Yachting

The U.S. Olympic Festival this week at Oklahoma City will provide different opportunities for the 75 or so Orange County athletes who will participate. For athletes such as 1988 Olympic shotputters Jim Doehring and Bonnie Dasse and Peter Campbell, a two-time Olympic water polo player, the Olympic Festival represents a chance to get together with friends--and rivals--while competing largely free of high stakes and pressure.

Please reference the article "Chamber Backs Lacey" in your May 18 issue. On the whole I enjoyed your article, however, there are several misconceptions that I would like to correct. First. I don't race yachts, I race sailboats. There is a very definite difference, mainly in the cost and I don't have the hundreds of thousands of dollars necessary to race yachts. Second. I am not a single issue candidate. While it is true that I was the spokesman for the "Save the Keys Committee" until I resigned from that committee last October, the Keys has not been and should not be an issue in this election.

MUSIC For a band at the vanguard of contemporary arty dance music, Yacht sure has staying power. The duo, known for its arch disco and gentle psychedelia, celebrates its 10th anniversary with a career-encapsulating set. The Echoplex, 1154 Glendale Blvd, L.A. 8 p.m. Sat. $15. attheecho.com.

Whether possessing innate superpowers or just overworked abs and some highly advanced technology, all comic book heroes are vigilantes. That's their raison d'être: To see justice done in situations in which the ordinary forces of law and order, be it the police or an interplanetary army, cannot. Which makes the villains just as interesting, and often more telling, than the heroes themselves. When urban decay and inner-city violence are on our minds, we get Gotham's master criminals.

Authorities seized convicted financier Bernard L. Madoff's waterfront mansion and vintage yacht in an effort to recoup assets for investors he swindled. U.S. marshals changed the locks at the unoccupied property and inventoried the 8,753-square-foot home, listed on tax rolls as worth $9.3 million. Madoff's 55-foot yacht named "Bull," a 1969 Rybovich valued at $2.2 million, was seized from a marina on Florida's Atlantic coast. A motor boat also was seized.

Olin Stephens, a naval architect who designed eight America's Cup winners, along with thousands of cruising and racing yachts, has died. He was 100. The senior member of the New York Yacht Club, Stephens died Saturday in Hanover, N.H., US Sailing reported on its website, without giving a cause of death. Stephens produced designs for more than 2,200 boats, including Dorade, which won the 1931 transatlantic race, and America's Cup defenders including Ranger, Columbia, Constellation, Intrepid, Courageous and Freedom.

When Geri Conser's plane crashed into the ocean four years ago while she was photographing a national yacht race in Newport Beach, she thought her career as an aerial yachting photographer was over. Not only did she lose her cameras, photos and her own plane, which sank in 180 feet of water, she also broke her back. Since the crash, however, Conser's back has healed and her photography career has taken off like a high-flying jet.

John Shadden said he had sailed "only three or four times" since his 1988 Olympic bronze medal campaign. But the Long Beach stockbroker showed he still has his touch at the helm when he brought Mike Campbell's Custom 52 Climax from behind with two victories Sunday to win the Fifties class of Ullman Sails-Washington Insurance Race Week at Long Beach.