Stearns, McCullough keep brass bat
Tony Stearns and Janet McCullough will get to keep the brass bat for yet another year after topping the 33rd Annual Laguna Regatta held over the weekend in the waters of the Saipan Lagoon.
Organized by the Over the Reef Yacht Club, this year’s Laguna Regatta sailed off last Saturday with very light winds which turned the whole field on its head.
Lino Olopai and Amada Rabauliman finished first and second in two of the races and seemed poised to really challenge the reigning champions, Stearns and McCullough.
Tyce and Angie Mister, longtime regatta competitors returned to the field for the first time in many years, but struggled with equipment problems on Saturday.
After fixing their boat on Sunday, however, the husband-and-wife pair made up for lost time and using the surprise strong winds from the east, challenged the whole field with two consecutive second-place finishes.
After a very intense series of very close races with dramatic shifts in fortune on Sunday morning, the final race started out with the teams of Mister-Mister, Olopai-Rabauliman, and the tandem of Ron Smith and Ted Parker in a three-way tie.
The committee called a very short race, which meant that the teams would depend almost entirely on skill to determine the victors.
In the heat of competition, many boats were only inches apart, but the end of the race saw the dramatic finish of Stearns-McCullough, followed by Smith-Parker, Mister-Mister, and Olopai-Rabauliman.
The 33rd Annual Laguna Regatta was originally thought to have six boats and 12 crewmen but was trimmed to four boats and eight crew on race day. The other crew that were supposed to take part in the yearly race were Cecilio Rakulipi and crew and Mike Johnson and crew.
The route of the 33rd Annual Laguna Regatta used the standard two- to three-buoy course between Managaha and Tanapag.
Based on the island of Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands, the Over The Reef Yacht Club (Hobie fleet No. 189) sponsors catamaran events (Hobie and Prindle cats) and public seminars about both traditional Carolinian sailing and modern sailing.
