Written by: Rick Roberts
11/06/11

2011 Cal 25 Fleet V Championship:
Melendres’ “One Time” shows rain can’t dampen winning effort.
Long Beach, Calif.—Don’t let it be said that the local Cal 25 racers are not serious sailors. Sunday morning, the Cal 25 Fleet V Championship dawned cold and rainy, but they all came out and put on a closely-fought show ending the day with Art Melendres’, “One Time” as the winner on a tie-breaker.
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“We’re really thankful the race committee saw fit to hold this regatta,” said Melendres. “It was a real dogfight from beginning to end. Everything you expect a Cal 25 regatta to be.”
The first race of the day the wind was a moderate 10-11 knots, but coming from the wrong direction… off the beach at Belmont Shore which is about 180 degrees from its normal southwesterly direction. Not that big of a challenge for the race committee but for the sailors, local knowledge and local experience was thrown overboard.
But when the rain quit and the skies cleared the wind clocked around to its normal direction for the last two races of the day and settled in at 9-11 knots.
“We had three completely different races,” Melendres said, “with three different winners… and it came down to a tie breaker in the last race. That’s pretty competitive racing.
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Second place honors went to Bob Daniel and his boat “Nemesis”.
“I love the one-design aspect of racing in the Cal 25 fleet,” Daniel said.
At the end of the day’s racing, there was a tie for first and only one point behind was “Nemesis”.
“We had a third in the last race,” said Daniel. “If we had gotten second, we would have won this. But, it was great racing and I had a great crew, especially my foredeck person Kristy who was terrific.” Rick Sottile and Felix Basadre finished in third place with their co-owned Cal 25, “Tiburon”.

“It was a lot of work and strategy to out maneuver the rain and wind today,” said Sottile.
“It took a lot of extra skill to find the wind lines.
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“The last race of the day was great with all of the boats together. You really had to be on top of your game to win this one today.”
Putting a winning team together is a family matter on “One Time”. Melendres gives credit to his son Scott Melendres and daughter Monica Ouiedo.
“I owe this win to the fact that I have a great tactician [Scott] and a great driver [Monica],” said Melendres. “The team never quit. During one of the races our foredeck man fell and cut himself. But he got up and hung in there.
“When it got down to the last race, everyone on the boat stepped up and did their jobs.”

Final Results
1. Art Melendres, LBYC, “One Time”, 4-2-1, 7 points on tie-breaker
2. Bob Daniel, ABYC, “Nemesis”, 1-3-3, 7
3. Felix Basadre/Rick Sottile, SlBYC, “Tiburon”, 5-1-2, 8
4. Don Reiman, ABYC, “Rhyme N Reason”, 2-4-4, 10
5. Dennis Diem, LBYC, “The Iguana”, 3-5-5, 13


Complete results are available at www.lbyc.org .


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Rick Roberts
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Long Beach Yacht Club