Read And Holmberg Lead Pack Toward Semifinals

Tight competition as six crews fight for four places in the semi finals.

As Dennis Conner was racing down the Southern California coast from Newport Beach to Baja California in the annual offshore classic Friday, Ken Read and his crew sailed into a tie for first place with Peter Holmberg in the 37th Congressional Cup by winning all five of their races on Day 3. This crew – tactician Terry Hutchinson, bowman Jerry Kirby, Chuck Brown, Morgan Trubovich and veteran trimmer Moose McClintock – probably will be part of the team that Conner takes to New Zealand next year to try to win back the America’s Cup.

“We’re feeling very comfortable as a group,” said Read, a North Sails vice president who drove Conner’s entry at Auckland in 2002-3. “Jerry hadn’t done an event with us before and this is only the third one of these [match racing events] I’ve done.”

And because America’s Cup performance doesn’t count, Read’s ranking on the world circuit is virtually invisible. But he finished third in last month’s Sun Microsystems Cup in Australia and, along with Holmberg, is a good bet to reach the semifinals here. If the title comes down to those two, they should know each other’s moves well. Holmberg was strategist in Read’s Stars & Stripes afterguard at Auckland. Each is 11-4 with three races remaining in the double round robin Saturday to determine the final four on Sunday.

Four others are contending for the other two slots: third-ranked Bertrand Pacé at 10-5, four-time Congressional Cup champion Rod Davis at 9-6 and Britain’s Andy Green and California’s Morgan Larson at 8-7. All are sailing Catalina 37s in a windward-leeward course near Belmont Pier in Long Beach’s outer harbor.

Pacé, the veteran French campaigner now sailing for Team New Zealand’s America’s Cup defenders, fell out of a first-place tie with Holmberg by losing his first three races Friday. Then he momentarily lost main sail trimmer Chris (Curly) Salthouse overboard while leading James Spithill around the windward mark in his last race of the day.

Salthouse said he was knocked overboard when “my good friend Graig Satterthwaite lost his balance.” Satterthwaite pulled him back aboard from the stern a few seconds later, no harm done and the lead intact.

France’s Sebastien Destremau and Denmark’s Jesper Radich, each 3-12, aren’t in the running for anything except the event’s traditional booby prize book, “Sail Your Boat Right.” But they played effective roles as spoilers Friday.

Destremau had lost his last eight races before stunning Pacé and Holmberg back to back, as Radich knocked off Davis. Read’s last three matches are against Destremau, Radich and Holmberg. “I’m telling you, it’s not easy,” Read said. “Anyone here can beat anyone else. I don’t think there are speed differences [among the boats]. We aren’t counting anything yet.” His key win was in the last race against Davis, with a right-favoring sea breeze piping to 14 knots. Despite a wide disparity in match racing experience, Read outmaneuvered Davis to control the right side, hit the starting line a half-boat length ahead to windward and held on tenaciously to win by 20 seconds. “Huge credit to [tactician] Terry [Hutchinson],” Read said. “We switched our call with about a minute to go and decided we wanted the right.” Holmberg will face PacZ, Read and Spithill in his final races.

STANDINGS (after 15 of 18 flights; top 4 to semifinals)
1. Tie between Read and Holmberg, 11-4
3. Pacé, 10-5; 4. Davis, 9-6
5. Tie between Green and Larson, 8-7
7. tie between Pillot and Spithill, 6-9
9. tie between Radich and Destremau, 3-12