealers in each capital city.
 

Barry continues, “We’re excited to introduce something different to the marketplace. Tom’s boats are exceptionally well-built and should stand up well in the tough conditions down there.” We wish Barry great success and look forward to hearing great tales from down under!

Conditions on the sound tend to be on the windy side, and the Harbor 20 group enjoys involving as many people as possible, so they typically sail with three per boat.
 

For most of the yachting community outside of Southern California, spring marks the beginning of the yachting season. Though Newport Beach is blessed with year round sailing weather, the Newport Harbor Yacht Clubs celebrates the ceremonial start of the year on the first weekend in May with a regatta and party at the club. The regatta has historically run from the Los Angeles Yacht Club down the coast to the Newport Pier. 1.5 miles of upwind work followed by 17.5 miles of follow the leader downwind to the finish line. It's a floating precursor party to the big party back at the dock on Sunday.

The regatta also has the propensity to draw a number of interesting oats out ranging from the fastest of the fast, grandest of grand, and newest of new. And this year didn't let anyone down. Class A saw Stark Raving Mad, the newest canting ballast RP 66, 2 SC 70's, an Andrews 68, the three week old Andrews 49.5 It's OK, and the venerable Ragtime. Class B was in equally interesting mix of 3 SC 50's, a Peterson 50, a J/44, and a Beneteau 41. But it was class C that was perhaps the most interesting. In it were Astor, the 1929 Fife 86' schooner that displaced somewhere between 75 and 85 tons, 2 Cal 40's, a Cat 38, a J/80, and the new Harbor 25.

The RC placed an artificial rating limit of 150 and the Harbor 25 rates 165 so we wound up being an unofficial entry. But still it was an exciting event to be crossing tacks with the eclectic fleet and test the capabilities of the Harbor 25 against the best boats from the past 75 years.

Armed with a crew of 4, Tom Schock, Steve Schupak (son in law), Riley Schupak (grandson to Tom, age 9), and David Banta (Harbor 20 sailor), Yemaya prepared for the trip down the coast. The first thing that became apparent was that we needed to stay farther from the starting line before our start that you would normally think. But with the A fleet sleds orbiting and jockeying around at 9-14 knots they cover a lot of ground quickly. Luckily they all had bow spotters and there weren't any problems. The next alteration we made tactically was to keep an eye out for the vintage schooner Astor, with 86' and 160,000 lbs she wasn't going to make any quick maneuvers so one person was charged with calling out her actions ("Astor's tacking, Astor's jibing to port, Astor's crossing on port let her play through, etc.). As the clocked down to our start we got a little caught up in the spectacle and got a safe but 20 second late start at the gun. Every time we looked over at Astor they seemed to be putting up another sail. Later at the dock we talked with them and their mantra was every crew gets their own sail. And with a crew of 22 that was a lot of sails to trim!

The wind was the best we've had in years for an opening day race, 18-22 knots and out of the west! If we paid money we couldn't have ordered any better conditions. The brief upwind leg from the start and out to Angeles gate was a piece of cake. We tacked twice, (though tacking is always a piece of cake with the jib boom) and exited the harbor, then turned the corner and headed for Newport Beach on a broad spinnaker reach. I set the kite from the comfort and safety of the cockpit and we took off on our thrilling ride homeward.

As expected, the fleet set their kites and the bigger boats legged out on us. But they weren't moving away all that quickly! We had Riley doing the toughest job of watching the GPS and read off the big speed numbers as we surfed along. Our speed was fantastic, the bottom of the troughs brought mid 7's, and the top surf was 12.5, we averaged 7.6 over the 19 mile course!!! Not too bad for a 25' boat.

The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful. Riley got tired of calling out our speed so he went below and took a nap. We feasted on snacks, lunch, and watched the coastline speed by. Riley woke up in time to come back on deck and resume his speed watch and see us cross the finish line. The bigger, faster, boats were still in front of us, though they were still within site. We thought we had a chance on them.

We were right too! Though we weren't officially scored, the club was kind enough to calculate where we would have finished with both our actual rating of 165, and if we had sailed at the rating cap of 150. In class we would have been first with both ratings, and since it was a windy year, the "slower" boats in C fleet won the overall spots. Yes, we would have been first overall with either rating! Not too bad for group of three and a half sailing on an extended day sailor with cockpit cushions!!!

Story by Steve Schupak
Photos courtesy of Dwight Beldon
 

This is an email we received from San Francisco Bay sailors Lon & Sue. They went out on Aaron Cooperband’s H25 #5, which was launched on March 20. Lon & Sue are highly skilled sailors who own a Moore 24 that they have been racing avidly for years. This is what they had to say:

We went sailing yesterday afternoon on Aaron's 25. It was a
beautiful day on the bay, blowing 20 to 25 (per the TackTick instruments). With 4
of us aboard, a single-reefed main and jib, we were impressed with
the boat. Fingertip control on the helm, dry cockpit.

Nice boat,
Lon & Susie

Here is a photo of the boat taken by Eric Lyons. He was on an Islander 36; and according to Aaron “In 15 – 20 knots of wind on a beam reach the Harbor 25 was reeling him in. When the wind increased to 25, he started to pull away slowly. Pretty impressive!”