Any summer sailing in New England is hard to beat, so Quantum expert Carter White breaks down how you can make the most of your time in Marblehead.

I have raced in and around Marblehead since the late 1980s and witnessed almost every condition, from a drifter to a hurricane. I’ve probably sailed in every location the clubs use for their various racing circles, and I’ve also helped organize the ONE Regatta (previous PHRF-NE and current Ted Hood Regattas) and the 2014 J/105 North Americans. Through it all, I’ve seen that each circle brings its challenges, trends, and conditions, which I will try to break down here.

Outside Course (aka Outside Line)

The outside course is the area furthest offshore and most to the right of the harbor when looking away from land. The course is normally centered 3.25 NM at 175° (magnetic) from Marblehead Bell RG “FR” but can often be closer to shore. Typical conditions for this course would be no wind in the morning and a sea breeze filling in during the afternoon, around 1pm or so. If this is the case and there haven’t been any significant storms immediately ahead of the sailing day, you should have relatively flat water with possible one-foot easy rollers. 

The key to success is to figure out the current/tide. The current/tide does not go out from land and into land during the ebb and flood, but the current goes left to right or right to left (looking out from shore toward the southeast), moving slightly northeast/southwest.

The wind will fill from the southeast, probably around 130 to 150 degrees, and it will be stronger away from land as it fills. The current is usually uniform across the course, and, with a predicted direction of 170 to 180 degrees, the race committee will often skew the course to the right. The RC knows people want to go left, so the skew keeps things even. But even with the skew to the right, the pressure is more to the left, so starting at the pin and going left is key upwind. Downwind you almost always stay straight at the windward mark and work the edge of the course down to the corner and gybing on layline or close to it. This keeps you in the bigger pressure downwind on the course’s left side (looking upwind). All of this is happening early in the day of racing, around 1pm to 3pm.

After 3pm, you need to start looking at the right side of the course. Typically, the lower left will still be favored, but watch out for the top right as the wind moves from 130 to 170 degrees or more as the day progresses. Often the shift doesn’t outweigh the pressure, but if you see large, puffy clouds over Boston (to your right looking upwind), you can predict the right shift will happen. Finally, remember the current as it will be critical for starting and laylines, not necessarily for course-side advantages. History has rewarded the folks who won the corners on this course and timed the shift and pressure perfectly.

As you are waiting for the typical conditions I’ve described or are in a different northerly breeze with predictions to shift, watch the clouds onshore over Salem. If the big, puffy clouds start forming, the sea breeze is coming. The land breeze will continue if wispy high clouds remain and there are no puffy clouds.

Finally, like anywhere, the typical conditions occur 50 percent of the time, while anything else happens the other 50 percent. In this case, be prepared for chop and rollers. The current is strong, and when going against the breeze, it will create a decent 1- to 2-foot chop on top of one- to three-foot rollers that may or may not line up with the chop. If this is the case, make sure to have plenty of twist and power; you will need the twist to drive around the waves and keep the helm light while still having enough power to go through the occasional wave you can’t miss. In most boats, this means playing the backstay almost constantly.

The Halfway Rock Line

Much of the outside line details and tips and tricks can also apply to the halfway rock line. However, the current can be trickier on this course. This circle is typically centered 2 NM at 135°   (magnetic) from Marblehead Bell RG “FR” and is more exposed to Salem Bay and the Danvers River. Here you will have potentially two different currents: one coming from and going to land (in and out of Salem west/east) and another northeast/southwest like the outside course. This creates more disturbed water and chop than the outside course.

With the typical conditions I’ve described, the starting line will be set closer to shore and in one current, while the weather mark will be in a completely different current. This is key for starting and approaching the marks, and can make or break the downwind leg, possibly because you may want to use the current to your advantage when picking a side. 

The Tinkers Line

In my experience, this course can be the trickiest. This circle is just outside Marblehead Harbor and closest to Marblehead Neck, the largest land mass. On this circle, you can see up to three different current directions on one leg, and the land can become a factor creating a constant geographical advantage. On this line, it is imperative to have a training partner to sail upwind on opposite tacks for five minutes or more and then come back together to see who is ahead or behind. There will often be a significant difference, and it will only be clear sometimes which side will win. In my experience, heading towards land has paid off in most conditions on this course; however, there are times you must go offshore to get more breeze.  

The Brimbles Line

This is typically where the lasers or smaller boats sail as it is protected by islands on almost all sides of the course. It is closest to Salem Harbor and is the most inner course. Its challenge is boat traffic on the weekends. Many sailboats and powerboats are leaving and returning to Salem and Marblehead Harbors, and this course is at the crossroad of those trips. This often causes square chop even when the wind and current are lined up for a smooth day. On this line, you are closest to Salem Harbor and Danvers River, which will be the predominant currents (generally west/east). Due to the proximity of the islands, the winds are much less stable, so this circle typically has much shiftier winds. Here, the shifts become more important than the pressure, so staying on the lifted tack is critical.

If you have any questions, get in touch with a Quantum representative to discuss your racing further. Good luck, and welcome to Marblehead!

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“Pull up a chair and get yourself a Mount Gay and whatever—actually, make that two because it’s going be a long one,” I advise the crowd that’s lingering outside the party tent at the Boston YC on a balmy afternoon in July. The sun is setting on the Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta Series at Marblehead Race Week, and like the name itself, this traditional awards presentation runs longer than your average grip-and-grin. We would expect nothing less of a regatta that’s been running since 1889 and is the most important gathering on the local sailing calendar. Aside from the individual top three of the 10 classes at this year’s regatta, we’ve got a few new trophies, and the Marblehead Racing Association peeps have theirs as well—the perpetuals that locals cherish with a pride unique to this sailing-­crazed town north of Boston.

Before I get rolling with my emcee duties, I take a slurp from my own Mount Gay and Regatta Craft Mixers ginger beer and soak in the scene from behind the table on the stage, which is lined with Helly Hansen duffel bags, glassware and plaques. There’s an aura of happiness that fills the tent, and there’s also a healthy mix of males and females, of sailors young and old, of families and empty strollers, of tykes running amok. It’s hard to put my finger on it, but there’s something different than the other four stops of our Regatta Series.

Maybe it’s the Pleasantville-ness of the town itself that makes it seem as though I’ve been dropped into one big family reunion. But it’s more likely because of the prevalence of so many coed and family teams I’ve watched on the water, including the father-and-son pairing of Jim and Nat Taylor, who eventually win the coveted perpetual Cressy Trophy, a bronze spittoon awarded to the winners of what is deemed to be the regatta’s most competitive class.

The Taylors: Father Jim, the naval architect, and son Nat, the recent college grad, hadn’t bothered to register for the Rhodes 19 division under one skipper name or the other. They simply entered “the Taylors” in the registration name field. On the racecourse over four days, they top the hottest local fleet, which is full of top-level teams of siblings, spouses, friends and roll-tacking post-­collegiate sailors getting in on the inexpensive one-design action.

Jim, who is 73 but doesn’t look a day close to it, crews for Nat, who has the quicker reflexes to deal with all the boat-on-boat action. It also leaves the old man to tinker with the rig and jib trim, which he does best. “I’m really old,” says Jim, who’s been racing with Nat on and off since he was a junior sailor. “We were recently joking that one of the things that lured him into the sailboat racing thing was going out in Optis when he was about 10, and he went out and kicked my butt. He thought that was pretty cool, to beat Dad, so that lured him in, and we’ve been sailing together since then.”

Once Nat finished college and moved back to the area, they picked up where they left off, but today it’s tougher to win races. “I’ve been in the class since winning Race Week back in the 1980s, but it was a completely different thing back then, and the talent level [was] nowhere near where it is right now,” he says. “It’s very high with college sailors ­joining the fleet.”

But it’s not just the new-school ­hotshots getting into the old-school class that keeps the racing interesting for old-timers like Jim and everyone else. It’s also the pace of the race. “One thing we like about the Rhodes 19 is that they are all pretty much equally slow,” Jim says, “which keeps the racing close. If you have fast boats, a couple of them get away and they’re ahead by half a leg. With the Rhodes fleet, if you do it right, you gain a few lengths here and there, but that’s about it. And it can all turn around on the next leg, so being slow is an advantage in a lot of ways.”

The other popular “slow” fleet is the colorful Town class, which stands above all as the fastest-growing one-design action in Marblehead. The Town class, its historians say, has the distinction of being the oldest continuously raced fleet in Marblehead. These 16.5-foot lapstrake one-design dories—some wood, some glass—were “designed as an affordable boat for the ­townspeople, hence its name.”

Thanks to the allowance of a “trawl mooring” onto which the Towns can now tie up to at the far, shallow end of the harbor, it’s also the easiest class to get into for those lacking a mooring. For this, the Townies can thank local preservationist Bart Snow, who is credited with Marblehead’s Town class revival.

“Back in 1954, we had about 60 boats, and they sailed Race Week in two divisions,” Snow says. He was one of them and later rejoined the fleet in the 1990s, which had since dwindled to 10 boats. About a decade ago, however, Snow began collecting used boats and fixing them himself.

“I soon realized I didn’t have time to do that, so I sold some to other people to fix, and that didn’t work well because they would always do it ‘next year.’”

He now leaves refurbishment of recovered Townies to the craftsmen of the Pert Lowell Company in nearby Newbury, Massachusetts, and he and other stalwarts are always on the hunt, scouring the internet and conducting recovery missions in places as far as Ohio and Kentucky. But they’re mainly found in barns and lake houses in Maine and New Hampshire. The fleet is now up to 45—and growing—but there’s one new requirement when recommissioning. “They were all white 10 years ago,” Snow says. “I tell people that they have to paint it something other than white, so when they are sailing up the harbor to get to the starting line, they are quite noticeable.”

With only a main and a jib, there are few strings to pull, and the boat can be sailed by two people with minimum fuss or skills. “It has a weather helm, so we move the mast forward to take the helm out,” Snow says. “Over the years, there’s been some changes to the specs to make them go faster, changes like extending the skeg and making the centerboard slot smaller, but they don’t plane and they’re easy to sail—all you need is a friend to come along.”

For this year’s Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta at Marblehead Race Week, there were 18 Towns that competed over four days, two of those at the upper limit of the class wind range. The top boat after seven races was skippered by local sailmaker and national champion Chris Howes on Believe It or Knot. Snow crewed for Howes, which ruffled some feathers on account of there being too much talent in such a little boat.

Be that as it may, Howes and Snow only won by a single point, and they had to work hard to get it on the final day. “The Town class is mostly families and kids, and all types who just want to race,” Snow says. “We race more than any other class [in Marblehead], four days a week. Many of the sailors just race to sail; they want to be on the water.”

I suppose that’s the vibe I was picking up before starting the awards. As crazy as it sounds, that aura of bliss was exactly that: Everyone was just happy to be on the water, together with friends and family once again, checking off another Race Week and living their best Marblehead lives, no ­matter how fast or slow they go.

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