Here is the honest-to-­goodness truth: After a North U Performance Race Week in St. Thomas, you will be faster, smarter and definitely a little sunburned. Most importantly, though, you will be ready for your home-fleet racing, with one distinct advantage: You will have done more starts, more mark roundings and a lot more boathandling than in an entire season. It’ll feel like boot camp in paradise, but when you get home, you’ll be ready to serve.

This tropical Performance Race Week happens twice each winter, once in February and once in March, and running the immersive sail-racing clinic is the kind professor himself, Bill Gladstone, who’s been teaching the North U curriculum for decades and always greets the students with a kind smile and inquisitive head lean.

North U is now owned by the American Sailing Association, whose primary mission since the early 1980s has been to teach sailing and seamanship. With Gladstone’s North U in their portfolios, they’re now expanding into teaching racing through live clinics and online courses. Race Week students, from all sailing walks and classes, spend a couple grand apiece to get schooled on boatspeed, tactics and rules. But ultimately, the experience is all about teamwork, and the lesson plan is reinforced over five long eight-hour days on the water, in the classroom and with onboard coaches.

As this year’s March edition of Race Week gets underway on an early Monday morning at the St. Thomas Sailing Center, the birds are chirping as Gladstone assembles the eager students. After pairing them with their coaches, he proceeds to pull boat assignments from a hat. It’s no secret among the veteran coaches that some of the IC24s, which are modified J/24s, are faster than others. But at the end of the day, the boat draw doesn’t matter because if the crew work isn’t sharp, a faster boat isn’t going to make a difference.

Related: Sailing World Expeditions is the go-to place for sailing adventures that fit your on-water lifestyle.

For the team I’ve been assigned to as a coach, what does matter is the color of the boat. Gladstone pulls our team’s name and announces One Love. It’s the bright yellow that’s impossible to miss on its mooring. My first reaction is, “Oh no, not the yellow one.” Brightly colored boats always get the starting-line caller’s attention. But my team is ecstatic with the draw. The Olson 30 a few of them race back home in Duluth, Minnesota, is yellow and appropriately named Tweety.

I’m not thrilled about the whole color thing, but I do like the name, which is fitting for the exercise we are about to embark on. It’s a song of unity, and that’s what the goal will be: a tight unit with respect for each and their skills, doing our job to the best of our ability. Over the next five days, we’re going to get together and feel all right.

My teammates are Bob Schroer, Marne Kaeske, Melissa Kuntz and Tim Buck. Each of them are in St. Thomas for individual reasons, but they’ve come as a team. When their sailing seasons get underway in a few months, they’ll be racing at Minnesota’s Duluth YC on Schroer’s Olson 30 and Buck’s Aerodyne 38. 

For Schroer, priority No. 1 is crew mechanics. And after that, understanding wind patterns and helm balance. For Kaeske, who is relatively new to the racing thing, it’s about confidence and knowing what’s going on inside and outside the boat. Buck’s goal is to correct “decades of bad habits,” but also sail trim and better helming. And for Kuntz, it’s simply about being more comfortable with helming.

This much is all I can discern as we hastily gather for our first team meeting in One Love’s cockpit before rigging and dropping our mooring lines in St. Thomas’ picturesque Cowpet Bay. Gladstone runs a tight schedule, so there’s no time dawdle. A quick run through the boat setup and who’s doing what in the first rotation, and off we go in the direction of Christmas Cove. The morning’s session focuses on the basics of tacking, upwind sail trim and rotating everyone through every position. And when it’s too soon, we’re back ashore for Gladstone’s first classroom session and lunch at the club. The afternoon’s focus is spinnaker handling and crew rotations. With some additional classroom time and a video debrief, the sailors slink back to their condos, heads full of tips and bodies worn from a long day on the water.

The routine continues the next morning, with the addition of starting practice and one-lap windward/leeward races. Each “real” start is preceded by two practice starts, and by lunchtime, it’s easy to understand why Gladstone promises more race starts than a season’s worth. In two days, I think we’ve already met our quota. To mix things up and introduce a few more challenges, Gladstone adds an hourlong around-the-island race, a counterclockwise lap around nearby Great Saint James, which adds in some navigational skill development as well as some strategy lessons in navigating through swift currents and wind shadows.

On board One Love, I’m feeling pretty chuffed with the team I’ve been assigned because one of the biggest challenges of Performance Race Week is the mandatory crew rotations. Pushing students well out of their comfort zones and outside their normal crewing positions creates all sorts of stress and unfamiliar situations. The bow is usually the most difficult to master for those who commonly hold the helm. And for those who never drive, strong winds, waves and a fleet of student drivers make for heart-pounding starts and mark roundings.

On One Love, Buck and Schroer were plenty comfortable at the helm, but the most peculiar thing started happening: Kaeske and Kuntz, both of whom claimed zero experience driving in a race, were outstanding. By the fourth day of the clinic, our team were beyond basics and focusing on the 2.0 details, like cross-­sheeting, passing the tiller behind their backs, roll-­tacking and jibing. In four fast-paced days, I witnessed an ­amazing ­transformation in this ­foursome—more laughs, a lot less stress around the corners, and more confidence around the track.

We’re mentally ready for the final-day regatta, where the coaches shall only coach between races. But to be sure, I suggest some morning calisthenics on the mooring. I trigger my stopwatch for five minutes, and we get a few curious looks from other teams passing by as Kaeske is on the foredeck end-to-ending the pole to lazy spinnaker sheets, Kuntz is at the back doing tiller passes, Buck’s refining his jib cross-­sheeting exchanges, and Schroer is practicing the roll-and-flatten with the mainsheet in hand. Now it’s really looking like boot camp, and all we’re missing are jumping jacks and burpees.

The “regatta” portion is a two-session, seven-race day, with races in the morning, including one distance race round Great Saint James—this time clockwise—a lunch break at the club, and more races in the afternoon. And as Gladstone promised, we got as many races in as you would over a typical three-day ­weekend regatta. It’s fast-paced fun in the sun. Team One Love is solid midfleet going into the lunch break and, perhaps with a bit of a food coma, puts a 6 on the scoreboard before finally winning a race and closing with a fifth in the eight-boat fleet.

On the dry-erase ­scoreboard back at the club, we later learn we’ve tied for third. On the countback, the team on Huron Girl beats us with a second to our third, and that’s that. Second place is only two points away—so close. But Performance Race Week is not really about points on the board. It’s about getting faster and smarter, and while a sunburn will soon fade, the memories and the lessons will last a lifetime.

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Transitioning from collegiate sailing to keelboats can be difficult for many young-adult sailors who lack experience or connections. It’s not a new problem, and while there are national events and local efforts across the US to retain these young sailors, one program in Rhode Island is having a real and positive impact on the local crew pool.

“You have a lot of people between 18 to 25 that love sailing and maybe do it in college, but then life takes them in different directions, so sailing loses them,” says Peter McClennen, a beneficiary and supporter of Sail Newport’s EOS Sailing Program. “Our view is that college-­age sailors don’t really have strong big-boat crew skills. A lot of sailors have never used a winch before and never really worked in anything more than a two-person crew, so we start to introduce the important aspects of teamwork, communication, trim and choreography. We try to have them build two to three role skills so that they can be helpful on other boats.”

Sail Newport’s EOS Program was founded by a group of local sailors in 2017 in honor of renowned big-boat sailor Edward Oliver Sanchez, known for his work ethic and positive attitude. “Tad was always the first one on the boat, the first person down in the bilge bailing it out, and the last person to leave,” says Thomas Loughborough, a professional sailor who coaches with the program. “If you needed a sail moved, he was the first person to jump up and help you move it. The ethos and values of this program were lived by our friend Tad, who was taken from us too soon from bowel cancer in his late 30s.”

With a fleet of donated C&C 30s, the program instructs about 40 sailors, who compete in the local weeknight racing series. To maximize learning and skill-building, the boats are helmed by experienced sailors, and each boat has one professional sailor on board to coach.

“Bringing experienced people onto the boats is a core part of the whole platform,” McClennen says. “We have stable, calm, professional drivers because it’s very hard to train a driver and crew at the same time. If the driver’s wrong, the whole crew’s wrong—that’s just how it works. The crew can’t really be learning if the driver’s not doing the right thing.”

The program’s ethos is that developing the skills of reliability, responsibility and hard work is paramount to preparing young sailors to thrive in keelboat classes. “Teaching resilience is step one; I’m not easy on them,” Loughborough says. “A lot of my coaching has to do with a real focus on the process that is mundane, time-consuming or just uncomfortable, and by that, I mean cold, wet or disruptive to your day. All that preparation before you get on the water is essential to performance on the water.”

Loughborough’s tough-love approach has provided a generation of committed sailors the opportunity to thrive in keelboats. One such beneficiary is Anthony Purcell, a sailor on the University of Rhode Island Sailing Team. “When I heard about EOS, I was all over it,” he says. “I was a freshman in college looking for a way to participate in a highly competitive sport without sailing dinghies.”

Purcell joined the ­program in the summer of 2021 with minimal keelboat experience. Through working with Loughborough, he developed the skillsets required to be an indispensable member of the programs he now sails with. “The most crucial part of being a program member is showing up—and consistency,” he says. “Tommy was a great mentor because he was able to take me from a timid kid who didn’t know what I was doing to someone with the confidence to say, ‘If I show up and put in the time, there’s no reason things can’t get done.’”

Now in his third year with EOS, Purcell is the program’s fleet manager and the offshore coordinator of the URI Sailing Team who regularly races in IC37 class regattas.

Opportunities for EOS ­sailors to confidently transition into serious racing programs is the goal, McClennen says. “Once you’re with us and building skills, we’re all pretty well-networked in the sailing community, so as people look for crew, we feed them out. We have people on 12-Meters, IC37s, TP52s, you name it—that’s a key hallmark of our program. If you’re committed and focused on becoming a good sailor, you will get connected and end up on race boats all summer long.”

McClennen’s own IC37, Gamecock, has a crew roster filled with EOS sailors. “My boat has 10 people who have been a part of EOS, as do many of the other IC37s,” he says. “That’s where you see how important those crew skills are. Imagine you’re leading an IC37 campaign and need sailors; an EOS kid can say, ‘I know how to do runners, I know how to do bow, I know how to do mast.’”

Maintaining a fleet of well-used C&C 30s presents a plethora of challenges for the program, Purcell says. “The boats are eight years old, and that’s going to be the limiting factor of the program right now. With old boats, the more you sail them, the more they’ll delaminate and fall apart, and the more things will break.”

It takes a village to keep the boats in working order. With Purcell leading the charge as fleet manager, the sailors take the initiative to maintain the boats and repair damage. Jim Stone, of Gorilla Rigging, donates standing and running rigging to the program and services the boats when needed. Program helmsman Randy Shore, who owns the Newport-based sail loft Sailor and Seam, repairs the sails.

The framework that EOS provides is one solution to the nationwide issue of providing pathways for college sailors and recent grads into adult sailing fleets. The success of any such program, however, depends on the support of boat owners, professional sailors and organizations. For EOS, the connections, capabilities and access to the facilities and staff of Sail Newport, the city’s public-sailing facility, are critical to the effort.

Loughborough believes ­programs like EOS require three things: generous benefactors, an organization like Sail Newport that is willing to take on the risk and responsibility and, most importantly, a pool of keen young adults who want to move to the next level. “If the community in which you’re trying to create this doesn’t have that level of interest in the sport, then it’s going to be very difficult to get that type of buying and participation from the students themselves,” Loughborough says.

While the program is ­limited to Newport, its local nature allows for a dynamic environment that adapts to the needs of its sailors. “It’s very motivating to work in this type of program,” Purcell says. “Every time I throw out an idea, Peter is all about it. It’s really awesome that he goes out of his way so much to give everybody as many sailing opportunities as possible, and then repeat those opportunities to anyone who shows commitment to the program. It’s very motivating to know that the time and effort I’m putting in are recognized by those above—not only recognized, but greatly appreciated and often vocalized. It’s great to be a part of a program that I know has ­enthusiasm and funding.”

The success of EOS over the years confirms at least one thing: Most college sailors want to continue in the sport but lack the connections and skills to do so in big-boat sailing. As long as there is an opening to connect sailors to boats, more will transition from scholastic athletes to participants of a lifetime sport. It’s a model approach that can benefit any fleet looking to increase participation and ensure its longevity.

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Collegiate keelboat ­sailing does not get nearly the amount of attention it deserves. While offshore teams were long seen as a secondary option for sailors either too big or not experienced enough to compete in dinghy fleets, several teams are shifting away from traditional collegiate dinghy sailing to focus on the growing number of competitive collegiate offshore regattas held across the country. In the 2022 college offshore season, a new squad made its mark on the world of collegiate keelboat sailing: the University of Wisconsin.

Wisconsin is an unlikely candidate to win in offshore sailing; as a club team that practices on an inland lake, the university is hard-pressed to match the resources of government-­funded teams, such as the US Naval Academy, or teams located near coastal sailing hotspots, like the College of Charleston or the University of Rhode Island. However, Wisconsin’s record speaks for itself: Having won the 2022 Intercollegiate Offshore Regatta in Larchmont, New York, and the 2022 Great Lakes Intercollegiate Offshore Regatta in Chicago, it is clear the big-boat Badgers are a force to be reckoned with.

“It’s been really cool to see the Midwest be represented in college offshore sailing,” University of Wisconsin team captain Kate Thickens says. “When I was a freshman, offshore sailing wasn’t cool. Now there are a lot more people on our team interested in sailing big boats, so we are going to as many offshore regattas as we can.”

Wisco’s development of its keelboat program represents a national effort to increase big-boat access to younger sailors. The Larchmont and Great Lakes Intercollegiate Offshore Regattas, hosted by the Storm Trysail Club, are one prong of a sport-wide approach to increasing youth keelboat participation. Over the past decade, regattas such as the Harbor Cup in Los Angeles, the South Carolina Offshore Regatta and the Lake Erie Intercollegiate Offshore Regatta have sprung up to support decades-old regattas such as the IOR series and the US Naval Academy’s Kennedy and McMillan cups in creating a year-round, competitive collegiate offshore racing circuit. The Intercollegiate Sailing Association, College Sailing’s governing body, is also taking steps to bring offshore sailing into collegiate sailing’s fold, now recognizing key offshore events such as the Los Angeles Harbor Cup and Southern Collegiate Offshore Regatta as ICSA events despite them not being hosted by universities.

The addition of collegiate big-boat sailing has allowed swaths of youth sailors who outgrew or lost interest in dinghy sailing to continue to compete at a high level. “Offshore is the land of the misfits,” Thickens says. “It’s a great option for people who are told that they are just too big for college sailing. Obviously, with dinghy sailing, people are very weight-conscious, so they don’t always want somebody that is 6-foot-4 in their boat. I think people like that have definitely found more of a home on the offshore team, where they aren’t being told that they [are] too big. In fact, people will say, ‘Wow, we want you as our mast guy or gal or trimmer because you’re taller and stronger.’”

Competing in a variety of boats during offshore regattas provides the opportunity for new keelboat sailors to learn the skills necessary to continue on after graduation. “A lot of the time, we’ve never even practiced with the exact group that is competing in the event because we’re still building our offshore team,” Thickens says. “I’d say the majority of our effort is toward bringing new sailors into keelboats and teaching people how a winch works or how to fly a spinnaker.”

Access to keelboats remains a challenge for most teams, while the traditional powerhouses of offshore sailing enjoy waterfront facilities with a variety of donated keelboats to train on. The Badgers practice once a week using the Hoofer Sailing Club’s Tartan 10s on inland Lake Mendota. Competing in boats ranging from J/70 sportboats to J/109s and Dehler Optima 101s, the team often does not have the opportunity to train in its class of boat until the day before the regatta. “One thing that helps us do well at events is having a full day of practice on the day before the regatta,” team helmsman Jack Schweda says. “A lot of the time, most or all of the crew hasn’t sailed that specific type of boat before, so the practice day is a huge help.”

What the Badgers lack in facilities, however, they make up for through community support, relying on alumni and friends of the team for coaching. “We’ve had a lot of good chalk talks in the past year or two from alumni and guest speakers,” Schweda says. “Everybody on the keelboat team comes to these chalk talks and learns about how each position works—even positions that they might not be doing. I think that helps because each sailor hears it all; when a sailor gets put on the roster doing a position they have never done before, at least they have been to those chalk talks where they’ve heard the information and can try to work toward doing a good job.”

Located hundreds of miles from the venues where they compete, team members drive through the night in their personal vehicles to sail against top teams. Managing logistical challenges that other teams take for granted brings the team together, Thickens says. “Our drive to regattas is normally anywhere between 15 to 17 hours in the car, but I honestly think that it’s a positive thing. Yes, we are tired, but the drive creates chemistry with the group. This sailing team is one big family—there is no other group of people that I’d rather be packed into a minivan with and be stuck in the back seat. As a freshman, it was really cool to be thrown into these vans with older people on the team and get to know them; there’s really no better way to get to know people.”

While Wisco has been unique in its success in the past year, it represents a growing number of club teams that are taking up offshore sailing and placing on the podium at the highest levels.

While Wisco has been unique in its success in the past year, it represents a growing number of club teams that are taking up offshore sailing and placing on the podium at the highest levels. The similarly club-funded and freshwater University of Toledo placed second in the 2022 Larchmont Intercollegiate Offshore Regatta’s J/105 fleet and won the PHRF A division of the 2022 Lake Erie Intercollegiate Offshore Regatta.

The rise of such teams affirms that collegiate offshore sailing now allows many new or club-status teams an opportunity to take their sailing programs to the next level. While the Navy-hosted McMillan and Kennedy cups still featured the same decadeslong champion keelboat teams, events such as the Larchmont and Great Lakes Intercollegiate Offshore Regattas saw a plethora of club and developing teams the likes of Virginia Tech, Ohio State and Syracuse.

Offshore sailing may also be the way forward for new teams looking to establish themselves in the realm of competitive collegiate sailing and provide opportunities for sailors to thrive in the sport as experienced keelboat crews. Connecting collegiate sailors with race-boat owners provides a viable and sustainable solution to supporting local racing scenes with a deeper and younger pool of available crews.

The post Wisconsin Sailing Goes Big appeared first on Sailing World.

Like most things in life, the new Tartan 245, was born of necessity—and the desire for something ideally suited for the purpose. And this is how yacht designer Tim Jackett, of the Marine Manufacturing Group in Painesville, Ohio, created the Tartan 245 with Cai Svendsen, a customer who once owned a sailing school in Miami’s Biscayne Bay. This particular retired sailing instructor, who also owned a C&C 99, had experience with a wide variety of boats over the years, and naturally, had ideas of his own that would combine to make the ideal wind-powered vessel for harbors and bays. Jackett, as he’s known to do, took on the gentleman’s challenge and ran with it.

“He had always been thinking about a boat that would fit him better,” Jackett says. “So, we wound up moving along to the point where he wanted to see it happen. He funded the tooling and built the first boat. The goal was a boat that could be used in sailing schools but also be sporty enough for private ownership.”

The result is the 245, a conservative-leaning 24-footer that Jackett says is designed to accommodate four learn-to-sail students and an instructor, or a couple out for harbor cruise. “There’s a nice big cockpit with reasonable seatbacks and a limited cuddy cabin for sails and life jackets,” he says. “There’s room for an instructor in the companionway or aft of the tiller.”

Easy trailering and off-season storage are essential traits of any small keelboat, so to this end, the boat has a lifting keel and a deck-stepped carbon rig (and boom, both built in-house). The 900-pound keel is a composite fin with a lead bulb.

Jackett says they didn’t want a transom-hung rudder, which is vulnerable to damage in the sailing school environment, so instead, the rudder sits in a hinged-cassette arrangement that allows it to be easily pulled up and out of the water.

The standard sail plan has 285-square feet of upwind cloth, and while the initial concept was for a 110-percent jib with hanks, Jackett says early user reviews with the first boat in Annapolis, Maryland, have recommended a roller-furling jib instead, which keeps sailing school students off the foredeck as much as possible.

The asymmetric spinnaker package is optional and it has a centerline retractable carbon sprit from the stem that’s recessed into a covered well in the foredeck. Spinnaker sets and douses, Jackett says, go easy in and out of the wide companionway, and with the additional boost of the kite, says Jackett, in 15 to 20 knots, the boat has proven to “jump up and go.”

The quoted price of $49,165 does not include the options for: batteries, electric outboard, Porta-Potti, safety gear or electronics.

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Successive hurricanes and floods pummeled coastal Texas in the early 2000s, dealing a crippling blow to the many one-design fleets long rooted in the region. Recovery was slow, and while it took the better part of two decades for dinghy and keelboat fleets to flourish once again, youth sailing, particularly at Lakewood, needed more young sailors among its ranks.

Ten years of building a strong youth program led them to ask the very same question posed in yacht clubs across the nation: How do they get those same young sailors back and active? “From a membership perspective, the level of growth wasn’t where we wanted it to be,” says Lakewood’s past commodore Ash Walker.

Younger members, who are building careers and families, want team and match racing as well as social activity, Walker says, but they don’t want—or can’t afford—to own and campaign private boats. It was time for the club to step up and smash those the barriers, which began with an exhaustive three-year evaluation process and led to 12 new RS21 keelboats, commissioned at the club in late February.

The process provides a road map for other clubs with the ­initiative and wherewithal to do the same: They first reached out to progressive peers around the country to determine what type of programming was working best. Then came the boat: J/22s were attractive, Walker says, because it was the dominant fleet in the area already, but trying to find a dozen of them was problematic. “We wanted boats to be virtually identical for the racing we wanted to do,” Walker says. “We then talked about the J/70, and looked at it pretty hard, but cost and boat draft was a factor there. They looked at Sonars, but again, sourcing a matched set was a concern. Then came the arrival of the RS21, from English builder RS Sailing. As a sporty new and unproven design, Walker and his committee, which included local RS dealer and club member Mark McNamara, owner of KO Sailing, found that the 21-footer was an even tougher sell to those with the purse strings.

Cost was a big concern, but the club had recently sold real estate it owned, an off-site facility with declining use by the club membership. “We had the good fortune to sell that property and reinvest for the good of the club,” Walker says. They also partnered with a local sailing foundation, Bay Access, which “gave us some flexibility and an additional source of capital to help offset the costs.”

“I was keen on the RS21 from the beginning,” McNamara says. “RS really thinks through their boats. Early on, I tied in the factory with the club’s decision-makers to ensure it was a partnership, that RS understands our goals.” As fleet manager, McNamara’s KO Sailing now oversees the concierge service. “The goal is to remove every barrier to get members out on the boats, and then back on land and straight into the club bar or restaurant,” he says.

Walker, McNamara and a small Texan entourage chartered an RS21 for one regatta in 2019 (“We had a great time,” they say, with a chuckle, when pressed on their results) and confirmed that it “hit all the buttons,” Walker says. “It’s a new, good-looking boat, and can be used for adult learn-to-sail classes, twilight club racing, as well as youth and match racing. It’s very versatile and very stable. Being able to sail in both Clear Lake and Galveston Bay 12 months out of the year, we’re happy with the choice. Costwise it’s a great fit.”

Plus, the members are now jazzed with the sight of a dozen of them, now sitting in lifts, adorned with colorful decals and bow numbers.

When the first container arrived at Lakewood’s facilities on Clear Lake, a handful of members rolled up their sleeves to help assemble—screwing on cleats, stepping rigs and slotting keels. “You can only imagine what it takes to organize a fleet like this, and the headaches we ran into were very, very small,” McNamara says, lauding RS for its help—including one of the company’s principles flying in from England to help assemble the boats.

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“Looking back, it was important to have a lot of communication with the members, to sell them on the idea that this is the future,” Walker says. “Selling them on the idea of buying 12 sailboats was a challenge, but when we showed that it would bring in new members, they jumped on the wagon.”

When the board approved the plan, and the funding in late 2019, membership jumped immediately—”double digits,” Walker says. “Including younger family members and a couple of well‑known ­sailors who sold their J/22s.”

To facilitate management of the fleet and member usage, Lakewood also retained KO Sailing, which built an online reservation system. Every member who wants to charter is vetted, and those in need of remedial skills go to a coaching session with the club’s waterfront director, Terry Flynn. A custom microsite for Lakewood allows them to register for weeknight local races and day sails. “People show up, and the boat is on the dock ready to go,” McNamara says. “It’s a very simple process.”

Where there was once not a single club-owned fleet on Galveston Bay, Lakewood’s lead might quickly change that, says Walker, who hopes other nearby clubs follow suit because, as ­everyone knows, Texans only go big.

The post Lakewood’s Reboot appeared first on Sailing World.

The “Members Only” syndicate, formed by Jay Cross, Hannah Swett and Brian Kinney, won the first major regatta for the new one-design IC37 keelboat class. While they began the season as the team to beat, poor results in subsequent events bumped them to dark-horse status going into the National Championship in late September. After three days and eight close races, however, the syndicate and their teammates put themselves back atop the class, winning the championship in the final race of the regatta.

“At the beginning of the season, none of the teams had sailed the boats before,” Kinney says. “We were fortunate that we won the first event, but had some missteps; so it was a bit of a redemption to come back and win the big event. It was one of those regattas where we didn’t make it easy on ourselves.”

You won the first race, then followed up with two seconds. That’s a solid start.

Yes, but then we threw up a 13th on the second day. We were winning the regatta comfortably on the last day, and we were punched in the first race of the day—but had a boathandling error that was entirely my fault at the first leeward mark, and that race ended up being a fifth. The next race, we sailed the best beat of our entire regatta to get from midpack to fifth as we rounded the last weather mark, but we missed a course change for the downwind leg and dropped back to 11th. Scratching our heads at our unforced errors, we knew going into the last race that we were down by 1 point. We had to either win the last race to win the tiebreaker or get a boat behind us and the second-place boat. We had a great start, and they were on our hip all the way out to the left side of the course. When we finally tacked, we just crossed, rounded the mark first and just kind of sailed away to win that one. It was the most satisfying regatta win I’ve ever had because of the way we did it as a team.

What made this new team so good?

The three of us that started the team come from small-boat sailing. Jay was an Olympian in the International 470 class for Canada and is a top Etchells sailor today. Hannah did an Olympic [women’s match-racing] campaign, and I’ve sailed small keelboats for a long time. We all brought people from our past sailing experiences to the team. Each of us brought our own core bodies to the team, and everyone meshed well together. Our team’s chemistry was spectacular over the course of the year.

Were you or others on the team involved with the early development of the boat; particularly the ­tuning and boathandling guides?

No. The tuning guide and how to sail the boat was done by Melges and North and that’s one of the nice things about the class. There was a ton of support from North [official sail provider] with regatta coaching. The class is especially restrictive with on-the-water coaching during events, but has instituted things to get everyone up to speed.

How’d you manage to lock in Steve Benjamin as your tactician?

We’ve all known him for a long time through the Etchells, and Jay reached out to him and invited him two months before Nationals. Believe it or not, he wasn’t committed, and said he’d love to. One of the nice things about our program is that we’re all people with day jobs: our bowman Brian Fox is a senior partner at McKinsey & Company; Jay is the president of Hudson Yards, the largest commercial real estate development in the world; and I run a large trading operation, so we’re all people that charge hard during the day—but we also take our sailing seriously. I think that was attractive to Steve in that he was jumping into a program where we at least had a clue on how to get the boat up to speed and around the course.

What did Benjamin bring to the program that was perhaps missing during the midseason slump?

He looks at the racecourse differently than most people do. He does tactics in an incredibly thoughtful way. We all know of rock-star sailors that think three or four steps ahead, but he’s another level higher. For example, there was an instance in one race where we were in third most of the way around the racecourse, and we were coming up the second beat in a crummy lane. We sailed in this lane about a minute longer than I would have. If I were calling the shots, I would have bailed much earlier. The first-place boat was on top of us and the second-place boat was squeezing us from below. The lane collapsed, and we kept sailing in it. We were pretty far toward the starboard-tack layline before he finally bailed out. We tacked up to the last bit of left at the top of the beat and rounded in second by two lengths. In doing so, we jumped the guy in second.

When we were sailing in, I asked him if it was a high-confidence move, and whether he felt strongly that the upper left was going to pay. He said, “Yeah, 100 percent.” So I asked him why we hung in that lane for as long as we did. He explained that, if we had tacked the moment the lane shut down, the second-place boat would have come back with us, preventing us from getting the leverage we needed. Because we tacked when we did, he said, the guy in second probably presumes it’s a lane issue and not a move to get left for the shift. Your average tactician is thinking about what to do when the lane collapses, but Steve’s thinking about how to make sure the other guy doesn’t follow us left. That point ended up meaning a whole heck of a lot in the end.

With everyone’s rig pinned at the same ­settings for the regatta, per class rules, how do you get a better set up?

That part of the class rules is kind of a nice thing. With the Etchells, every morning there’s a debate over tune, sail selection and all of that stuff, but not on this boat. The things that we can tune are the bricks under the rig, our outhaul tension, and our main and jib halyard tensions. We’re constantly playing the things we can. Steve changed how we set up the main and the communications around mainsail trim. The communications were much more structured around where we were with our backstay tension; and that was nonstop. In the midseason, we were primarily focused on targets. With Steve, I was looking around a lot less and much more head-in-the-boat the entire time, looking at the sails, the speedo and the compass. It was clear my job was to keep the boat going as fast as possible. He was really vigilant about communications, exceptional with moding. The second we strayed two-tenths of a knot from the mode we were supposed to be in, he was all over me.

One observation was the remarkable ­differences in sail trim across the fleet. What was working for your team?

I found that we were sailing with looser leech tension than most. When it was windy and wavy, for example, I was trying to give Jay as wide a groove as possible to drive to. Someone watching said they thought our mainsail was working way more than ­everyone else’s.

There’s a tendency to get tight leeched and bound up, and then the only way they could make it work was to pinch really hard. There were a couple of times when Jay would struggle to hang onto his target, so I would just ease the main, find a new baseline and give him a wider groove. For us, the gear shifting was nonstop…in and out, in and out for three straight days.

With the jib, because we can’t cross-sheet, it was harder to be as aggressive with the trim; one thing we’ll try next year is repositioning our runner trimmer to be more dynamic with the runner. That would be the next big step for us.

When you think back on this win, what’s the primary takeaway for the team?

That there were moments in the regatta where everybody on the boat did something that helped us win the event. Everyone had a moment where they either got us points or saved us from disaster. And from our perspective, that’s the cool thing about our program; that everybody brought different people together and it worked. I’d never sailed with Linda Lindquist [pit] before this summer, and she is amazing. She is just an awesome sailor, and incredible on the boat. Brian Fox [bow] might be the best bowman that nobody’s ever heard of—and now, I don’t think Jay wants to get on a boat without him ever again. And it all kind of tied together with Steve. He’s a silver medalist and a rock-star sailor with a Rolex, but he’s insanely collaborative. I think we’ve all sailed with a tactician that comes into a new team and starts barking orders. But Steve integrated everyone, asked us about our roles and our opinions. I didn’t know what to expect, to be honest. I knew he’d be good, but he fit the mold of our program well because we have good sailors that want to be part of the team, and he assimilated ­perfectly in a collaborative way.

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A s finely crafted, enjoyable to sail and otherwise perfect as the RS21 may be, there is one problem. For it to become the next popular keelboat, yacht clubs and sailors beholden to ancient local fleets must step up and embrace change. Today, there is a better boat to set the hook deeper into these sailors, and that boat is the RS21. This a club racer first. A one-design second.

While the RS21 is a high-tolerance one-design keelboat, its list of potential uses is long. It’s ideal for athletic match racers and team racers. It’s a weeknight beer-can racing machine that comes from the factory fitted with all the hardware necessary to switch between asymmetric and symmetric spinnakers. RS Sailing promotes this 21-footer as a “team boat,” meaning everyone can and will be involved in the sailing, and they’re right.

There’s elbow room for a crew of four or five, and the right amount of strings to pull. Jib-tack height is adjustable during setup, using a purchase system that’s covered by a Velcro flap to prevent the spinnaker from snagging the forestay turnbuckle. The jib has hanks, and with the cutout foredeck, a less-than-nimble bowperson can easily go forward without fear of falling overboard.

There’s a large recessed hatch, and when it’s open, one can behold the beauty of the boat’s cored vinylester laminate. The core material is recycled plastic that provides a noticeable amount of panel stiffness for its weight. It’s not an excessively thick laminate, Tom Rich says, but it’s solid to the tap test. Should the boat be totaled in an unforeseen disaster, it can be ground to bits and reused as material for the next boat. A Torqeedo battery is accessible through the foredeck hatch, and there’s room to store rolled sails inside. There’s even a pre-installed through-deck fitting for wiring mast-mounted electronics.

The Selden carbon rig (aluminum boom) is easy to tune from the turnbuckles, between races, as with other keelboats. Both the jib and main halyard exit from the mast and hook into fine-tune purchase systems, which allows draft adjustments on the fly and eliminates struggles common to horn cleats. The cunningham and vang are not led outboard, but each is reachable from the legs-in hike position. Jib leads are 2-to-1, with adjustment stops on short transverse tracks. All-in-all, the judges say the RS21’s simple front-of-the-boat layout won’t intimidate inexperienced crews, but the ability to easily play with sail shape will appeal to more advanced tweakers.

The judges also agreed on one thing after several hours of sailing in midrange wind conditions: The boat is not dumbed down or too difficult. It will reward acute awareness of weight placement, an understanding of what mode is best for the moment and, of course, smooth boathandling. “The balance of the helm is really nice,” Greg Stewart says. “It never wants to wipe out, and the [North] sails are good. It’s built well, and I would recommend it to anyone. I’m scratching my head to come up with anything wrong with it.”

For efficient boathandling, control lines and sheet angles are good, and the center pod is an unexpected asset. Critics will pan the fiberglass structure and its “granny bar” as ugly, but it does serve purposes, primarily to house the Torqeedo electric outboard when it’s stowed and raised (when stowed, a fiberglass panel door lies flush to the hull). The pod also allows the RS21 to use a split mainsheet so one crewmember can take over from the helmsman. The stainless-steel grab provides an excellent balance point for the helmsman when crossing the boat, which senior club members will appreciate. The youngins’, no doubt, will use it to put extra energy into every roll tack.

RELATED: New Boat: RS 21

Cockpit ergonomics are excellent for a boat this size. There’s comfortable upright sitting against lifelines, with beveled corners in the deck. “It’s got the low freeboard, the reverse bow, the chamfers forward and the chine back aft, so it definitely has the look of a modern boat,” Stewart says. “It’s amazing how stable it is. When we put four guys on one side deck and tried to heel it at the dock it barely moved. I felt that same stability when sailing. It feels like a big boat more than it does a dinghy.”

Allen agrees, adding, “I liked it a lot. All the adjustments and everything were handy at the mast, and the backstay and everything else were nicely led.”

“Upwind, when the crew weight is in the right spot, it makes a huge difference on the load on the helm,” Allen says. It’s like a Viper in that it has the same feel. But with the RS21, if you’re racing it, you want to be dead flat or have a bit of weather heel. It has a fine groove, and when you’re in it, you know it. Downwind sailing is easy with this thing when the leech-twist profiles match.”

Sailing it may be easy, but the true challenge, Rich says, will be selling a $40,000 boat to yacht clubs. “It’s a problem with the demographics of the clubs themselves,” he says. “The members who can afford these boats are older, perhaps too old for these types of boats. Is it too sporty or too wet for the 60-year-old member?”

Perhaps, but it’s right on target for next-generation members groomed in performance boats, so it’s a question of whether senior members are willing to invest in the future of their club fleet by giving younger members a reason to belong, beyond the bar, the ballroom or the pool.

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According to a news release from England’s RS Sailboats, New RS21 is aimed to “to help bring popularity back to keelboat racing.”

RS Sailboats, winner of multiple Sailing World Boat of the Year awards over the past few years has certainly become the most progressive builder of new dinghies and small keelboats. They’re integrated into many sailing programs in Europe and the United States, and with direct feedback from program directors, they’re listening to what new and experienced sailors desire, and this boat, they say, is the result of exhaustive development.

The price range is the “mid-30s” with asymmetric spinnaker package (plus inbound freight), says RS’s Riki Hooker, but that’s not a firm price, yet. “The RS21 keelboat responds to the need for a progressive, simple and affordable solution for keelboat clubs that increasingly see the opportunity for fleet ownership, league competition and training,” says Hooker.

We look forward to sailing the boat in when it arrives in the States later this year, but until then, here’s he new-boat announcement straight from the source:

Development of the boat was inspired by direct approach to RS Sailing by several leading keelboat programs. The design puts close racing over ultimate performance – convenient ownership over complexity – it maximizes low maintenance and value. This is the boat to bring wider availability, enjoyment and popularity back to keelboat racing.

The RS21 is both high quality and a sound financial proposition. Realistic costs allow appealing club charter fees – or affordable investment by syndicates of sailing friends. Team up and do it together.

RS Sailing’s sustainability focus means the RS21 also leads the way in terms of eco-friendly construction, with the hull built at Cowes on the Isle of Wight using bio-derived resins and recycled core materials. The deck design and lifting or removable keel system facilitate stacking for freight and travel efficiency. An optional rechargeable and retractable electric propulsion system is also integrated into the design. This boat is all about the future of sailing, in all its aspects.

RS 21 Stats

LOA 6.34m – Beam 2.2m – Draft 1.38m

No-hiking rule

2-part carbon fiber mast – for convenient storage and transport

Retractable carbon composite bowsprit

One Design and Club sails specification options

Optional symmetrical spinnaker

Optional integrated, rechargeable & retractable electric sail-drive propulsion

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2016 ROLEX BIG BOAT SERIES

The 2017 racing season for Pac 52s will bring the West Coast full circle, with a touch of irony, and it promises to end a drought in high-end keelboat competition in California. We’ll come back to the irony. The new and newly named fleet should have five boats, perhaps six. They’re different from their TP52 cousins in the Mediterranean, but only slightly, and the reasons for that difference match the motivations that were in play when the TP52 class was California-born. It went like this:

In 2000, the success of the Andrews 45 Locomotion sparked a series of events that led the Transpac Yacht Club to develop a new box-rule class. Locomotion was a planing boat that kept pace with 70-footers, and that got the natives excited. Downwind sailing is the heart of the sport in California. The new boats eventually emerged as 52-footers. By name, they were Transpac 52s or TP52s, with characteristics to make them good buoy racers and dynamite ocean racers. The class took off.

Then, by and by, it ran out of steam.

In Europe, meanwhile, a different genetic strain developed, with elite professional crews racing buoy courses only. That too boomed and then faltered, until sweeping rule changes brought the boats up to current standards, with deeper keels, more sail, higher-modulus carbon in the rig, and lighter weight. The class in the Med is set to thrive next season with roughly double the number of boats in the California fleet and dedicated, no-compromise owners.

The California fleet has the dedicated owners in common. Manouch Moshayedi, whose 100-foot Rio in 2016 broke a 12-year-old record in the 2,070-nautical-mile Pacific Cup, San Francisco Bay to Oahu, wants a boat that can race without time allowance. Rio finished first in a five-day crossing, scored last, and still owed the Pac Cup winner (a doublehanded Moore 24) a heap of time. “To win,” Moshayedi says, “we would have had to finish in two days.” Moshayedi is the ringleader for the Pac 52 fleet as it develops, and he takes nothing away from the double­handed crossing of Mark ­English and Ian Rogers in their Moore 24. He’s just looking for head-to-head ­competition.

Versatility is the key to the small differences between Pac 52s and TP52s. Moshayedi explains: “The boats in the Med race windward/leeward only. We want to race windward/leeward, but we want to also race offshore.” That intention places the new California fleet squarely in the tradition of the original fleet of TP52s as envisioned by the Transpac YC for racing to Hawaii and Mexico. “To race offshore, we don’t need as much righting moment to squeeze to a weather mark; we can foot off,” says Moshayedi. Accordingly, the fleet has a lighter motor, to the tune of about 100 kilos. It also has a mast 60 centimeters (not quite 2 feet) higher, so it has more horsepower. Otherwise, the Pac 52 measures to the current standards of TP52s in the Med, which, ironically, inherited their name from West Coast racing, leaving the West Coast folks now to call their boats something else — “Pac 52s,” for example.

That said, the new boats in the West Coast fleet are drawn from the same molds as the fleet in the Med. Moshayedi’s hull follows the Vrolijk-designed Platoon. Invisible Hand and Badpack follow the Vrolijk-designed Provezza.

Victor Wild’s Fox, a winner at the 2016 Rolex Big Boat Series, followed from the design board of Marcelino Botin and Sled. The schedule for 2017 class racing projects three events in Southern California and two on San Francisco Bay — leaving time for a Transpac, of course.

Read More: Sailboats | News

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Over 420 college sailors from the United States, Canada and France raced on 45 owner-coached keelboats over Columbus Day Weekend in the Storm Trysail Foundation’s Intercollegiate Offshore Regatta (IOR) sailed on western Long Island Sound. A team from the United States Naval Academy (Navy) sailing the J/44 MAXINE was the overall winner after winning four races and finishing second in one race in the competitive six-boat J/44 class comprised of all service academies.

Up until the Tuesday before the 2016 IOR, the forecast for Hurricane Matthew had Western Long Island Sound right in the center of the National Weather Service’s forecast cone. As safety comes before other considerations, the organizing authorities feared the same outcome as at last year’s IOR. In 2015, due to the threat from Hurricane Joaquin the week before the IOR, other regattas were cancelled and many boat owners had hauled their boats or moved them to safer locations. This year, the weather gods treated the IOR more favorably and in a 12-hour period, on the Wednesday morning before the IOR, the forecast had completely changed, sparing a possible hit to the Northeastern United States. The IOR was back in full swing.

After the hurricane potential, it was ironic that the forecasts for the first day were for 2-4 knots of wind, even as late as the evening before. Once again, the weather gods did their own thing and offered up an 8-12 knot northeasterly for a great day of three races with a relatively flat sea state and moderate temperatures. The Navy team on J/44 MAXINE had three bullets on Saturday.

MAXINE’s skipper Midshipman Matthew Robbins said, “We knew that to win the overall would require us to win almost every race. We sailed with teammates filling in for three of our regular crew members, which is a huge testament to the depth and talent within our program.”

Jahn Tihansky, the Director of the Navy Varsity Offshore Sailing Team said, “To watch them handle their boat across the range of conditions from getting off the start to shifting gears upwind and turning the corners efficiently, was amazing. They were also able to rebound from some misfortunes and quickly got back into winning form.”

The second day of racing was sailed in an increasing northerly, which ironically was an outer band from the now dissipating Hurricane Matthew. The breeze was in the mid teens with some gusts to over 20 knots. The race committee, led by Storm Trysail Club Principal Race Officer Charles “Butch” Ulmer, skillfully got in two races in stronger breeze and wave heights before the conditions became marginal.

The Intercollegiate Offshore Regatta is presented by the Storm Trysail Foundation (STF) with organizing authorities Larchmont Yacht Club and the Storm Trysail Club, and this year was again led by Regatta Chairman Barry Gold. “The IOR provides an opportunity for collegiate sailors to come together in a unique forum that is both highly competitive yet educational,” said Gold. “It also allows some college dinghy sailors with no big boat experience to be introduced to an entirely new aspect of racing.”

An example is Grand Valley State University (GVSU) in Allendale, Michigan. This was their first time in the IOR. Of the 10 sailors that comprised their team, five were experienced big boat sailors, and five had little to no experience on big boats. Nick Zomer, Commodore of GVSU Club Sailing said, “The GVSU Sailing Team is immensely grateful for an experience of a lifetime for many of our sailors. Fifty percent of our team had little to no big boat racing experience, nearly everyone on the team had never sailed in salt water, yet we were still able to place and hold our own in the regatta. Many a team member is now hooked on big boat sailing for life, especially in regards to the thrill, the adventure, the strategy, the camaraderie…all thanks to the IOR.”

The 45-boat fleet was divided into five classes: IRC 38’-43’ (9 boats), J/44 (six), J/109 (eight), PHRF (12), and J/105 (10).

The team from the University of Michigan won the IRC class sailing the J/133 ANTIDOTE. Finishing second was Webb Institute sailing a Farr 40 provided by Oakcliff Sailing, while third place went to Michigan Technological University sailing the Swan 42 QUINTESSENCE. One point out of third place was the GVSU team sailing on Farr 400 SUNDARI.

The J/44 one-design class was won by the overall IOR winning team from Navy sailing MAXINE, followed by the United States Coast Guard Academy sailing their own J/44 GLORY. In third place was a team from Massachusetts Maritime Academy sailing the J/44 VAMP.

McGill University (Montreal, Canada) won in the J/109 class sailing MORNING GLORY with four firsts, and a fourth. In second place was the team from ENSEIRB-MATMECA sailing on J/109 STRATEGERY, and in third place was Bates College sailing on NORDLYS. The team from ENSEIRB-MATMECA, in Bordeaux, France, earned the right to compete in the IOR as the winners of the 48th EDHEC Sailing Cup raced last April in Roscoff, France; their team won an all-expense-paid (except for air fare) trip to the IOR, thanks to the joint venture between STF and EDHEC Sailing Cup.

The EDHEC Sailing Cup is the world’s largest college sailing regatta that draws over 1,500 sailors and 180 boats, and the joint venture with the STF is designed to bring the top college sailors in the world together. As a result of being the overall winner of the IOR, the team from Navy has won an all-expense-paid (except for air fare) trip to the 49th EDHEC Sailing to be sailed from March 31 – April 8, 2017 in France. All U.S. collegiate teams are welcome.

The University of Florida St. Petersburg won the J/105 class aboard MAGIC with three bullets, a second and a third, followed by a team from Massachusetts Maritime Academy on GOOD TRADE, and third place in the J/105 class was another team from NAVY sailing ARETE. In the 12-boat PHRF division, Tulane University was first sailing on the J/88 JAZZ with 10 points. Virginia Tech was second sailing on the X-34 MAUDELAYNE also with 10 points, and another team from Navy was third sailing aboard the C&C 115 CONSTANCE.

Thanks to sponsors Rolex, Vineyard Vines, Safe Flight Instruments, Pantaenius Yacht Insurance, Flintlock Construction, Dimension/Polyant Sailcloth, UK Sailmakers, Gill, Craft Brewing Co., Coca Cola, and YachtScoring.com, there is no entry fee, and meals are provided for the boat owners and college sailors. Larchmont Yacht Club, whose Commodore Tim Porter graciously welcomed all of the competitors, again hosted the IOR.

The Storm Trysail Foundation is a 501(c)3 charitable organization dedicated to supporting the education of sailors, junior safety at sea, and intercollegiate big boat racing. STF educates young sailors as they bridge the gap between learning to sail and becoming accomplished blue water seamen through a national program of events, including junior safety at sea seminars and intercollegiate big boat racing.

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