NOOD WINNER:  LA TEMPETE !![Sunday, June 18, 2006. Chicago]  La Tempete, skippered by Tom Weber with tactician Steve Youngson sailed to a solid victory in the Beneteau 40.7 section of the 2006 Chicago NOOD Regatta.   2006 is the seventh straight year that the Beneteau 40.7 fleet has had it’s own starting section.  Eleven boats participated in this one-design event.The annual National Offshore One Design (NOOD) Regatta is sponsored by Sailing World Magazine and hosted by the Chicago Yacht Club.   This year the regatta consisted of eight races over three days, Friday through Sunday, June 16-18^th.  Conditions were mostly ideal with moderate south to southwesterly breezes of 13 to 18 knots, warm and sunny on Friday and Saturday, and cloudy and not as warm on Sunday.  At the end of the first day of racing on Friday with three races completed, Finesse, skippered by owner Alan McMillan’s brother, Neil McMillan, was in first place by 5 points, followed by La Tempete in 2^nd place with 9 points, and Tsunami, skippered by Don Hayes in 3^rd place with 11 points.  Over the course of the remainder of the regatta these three boats held onto the first three positions in the standings but their order with the top three changed by the end of the regatta highlighting the closeness of the racing at the top end of the section.  At the end of Saturday, with six races finished, La Tempete had moved into 1^st place.  Finesse and Tsunami were tied for 2^nd with 22 points apiece and the tiebreaker going to Finesse with two bullets.  But fortune didn’t smile on Finesse as they finished in last place in the last race on Saturday due to a temporary crew illness.  The deciding outcome for second place was on Sunday when Tsunami and Finesse protested each other over contact between the boats at a leeward mark rounding.  In the hallway outside the protest room, while the rest of the NOOD awards were being announced in the tent well into Sunday evening, the crews of the two boats waited while the protest committee debated.  Three of the possible outcomes would not affect the final standing.  The representative for each boat, Tory Enerson for Tsunami and Dave Hardy for Finesse, were called into the room for the decision.  Moments later, as Dave emerged he said it all with, “Finesse is in third place”.  With Finesse disqualified in the last race the order of 2^nd and 3^rd place changed and Tsunami moved into 2^nd.Meanwhile there was lots of other action on the course.  Das Boot skippered by Jay Muller with tactician Mike Weile, was the defending champion of the 2005 NOOD.  Going into Sunday Das Boot was in 6^th place tied in points with Vayu, skippered by Ron Buzil with tactician Tom Hauk, with 37 apiece and the tiebreaker going to Vayu who had a bullet in the 5^th race.  Das Boot came through when they had to with a 3-2-5 in the last three races as Weile hit his stride (he didn’t participate on Friday) and they were able to hold onto 6^th place. Vayu had their worst day of the regatta on Sunday with  7-8 finishes dropping them to 7^th place.  Meanwhile. Collaboration skippered by Bob Vickery surged ahead in the standings on Sunday from 7^th place to 4^th place with 5-2 finishes.  Spanker, skippered by Jim McDonnell, finished in overall 5^th place with  inconsistent finishes ranging from 10^th to 1^st.  Cancan, skippered by Clem Boltz finished in 8^th place with what may well have been the most consistent mid-fleet finishing scores ranging from 4^th to 9^th.  Rookie boats Barracuda, skippered by Steve Pelke with tactician Alex Guzman and driver John Boyle, and Temptation skippered by Bogdan Stojkowski, finished 9^th and11th respectively.  It was good to see the rookies on the race course and to note that they sailed well and competitively when Temptation beat four other boats in the 7^th race and Barracuda had two 4’s on Saturday.After the regatta I had the opportunity to ask a few of the skippers of boats in the top four places for some of their observations of the racing.  Don Hayes, skipper of 2^nd place Tsunami, said that going into the regatta he “felt our biggest competition would be:  La Tempete, Vayu, Finesse, and Das Boot.  La Tempete is the boat to beat (if that’s possible, Vayu ,because you have been on our ass (and I don’t mean behind) but ready to pounce on us at any given time.  Finesse, because of his brother and past history.  Das Boot, because of last year’s NOOD performance and their better finishes.”            Finesse’s owner, Alan McMillan, said, “As for who we saw as our biggest competitor, the real answer is that recently Collaboration and La Tempete almost always do good, but the fact of matter is that every boat in the 40.7 Class is capable of winning any regatta and I always look at it that way.”            Bob Vickery, skipper of 4^th place Collaboration, had these comments about the other boats before taking his team into the regatta.  “La Tempete is clearly the best boat in the fleet.  Tom and his crew have been sailing together a long time and their boat handling and tactic's reflect that.  After La Tempete, there are 5 boats which are good week in and week out: Tsunami, Finesse, Vayu, Das Boat and Collaboration.  That gives our fleet 6 boats that can win on any given day.”            Tory Enerson, tactician on Tsunami, weighed in with these observations.  “As far as competition goes, this fleet has gotten so competitive that it is hard to disregard any of the boats out there.  Of course there are some new boats who I am sure will be right there once they get the 40.7 down.  La Tempete has been very dominant lately, Vayu has really jumped into the elite status the last three years and is always a factor, Das Boat took great strides last year and has to be considered on the course.  The inconsistent but sometimes seemingly unbeatable Collaboration must also be noted and certainly Finesse and her consistent sailing and specifically her consistent sailing in the NOOD every year also makes her a boat to contend with.  I want to stress, however, that in this fleet, it seems that all the boats have a chance to do well.  Take Spanker for example.  A bit of a dark horse, she sailed great for the most part and showed that consistency can keep you in a regatta.”            About their game plan, Tory went on to say, “On day three we assumed there would be two races.  For the first race we just wanted to go out and sail our best strategic race, fastest around the coarse, and tactically deal with Finesse if the chance or need arose.  However, I do think that her strategy was to be a bit more engaging with us, match race style, which made for some very interesting situations, i.e. the three-hour protest at the end of the day.  In regards to the protest, neither of us could have lost third place so it was a no-brainer to go through with it.  Tsunami is a boat that hates to protest but one must defend her honor when it feels slighted. All in all, it turned out to be a very exciting day.  I liked that we went out in the second race and again sailed our own race as efficiently as possible and took a solid third, beating finesse handily without engaging her directly.”            Bob Vickery elaborated on his game plan.  “We are sailing with 6 new crew members in key positions and 8 new crew members in total.  Our improvement on Sunday was simply the result of each crew member understanding their job and executing well.  On Friday and Saturday the crew work was tentative, which caused our boat to be slightly off the mark both on boat speed and handling.  The end result of that, in a fleet as closely matched as ours is the difference between being in the front third or the bottom third. Once you are sailing in the bottom third of the fleet, you are surrounded with other boats that don't have a good understanding of sailboat racing.  They focus on holding you back as opposed to getting ahead.  Winning the battle instead of winning the war.  When you are in the top four or five places, those boats know how to sail sharp, stay with-in the rules, and work to get ahead without focusing on how to hurt the other guy.  Everyone wins in that situation.”            Alan McMillan had this observation about Saturday and Sunday:  “On Saturday, we wanted to be conservative, sail well, keep an eye on La Tempete, but don't lose the big lead we had.  Of course, we blew the last race on Saturday "BIG TIME", including an injured bowman who fell hard prior to the takedown at the leeward mark and getting both the  jib sheets and the jib itself all wrapped around the spinnaker pole.  So instead of the third place that we had at the time, we left the leeward mark rounding at least 15 boat lengths behind everyone.  Even though we caught up to Excalibur and Can Can at the finish, we still were DFL!  So much for being conservative.  On Sunday we focused on Tsunami because it wasn't realistic to catch La Tempete and no one else could realistically catch either of us.”            Don summed up Tsunami’s game plan on the last day, “Our game plan going into day 3 was to do our own thing, race our own race, and cover if the opportunity presents itself.  In that order.”             As for what the winners used, La Tempete and Tsunami use North Sails.  Tsunami uses Nexus instruments.                          When asked who their MVP was for the regatta, both skippers, Don and Bob, said their entire crew was MVP.   Don Hayes final comment was:  “We have an expression on Tsunami:  ‘OLD TIME HOCKEY’.  Which means STICK WITH THE BACIS, ONE LEG AT A TIME. OLD TIME HOCKEY.  I HOPE THIS WILL HELP.” 2006 Chicago NOOD  40.7 Section final standings and individual race results: