Scott Dickson Wins The Ficker Cup Match Racing Regatta For The Seventh Time

Each year Long Beach Yacht Club hosts the Ficker Cup Match Racing Regatta in the clubs identically matched Catalina 37 boats. The winner of this event gets an automatic invitation to the Congressional Cup. This year, seven teams vied for the invitation. The three-day event used the double round robin match-racing format. Each team raced each other team two times.

Photo by Camille Daniels

Scott Dickson, representing the host club, won the event for the seventh time with a decisive 11 wins and 1 loss. Scotty’s crew consisted of Tim Lidgard, Dave Ridley, Tony Stuart, Ian Vickers and Matt Wachowicz.

In second place with 8 wins 2 losses was Team Ayres Hotel. The team consisted of Skipper Bill Hardesty, Matt Reynolds, Jeff Reynolds, Matt Bryant and Matt Cassidy all from San Diego and Dave Kurt from Cal Yacht Club in Marina Del Rey.

Third place from Newport Beach, Jon Pinkey had 7 wins and 5 losses. The team of Chuck Parrish from San Francisco was 4th. with 7 wins and 4 losses A young team, skippered by TroyTindill of Buckland’s Beach Yacht Club New Zealand, was 5th with 5 wins and 7 losses.

6th was Matt Gregory of San Francisco with 3 wins and 9 losses. 7th was Phillip Thompson from Newport Harbor Yacht Club with O wins and 12 losses.

Long Beach inner harbor provided steady afternoon sea breeze of 10 to 16 knots for the three-day event. At the trophy presentation Sunday afternoon, legendary America’s Cup Skipper Bill Ficker from Newport Beach was on hand to present the trophy that he donated to LBYC for this match racing event. He joked that if Scott wins again it might be appropriate to change the name of the cup to the Dickson Cup.

In 2004,Congressional Cup will be celebrating its 40th year as the longest consecutively running match-racing event. The dates are April 19 to 24,2004.