U S Yacht Racing Union

Jory Twist of Newport Harbor Yacht Club dropped to third place with one race remaining after a premature start disqualified him from the seventh race in the U.S. Yacht Racing Union/Rolex Junior Sailing Championships Thursday off Newport Beach. In the day's second race (eighth in the series), Twist, Orange County's only entry, placed second, putting him in third overall. Despite Thursday's setback, Twist still has a chance; only four points separate the series' top three sailors.

Brian Fagan, the Santa Santa Barbara resident who has written an excellent cruising guide to the Channel Islands, has expressed some wise and prudent thoughts about "safety proofing" your vessel against the ever-present possibility of "man overboard." Fagan refers to the drowning of a crewman last August in a Santa Barbara to King Harbor sailboat race. The crewman slipped when handling a spinnaker and fell overboard soon after dark in moderate weather. He was never found.

Yachtsmen who hanker for a race to Hawaii every year--instead of every other year in the biennial Transpac from Los Angeles to Honolulu--have that chance because of the Pacific Cup, which is sailed on even-numbered years. The Pacific Cup, originally called the Kauai Transpac, is scheduled to start off San Francisco July 4 and is expected to draw upward of 75 entries, many from Southern California.

He was an architect who sailed. He was a sailor who planned mammoth commercial projects such as Los Angeles' Vermont-Wilshire subway station. In 1984, he melded the vocation with the avocation to help guide the yachting events for the Los Angeles Olympic Games. Charles McChesney "Chuck" Kober, who raced or coached in yachting regattas at five Olympics, died Oct. 22 at a Bangor, Maine, marina called Journey's End. His family said he was preparing for a cruise aboard his J-40, the Shibui.

By the end of last year, sailing had turned sour for Larry Klein. Unable to raise money for his America's Cup campaign, Triumph America, he scuttled it and joined Bill Koch's megabucks America-3 operation. But it wasn't long before Koch fired him for reasons now in litigation.

Underneath a J-24 sailboat in dry dock, Jeff Thorpe runs a power sander across the keel, planing the leading edge to razor sharpness. It's grunt work, but it pays the bills and enables him to be a serious sailor without having to run off and join the Navy. "A new J-24 costs $42,000 rigged, a lot of money," he said during a break from work at Anchors Way Marine boatyard in Ventura. "So I buy old boats and fix them up and sell them. That's how I can pay for my sailing."

Let's get this straight: The latest quarrel in the America's Cup is over when the challengers should show up in San Diego? That's it? It almost makes the catamaran affair seem sensible. The America's Cup Organizing Committee, cast as the Gestapo in this comic opera, tells the challengers, "You vill have your boats here by Dec. 20!"

Japan's Nippon Challenge, anewcomer, became a serious contender for the America's Cup earlier this year by hiring New Zealand's Chris Dickson to sail its boat at San Diego in 1992. Now, there are serious questions as to whether traditional Japanese decorum can survive another year and a half of the impetuous Kiwi. There might be no better sailor.

Horror stories are piling up over so called "performance boats"--power boats that can rocket along at speeds of more than 100 m.p.h. Anybody with enough money, but not necessarily the skill and knowledge to control such seagoing broncos, can buy these boats. The horror stories refer to the deaths and destruction that these racers are leaving in their wake, not to mention the danger and discomfort to which these boats subject their slower sisters.

A fisherman in an inflatable boat, powered by a small outboard engine, trolled slowly by my little ship, Herald Bird, the other afternoon. I was happily applying a third coat of varnish to the Bird's cabin and cockpit coaming. I guess I didn't look too happy because as he passed, while patting his "inner tube," he said to me smugly, "I've got no maintenance on this thing." I was forced to agree to the obvious. I didn't bother to tell him I was enjoying myself immensely.