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| (L-R) Joshua Legg and Greg Helias, 2024 H20 Fleet Championship winners |
By LEN BOSE
It’s that time of year when I am waving to the fighter jet pilots from my office window, and believe it or not I have had the pilots return my wave with a salute in previous years practicing for the Huntington Beach Airshow. Speaking of war jets, I completely missed the fact that the War Heroes on the Water were in the house that second to last weekend of September. That same weekend was the Harbor 20 Championships, and my predictions were very accurate this year. We also have most if not all of our harbor channel markers now eliminated.
On Saturday, Sept. 21, the War Heroes on Water “WHOW” commanded the harbor filling the anchorage and the harbor with some of the best-looking vessels located on our coast. If I’m not mistaken, this is the seventh year running the parade and fishing tournament, with each year bringing in more yachts and people. It’s all about saving the lives of our veterans through public awareness and fundraising, and providing a platform for veterans to strengthen their spirit and move forward towards purpose and healing. I refer to the event as WOW, because of all the yachts and people involved. My understanding is that the fishing tournament brings so many people to Avalon that it’s the busiest day of the year for the shore boats.
This leads into the Huntington Beach Airshow, taking place October 4-6, with the weather forecast showing flat sea conditions and mid-70s air temp. Saturday looks like the best day; the chance of fog diminishing from Friday. Sunday looks like it will be baking out on the water, with the air temperature forecasted at 85. Either way, it’s a great day on the water featuring the Thunderbirds, Canadian Snowbirds, F-22 Raptor Team, 122d F-15 Fighter Squadron and much more. This event always seems to make summer go out with a boom!
In my last column, I talked about the Harbor 20 fleet championships that sailed on September 21 and 22. My C Fleet predictions were a little off with Erika Foy and Paul Noring sailing away from most of the fleet, other than Team Kelly, who only finished five points behind to take second place. I was a little closer with my picks in B Fleet with Tucker Cheadle and Steve Schupak leading John Bubb after the first day, and for whatever reason he could not make it to the race course on Sunday, allowing Bubb to take B Fleet. Welcome to A Fleet John, you sailed fast this last season, and I am sure you will hold your own next season in A Fleet.
I hit my predictions perfectly in A Fleet with Team Legg and Helias winning the Class Championships. They had a slow start placing 11th in the first two races of the series, but Helias told me after the event that he mentioned the curse of me picking them to win after the second race. That must have lifted the bad jujum because they won six out of the last 10 races. Team Wiese finished in second place with Thompson and Conzelman taking third place, and Team Campbell in fourth. Chuck Simmons and I finished a hard-fought battle in seventh place. We’ve had many 4th or 6th place finishes, with our best finish being a 2nd. We felt good about our effort, but made too many mistakes mixed in with some bad luck.
In the middle of September, Harbormaster Paul Blank sent out a notice that most if not all the racing, anchorage and aids to navigation in the lower bay have now been illuminated. This is one of those small upgrades to the harbor that is more difficult to accomplish than you can imagine. Now we can hope that the next item is the county or Orange Sheriff’s Department seeing the light, and providing lights on the upper bay channel markers sometime in the near future.
If we are really lucky, maybe the Coast Guard might even see the light and change out the three remaining “old-fashioned” channel markers and replace them with smaller buoys when they start dreading next year. I know I’m reaching for the stars on that one, yet we can only wish.
Sea ya.
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Len Bose is a yachting enthusiast, yacht broker and harbor columnist for Stu News Newport.
