Something for Everyone at Ullman Sails Long Beach Race Week
by Michelle Slade 22 Jun 16:29 PDT
June 20-22, 2025
Steve George is a good sport; after Day 1 Ullman Sails Long Beach Race Week he was at the back of the fleet in Random Leg B class but he has a great sense of humor and was quite okay about that, understanding that his luck is in the hands of the universe. After all, a cruising boat like Shadowfax, his Jeanneau 43, needs a lot of breeze to get up and going because she's heavy.
"It's a big, comfortable cruising boat, which makes it easy to get good crew, and for some stupid reason we race it every now and then," laughs George. "If the wind gods are good and we have got a good breeze, we stand a pretty good chance but if the wind is light like it was on Friday, we have a bit of a rough time!"
George, a long-time ABYC member since 2011, bought Shadowfax in 2014. George, from Huntington Beach, grew up sailing at King Harbor Yacht Club and has sailed everywhere on the coast from Santa Barbara to San Diego. On Shadowfax he mostly races point to point events so the boat is well set up for distant events with a decent sail inventory for the offshore races that George enjoys. In recent years he attempted the 2023 Transpac for the first time on the Jeanneau, a race he had successfully finished on other boats, but broke off the masthead spinnaker bails six hundred miles from the start.
"Other parts seemed to be fairly stable but the problem was we were just turning to go downwind and if we couldn't raise the spinnaker, or if we had to do it on jib halyards, the jib halyards would only last a day or two before they chafed and broke so that's when we decided to back out," recalls George.
He fixed the problem and turned around to complete the 2024 PacCup - San Francisco to Hawaii which went really well; Shadowfax took second in class.
"The average boat in our PacCup cruising class was about 40-50', then they put a Swan 65 in our class which happened to be sailed by Paul Cayard," laughs George. "Guess who won!"
For Ullman Sails Long Beach Race Week, George has his regular crew on board including Greg Wigger, Chuck Stevens, Guy Collin, Grant Hill, Geoff Ives, and Gene Prizer, a seasoned crew who he has sailed with many times. He's won in class previously, and the last time he raced it a few years ago he got second in class albeit with a lot more breeze. George only sails in the Random Leg division because Shadowfax is not set up for short tacking.
"We don't do well under 10 knots, and this year we're an outlier in this fleet; most of our competition includes lighter J boats, a couple of Santa Cruz 37s, a Beneteau 40.7and a J105. The closest thing we are up against is have is Dos Amigos, the C&C110, we don't have a lot of heavier weight cruising boats racing this year. Ullman Sails LBRW is a fun time with great parties and usually great breeze and its game on."