SEASON CHAMPIONS, PART II W
LATITUDE/ROB
elcome to part two of our annual look at the Season Champions from the Bay's various racing arenas. You may notice that this month's segment looks drastically different than anything you've seen before. We elected to change things up to make the section a little more visually appealing, while getting more usable space at the same time. We hope you like the new look and feel! This month we look at both the Bay Area Multihull Association (BAMA) season winner, and four one designs with strong fleet associations on the Bay. If you're reading this and thinking, "wait, my one design isn't here, and it fits that description." Don't fret, we'll be getting to more next month, along with winners from the Wooden Boat Racing Association, and some winners of the Bay's more popular dinghy classes. Rather than go into the customary details about fleet health and trends here, we're incorporating them into the narratives below. Enjoy! Express 27 El Raton Ray Lotto Last year, Ray Lotto won his first Express 27 season championship since the '80s. Rather than rest on his laurels, Lotto and his loyal crew went out and did it again, winning both the inshore and offshore segments of the class's championship. "We sailed every race," Lotto said. "When you sail 39 races, you get a few throwouts, and that makes a difference. It's a
tough fleet, very competitive." With him for all 39 of those races was Steve Carroll, a fellow Express 27 owner, with whom Lotto has been sailing for 20 years. Patrick Lewis, Noe Goodman and Jordan Paxhia — all of whom have been sailing on El Raton for at least four years — were aboard for almost all the races. "Other than sailing every race, I have to put our success down to the crew," Lotto said. "It's a very pleasant boat to sail on because there's never any
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Ray Lotto repeated as the Express 27 season champion.
'Origami' lit up during the NOOD regatta; inset, from left — Ross Stein and Bill Pace.
yelling. It's always very civilized, and we all socialize together after sailing; we always go out to dinner after racing and everyone enjoys each other's company." El Raton — Spanish for "the mouse" — has a meaning that dates much farther back than the Express. Lotto was posted to a diesel submarine named Raton in the Navy in the late-'50s. The sub's logo was a dangerous-looking mouse riding a torpedo: the Radin' Raton. So 30 years later, he appropriated El Raton for his Express and it stuck. The San Francisco-based developer who served as the St. Francis YC commodore in '07, has owned El Raton since the '80s. "My son went to Berkeley, and we thought, 'what can we do to spend some time together?' Lotto said. "So we went out and bought the boat." Twenty-five years later and he's still out there charging it, and said that if his crew keeps sticking with him, he'll keep sailing the boat. "As long as everyone wants to keep racing, I'm there," he said.
