One point. That was the winning difference for Bruce Irving’s teammates on his J/30 Shamrock, champions of the J/30 East Coast Championship at the Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta Series in Annapolis. Through three days of extremely challenging light winds, strong currents and an ultra-competitive fleet, Shamrock’s young crew persevered to not only take home the class title, but also the regatta’s overall title as the top team, which earns them a berth in the Regatta Series’ Caribbean Championship this fall.

Irving, who painstakingly rebuilt his 39-year-old cult-classic keelboat to perfection over the past six years attributed his team’s win to great teamwork, patience and a calmness on the boat that took away the stress of the weekend’s stressful conditions. They went into the final day’s races with a tenable 2-point lead, started the day with a win and closed with a third, which was enough—just—to beat their friendly rivals on Bob Rutsch and Mike Costello’s Bebop.

“Today, we had more shifts that we could take advantage of and very decent wind during the first race,” Irvin says. “We focused on getting in phase, powering the boat up and getting boatspeed.”

Jimmy Praley’s old coach from Tufts University would have been proud of his former Jumbo sailor heeding his advice enroute to winning the Viper 640 class title. Praley, his tactician Austin Powers, and forward crew Max Vinocur were 3 points shy of the lead when the day’s first race got underway in a light easterly breeze. All day long, Coach Ken Legler must have been whispering in Praley’s ear: “Start where the others are not. Tack and win.”

With Legler’s sage advice imprinted in his mind, Praley’s squad on Robot Flamingo made their move to the top of the scoresheet with a big win in the day’s first race. “The goal was to try and stay close to our closest competitor,” Praley says, “but once we put some points on them in the first race we decided it wasn’t worth the risk to do anything but sail our own race.”

Robot Flamingo won four of seven races over the weekend and was the most consistent of the 13-boat fleet. Still, they closed the three-day regatta with only 2 points to spare over their second-placed rivals on Martin Casey’s Life of Riley.

“It was nearly impossible to be consistent this weekend, but we just did our best,” Praley says. “Fleet management was a big thing, and we were always optimizing our ability to get to the favored side of the course. Our biggest thing was to be as conservative as much as possible but not be afraid to take a flyer if we had to.”

Brad Julian and his team Yard Sail also capitalized on a strong Sunday finish. Yard Sail moved into first place in the J/22 fleet after an intense weekend of back-and-forth lead changes. Starting the day 5 points behind Aden King’s Rhythmic Pumping, Julian and team closed the regatta with a 3-point lead, but it wasn’t easy.

“Sticking to our game plan and putting ourselves in a place where we could control our own destiny was the key to winning today,” Julian says. “It was a tough day. The first race had reasonably stable conditions and a pretty clear need for a course strategy, whereas the second race was much more of a crapshoot. The big lesson was to never give up—we were mid-fleet at the first mark of the second race after a tricky start, and we just kept grinding.”

TC Williams and his crew on the Alberg 30 Argo won their fleet for the sixth time at the Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta Series, narrowly beating the second-place Firestorm/Laughing Gull by 1 point, a victory decided in the final race. As this weekend’s top Alberg 30, Argo also earned the class’s coveted Maple Leaf Trophy, which has been awarded annually since 1965.

“We have great chemistry on board, my wife Elizabeth was trimming the jib and my son Austin was on board doing bow for the first time,” Williams says. “Keeping the boat moving through the current was crucial. We always went left on the start, went left downwind, but the shifts were there and you had to find a way to keep the boat moving when the wind went away.”

Pete Kassal and his crew on J/24 Spaceman Spiff won their fleet with 16 points across nine races. “Being consistent was the key to winning the regatta,” Kassal says. “Being the first boat to get out of the current, which was definitely worse on the right, and not stalling the boat was important. I just got my boat together on Thursday, so I was very happy to be out there. The J/24 fleet saw intense competition, with four of the five competing boats winning a race.”

Competitive would be an understatement for the J/70 fleet, which had a dramatic end to its series when Sunday’s final race was finished mid-way through the race as the wind died altogether. With the front of the fleet crawling toward the leeward gate, fighting adverse current, there was a maddening slow-motion scramble to cross the finish line. The morning’s leader, Brian Keane’s Savasana, was stuck in the traffic and could only manage a 13th. Douglas Newhouse’s team on Yonder, however, crawled across with a fifth, to give them the victory on account of winning the tiebreaker with Cate Mueller-Terhune’s second-placed Casting Couch.

“This weekend, we had to fight for every inch we could get,” says Jeremy Wilmot, the team’s tactician. “The light, shifty weather was not our strength—we are definitely a heavy air team, and we came to Annapolis to work on our light air.”

Bryan Stout and Lizzy Chiochetti narrowly won the Melges 15 fleet, finishing 2 points ahead of the second-place team of Britton and Heather Steel. “Today, we had to sail the boat with what we had and not what we wanted,” Stout said. “A lot of the time, especially when we were around other people, if I could just focus on the telltales and make my boat go fast, we would have a lot of success.”

John and Mary Driver were the Wayfarer team, topping the fleet by 6 points after winning three of six races. “Our goal was to sail as well as we could,” says Mary Driver. “I was really afraid of trimming the spinnaker because I’m used to asymmetric sails so this was a little different, but I felt like after practice, it went very well.”

The Distance Race fleet was especially challenged with much longer racecourses that stretched across the Chesapeake Bay. Today, simply finishing was the order of the day, as it was on Saturday when only three of 11 entries completed the race before the time limit expired. Ben Capuco and his Aerodyne 38 Zuul won the ORC fleet, finishing second in both of its races. “Today was about redemption—we missed a 30-degree right shift on the weather leg but had great speed once we were off the wind,” Capuco says. “It was nice to be off the wind and having the right sails to win on the reach leg.”

While most standings were contested in the final races, there were a few teams that dominated their respective fleets over the weekend, including Matt Lalumiere’s Cash Money, which topped the Etchells fleet by winning four of its five races.

“We were in a very old boat that is hard to keep moving through the current, so keeping speed and communicating with each other as we were going through the gear changes, and making adjustments when we had to was super important,” says Mitch Powell, the team’s bowman. “We had some nice breeze and a square course, so there was great racing today.”

Ray Wulff and his teammates on the J/105 Patriot won the J/105 fleet by 9 points, winning four of seven races, including the last three. “Consistency was the secret to winning the weekend,” Wulff says. “Not doing anything stupid and staying fast when we needed to be fast was imperative. The most important thing was not getting in any trouble. We had a 23-boat fleet and staying out of the congestion helped us a lot.”

Mike Beasley and his teammates on the J/80 Black Sheep were the most dominant of the weekend, topping their fleet by a whopping 18 points after winning seven of eight races. “Tuning was key,” Beasley says. “We put a lot of time into boat setup and understanding what the demands were from the sails we had and what we were trying to achieve with upwind speed,” Beasley says. “Working as a team was a highlight of the weekend; we had a guy from the youth team. On Friday, he was a little ropey, but he was a machine today.”

The post Finishing Strong In Annapolis appeared first on Sailing World.

The second day of a three-day regatta is referred to as “moving day,” where competitors weigh greater risk and reward to advance up the leaderboard, and as a result, there’s often quite a bit of shuffling in the standings as greater risks also come with greater ramifications. This was the story today at the Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta Series in Annapolis where the Chesapeake Bay current was still moving swiftly. There were plenty of changes up and down the scoreboard. With a light and variable easterly, some of the 11 fleets got in two races, others only one before the late afternoon breeze faded and the race committee sent the sailors packing.

The Alberg 30 classics, sailing for their Maple Leaf Championship, completed one race after a morning postponement onshore and were halfway through the next before the race was abandoned. Raymond Bay’s team on Laughing Gull was winning that race by a healthy margin and was disappointed to not be able to pocket a win, but a third in the previous race was enough to bump them to the top of the standings, 1 point ahead of perennial class champion TC Williams’ Argo.

“Consistency and good roundings has been key for us,” says Bay, who is refurbishing his own Alberg 30 and borrowed Laughing Gull for the weekend series. This is his first Alberg 30 regatta.

“It’s also the first time I’ve raced a full-keel boat like this, so there’s been a bit of a learning curve, but we are starting to figure it out. Getting off the starting line has been the hardest thing because, if you stop an Alberg 30 anywhere near 30 seconds before the start, you will be late. It’s a 9,000-pound boat so it takes longer than you think to get it to full speed.”

Bay says Williams’ crew on Argo had a spinnaker mishap in the day’s only scored race and finished fifth, resulting in only 1 point between them going into Sunday’s races. Bay says he’ll be focusing on sailing his own race but keeping close tabs on Williams. “It’ll be about sailing fast and getting off the line,” Bay says. “I like to sail low and fast and TC knows he can pinch me off, so that will be key: getting off the start, getting away from TC and getting to where I need to.”

On the same near-shore race circle, local J/22 skipper Brad Julian and his team on Yard Sail moved into second place, posting a first and a sixth in the two races sailed. “Sticking with our strategy, starting on the pin and working the left shifts helped us win today,” Julian says. “We were set up so that we had control to execute our plan instead of getting controlled.”

Julian and his crew are only 5 points behind Aden King’s Rhythmic Pumping, the current leader, but lurking 4 points behind is Jeff Todd’s Hot Toddy, a perennial winner at this regatta and a local ace who can never be discounted. Yard Sail will have their work cut out for them as they move into the final day of racing.

Another team to advance on moving day was Martin Casey’s Life of Riley, which won the day’s only race in the Viper 640 fleet and bumped them to the top of the standings. “We had a great start and were able to control the race in the light breeze today,” says Jason Currie, the team’s tactician. “Going into tomorrow, we plan on sailing consistent races and consolidating our win.”

Yesterday’s Viper 640 leader, Jimmy Praley’s Robot Flamingo, is only 3 points in arrears, however, and with both teams having won two races apiece, this battle will be one to watch.

While moving day is about climbing the scoreboard, it’s also about preservation for those holding onto tenable leads: Brian Keane’s Savasana’s scored a third in the only J/70 fleet race of the day, won by Doug Newhouse’s Yonder, to keep its lead, now down to 2 points; Pete Kassel’s Spaceman Spiff continued its dominance in the J/24 fleet; John and Mary Driver remain the top Wayfarer team and Matt Lalumiere’s Cash Money won a race to pad his lead to 3 points.

Annapolis locals Bryan Stout and Lizzie Chiochetti also held on to their lead in the Melges 15 fleet with a fifth-place finish. “Today was tricky because our fleet was sailing through a lot of current in our minimum breeze conditions, but I’m super glad that we got a race off,” Stout says. “Tomorrow, I’m going into it with a fresh eye. Our boat has been fast all weekend and I’m glad that that’s doing us well.”

Close behind the pair are Britton and Heather Steele, who finished today’s race in third and are only 3 points out of the lead.

Bruce Irvin and his team on the J/30 Shamrock are still the top boat contending for J/30 East Coast Championship, having finished third in the day’s extremely light conditions. “We were just trying to keep the boat moving through the light breeze and strong current today,” Irvin says. “Tomorrow, we will stay right with our main competitor, Bebop, and just try to get off the line clean and control the beat.

Shamrock goes into tomorrow’s final races with 2 points to spare on Bob Rutsch and Mike Costello Bebop, with both teams having won a race thus far in the series.

Today’s racing featured the addition of the Distance Race fleet, with nearly a dozen boats dispatched on a long course traversing the Bay. In the ORC fleet, Ben Capuco and his Aerodyne 38 Zuul were one of only three boats to finish before the time limit expired. The race was won by James Sagerholm’s J/35 Aunt Jean and none of the PHRF entrants finished the race, so there are no results for this fleet.

“Being just a little bit faster in the current and finding that right finger of wind to get us to the bridge made our race,” Capuco says. “There was a lot of tight reaching today.”

Racing resumes with an 11:00 am start for all classes on Sunday, with the final awards to be presented at host Annapolis YC later in the day when one overall winner will be selected to compete in the Helly Hansen Caribbean Championship in the British Virgin Islands in October.

The post Scoreboard Shuffle At the Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta Series Annapolis appeared first on Sailing World.

When authorities open the flood gates of the Conowingo Dam, releasing metric tons of liquid sunshine into the Susquehanna River, sailors certainly feel the impact downstream on the Chesapeake Bay racecourses off Annapolis. Such was the case on the opening day of the Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta Series Annapolis where the daylong ebb had a boost of southbound flow and the wind played nicer than expected.

The strong current was one of many challenges for the 152 teams that have gathered for this first big event of the Annapolis spring sailing season, and while some teams managed it well, others…well, not so much. Listen around the teeming bar at host Annapolis YC and you’ll hear numerous accounts of failed attempts to get around marks without incident.

Competitors on the Division 2 racecourse, which had its weather mark anchored smack in the middle of the channel where the river runs swiftest, had it most difficult. Sailors in the Etchells, J/30 and Viper 640 classes were fighting the full brunt of it all day long. The smaller Melges 15 dinghies failed to finish their first race within the time allowed, but shorter courses for the next two races allowed Brian Stout and crewmate Lizzy Chiochetti to knock off back-to-back wins to lead their 11-boat fleet by 5 points. Skipper Jimmy Praley, with teammates Austin Powers and Max Vinocur, did the same in the Viper 640 fleet, finishing fourth in the first race and then running the table.

Meanwhile, competitors over on the Division 1 circle, tucked closer to shoreline and out of the worst of the current, completed three to four races to get their regatta started off right. TC William’s Alberg 30, Argo, winning two of three races, took the early lead in its battle for the class’s coveted Maple Leaf Championship, but Raymond Bay’s Laughing Gull is only 1 point in arrears with two days yet to go.

Annapolis’ Aden King, skipper of the J/22 Rhythmic Pumping, with Will Farmer and Jeff Sullivan, went 1-2-2-9 for the day and summarized it as, “We went left—hard left—every race and were three-to-four boats from the pin at every start.”

Mike Beasley’s J/80 Black Sheep started its regatta with a third in the 22-boat fleet, which was a keeper in this no-discard series, but Beasley says, they “found another gear” for the second race, and it’s lucky they did so. With a second-row start behind the race committee boat, Beasley says they kept their cool and tapped into the prowess of tactician Dee Smith’s to get them back into the hunt, into the lead and across the finish line first.

“The guy has won a few championships for good reason,” Beasley says. “We got out of that bad situation by playing the shifts and playing our own game. We’ve been in that situation before, but we’re comfortable in this [light] wind range. While we knew we were deep, it was just a matter of getting one boat at a time, and then suddenly we were OK. From there, we just kept chipping away.”

That race win was followed up by two more and Black Sheep ended the day 10-points ahead of Mike Hobson’s Meltimi, which won the first race.

Black Sheep’s new sails certainly helped, Beasly says, and that extra gear he mentioned was a firm mainsheet and high-traveler setup that got them out of trouble more than once. “A high mode is a good mode to have,” he says, “but the crew did a great job switching modes and getting around the corners. I’m just at the back of the boat pushing the wood.”

As for the current on the Division 3 circle near Thomas Point Lighthouse, it wasn’t as much of a tactical factor Beasly says. While the herd mentality was to go left to get out of the worst of the ebb, there was opportunity on the right as well. “We felt the current was pretty global in the middle of the Bay and there was really no real relief anywhere,” Beasley says. “Our concern with winning the pin—and we could see it happening with the J/70s that started ahead of us—was getting locked out of playing shifts. Dee recognized that right away and we tried a bit more in the middle. It helps that he’s dynamite at finding the shifts.”

As would be expected of the J/70s, stacked with top-shelf teams gearing up for the November World Championships in Florida, the action is tight at the top and after four races Brian Keane’s Savasana leads the pack. Savasana won the last race of the day to put 4 points between them and Doug Newhouse’s team on Yonder. Savasana, which has been on a J/70 class winning streak since January, opened the series with a win and posted a 5-6 before ending the day on a high note.

“In that last race the racecourse opened up a bit,” says Savasana’s Thomas Barrows. “The left had been paying in the earlier races because of wind shift current, and downwind traffic. The port-tack layline was above the J/105s going downwind.

In that last race, Barrows says, they had a good start at the pin, went all the way left, but it was better to be middle left so they had some passing to do. At the top of the first run, they capitalized on an early jibe, got the win and ended the day

The overall theme for the day on the Division 3 course, Barrows says, was that the left side was, “Generally quite good…Yonder started at the pin and had three really good starts, so that’s why they were doing well and we had our better start in the last race. I’m sure everyone felt slow at times today because it was tricky. We were sort of in the lee of a bunch of container ships so that added another thing at the top of the course and then just racing around a lot of J/105s and J/80s made it a little interesting. “

As for managing all these variables, Barrows says they kept it simple: “it was about just setting up the boat to be a bit more forgiving and not sheeting as hard on the sails and being very active with the jib trim.”

Conditions are expected to be similar for the second day of racing with the addition of the Distance Race competitors of ORC and PHRF who certainly have their day with the current as they transverse the bay on a long course that should take them shore to shore.

The post Swept Away on Opening Day appeared first on Sailing World.

Come Friday morning, the Annapolis, Maryland, waterfront will be abuzz with race teams preparing for the opening day of racing at the Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta, hosted by the Annapolis YC. This third event of the national regatta series is the first major event of the Chesapeake Bay spring sailing season, so there will certainly be heightened anticipation as 160 teams get set for three days of racing across 13 individual classes.

Two classes new to the regatta, which has been held in Annapolis for 33 years, are the Melges 15 and Wayfarer classes, doublehanded dinghies that originated more than 50 years apart. The Melges 15, considered to be the fastest growing dinghy class in the US, has attracted family, coed, and youth teams to its winter regatta series in Florida, and some of these sailors will be taking to the Chesapeake for the first time alongside a few new owners. The Wayfarer, originally designed in 1957, has stood the test of time and is enjoying a resurgence with concentration of owners in the Southeast and Michigan, and the Annapolis regatta will serve as an opportunity for these traveling teams to meet one another on the big stage.

While many competitors will be traveling in from afar, Annapolis is home to robust one-design fleets that produce a unique concentration of class champions alongside some of the sport’s top professional sailors. The largest turnouts for this year’s regatta are in the J/70, J/80 and J/105 classes, which is to be expected in this sailing-obsessed city. The J/105 contingent, with 22 entries to date, will have all eyes on Cedric Lewis and Fredrik Salvesen’s Mirage, overall winners of the 2022 regatta, especially Ray Wulf’s Patriot, which was runner-up to Mirage in last year’s two-race series, truncated on account of the absence of wind over the three days.

The J/80 fleet only managed a pair of races in 2022 as well, with Will and Marie Crump and Thomas Klok’s R80 beating Thomas and Jennifer Kopp’s Kopp-Out, from Grosse Pointe Farms, by a mere 2 points. While the Crumps will not be in attendance to defend, several past winners, notably Conor Hayes’s More Gostoso, from Meredith, New Hampshire, will take up the challenge alongside 21 other teams, including five teams that have entered as part of the concurrent NorthU Regatta Experience. This immersive race-training program run by the American Sailing Association features two days of clinics and coaching for participants before the regatta and onboard coaching during the races themselves.

Over the weekend, two legacy classes will contest their annual championships: The East Championship for the J/30s and the Maple Leaf Championship for the classic Alberg 30s, both of which have been a regular presence at the regatta for many years. For the Alberg 30s especially, this is the major kick off for their Chesapeake season with teams traveling in from throughout the region.

While the Etchells fleet is small in size following its World Championship in Miami last month, the Viper 640s, having contested their Worlds in New Orleans in March, are back to near strength with 17 entries, including the 2022 regatta winner Evil Hiss, helmed by local favorite Mary Ewenson. The 1-boat J/22 fleet is packed with top local teams, including multiple-time defending champion Jeffrey Todd, as well as four experienced all-junior teams supported and kitted out by event organizers and Helly Hansen as part of the regatta series’ effort to bolster youth participation at all locations.

The J/70s will also have plenty of young sailors spread amongst the teams, many of which are using the regatta as training opportunity for the high-stakes J/70 World Championship in Florida in November. The leading contender, Brian Keane’s Savasana, which has won all the major winter events to date, will be in attendance, focusing on refining its program and keeping its momentum on the long road to the Worlds.

One new addition to the regatta is two days of distance racing for local PHRF and ORC sailors. These 11 teams will sail Saturday and Sunday only, completing one long race per day over courses that span the Chesapeake Bay for as many 12 miles, or as many hours as needed to get them a quality race and back in time for the nightly parties hosted at the Annapolis YC. With so many classes and racecourses to manage, the club works in partnership with Eastport YC and the Severn Sailing Association for on-water and race committee support.

In addition to planned social activities for the sailors, friends and locals, the Regatta Series and Sailing World will host its third Speaker Series event with American Magic, the New York challenge for the 37^th America’s Cup in Barcelona in 2024. Terry Hutchinson, American Magic’s skipper and president of sailing operations, will be on stage Thursday evening to share the team’s progress and provide exclusive insight into their formidable Cup challenge. Quantum Sails, the official sailmaker of the series has a full complement of support planned for competitors, from daily weather briefings, on-the-water coaching and debriefs and sail-repair services and title sponsor Helly Hansen will have an on-site store open daily to fit competitors and club members for the season with the latest sailing gear and accessories.

The post Ready, Set Annapolis appeared first on Sailing World.

The inclusion of a distance-race offering was hatched in earlier years of the Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta Series, with a goal of getting idle boats and crews off the dock, on to the water for one day, and into the party after racing. Simple enough, right?

Right, but is one day ever really enough? No way. If you’re going to dial up the crew list, order the sandwiches and strike the dodger, you might as well get another day of fun, right?

Right. At all Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta Series stops this year, organizers are offering two days of distance racing (or what could be more aptly called long-course buoy racing, as there is no overnight element), where competitors enjoy a daylong race that tests the boat and its crew on all points of sail, across a variety of winds and conditions.

One of the best parts of a long-course race is that when the Sailing Instructions state the warning signal will be at 1000, you can bet you’ll be starting your wrist top timer at 1000. There will be no race committee chatter about whether the windward mark is perfectly in place for an erratically shifting morning breeze. Nope. with long-course racing, when you get the course, you know your marks, you get set, you go.

Managing the long-course action this year, as he did in 2022, will be Annapolis-based race officer Bruce Bingman. The plan, he says, is to start the long-course fleet 5 to 10 minutes before the big-boat one-designs on his circle, to send them on a 6- to 16-mile random-leg challenge and finish them right where they started—or perhaps somewhere else. We checked in with Bingman to pick his brain on what to expect and how best to conquer the unpredictable Chesapeake Bay.  

What sort of courses can our distance-race competitors expect?

Of course, it all depends on the wind strength and direction, but the way I normally do it is to send all the boats up to the same weather mark, maybe a mile or so directly upwind, and then after that, judging that we’ll set up near the red bell buoy off the entrance to the Severn River——about 3 miles out from harbor—I’d probably send them to Eastern Shore, around a few markers there with some beats, headsail reaches, some downwind work, and a jibe or two. Then come back around a box; roughly speaking so we get all compass legs if at all possible. I always try and think of interesting courses that we could do and I typically set them assuming that we have the prevailing southerlies or the post-frontal northerlies.

How many times can we expect to cross the current? Which can be a big deal.

At least twice. My intent is always to give people an interesting race. To get to the Eastern Shore you’ll have to cross it going over and obviously again coming back. I will, however, set up a few courses for the lighter breeze where they won’t cross the current because even on a light current day the current will run up to a knot in the center of the bay. If there’s been heavy rain, up in Pennsylvania or Northern Maryland, and they open the flood gates, you’ll get 3.5 knots of current running down the center of the bay.

Can you share some of your wisdom as it pertains to distance racing in this part of the bay?

I always run with both a knot meter and a GPS, as well as the boat’s compass. You want to make sure you’re optimizing all the way around. On a distance race, you always have to be thinking about optimizing VMC—that’s velocity down the course, not necessarily velocity directly to the mark. Part of the thinking of that is that if it’s long enough of race and you know the wind is going to shift during the race, and if you’re beating to the mark and another competitor has been just cracked off and going faster than you, they will be further down course, even though they may not be directly downwind of the mark. They’ll be further toward the mark than you are, so when the windshift comes, they can take advantage of the shift. They’ll either tack and lay the mark or be lifted toward the mark. I’m very much a VMC racer provided it’s long enough. You can’t do that on a one or two-mile leg, but once it gets over 2 miles, you really need to be thinking about what the wind will do. Look at clouds—obviously you want to sail to the dark cloud. Try to improve your chances the longer the distance gets. The shorter the leg, the more you need to focus on VMG, and that’s all about optimizing sail trim and boatspeed. When it comes to distance racing, I try never to pinch unless I have a very good reason.  

What are your thoughts on dealing with the current?

The further you get to the center of the bay, the strong the current is, so you don’t want to get caught short going around a mark in the middle of the bay. That last tack of 50 feet will cost you a lot more than over-standing by 200 feet of the mark. If I’m tacking for the Hackett’s Point can, for example, and the current is flowing down the bay and I’m in light northerly (going up the bay), I will wait until the thing is 45 degrees off my transom before I tack.

How about some more tips on racing in Annapolis; If you were racing, what would be your priorities?

Lots of water. Not beer, until after the race. I spend a lot of time looking at the weather and being really confident on which sails I will want to use and which ones come off the boat. For sure you want to make sure you’re prepped and have an outboard lead of some sort so you have a better slot to control for headsail reaching because you will almost certainly do some headsail reaching. If you’re rounding the mark and rigging up outboard leads, you’re too late. That’s not fast. If I’m going to run a staysail, I’ll make sure that’s set up and ready to go. Change sheets should be ready and available. Practice. If you can, before the race, get the crew together and practice some headsail changes and a spinnaker peel. It’s an opportunity to get out there and shake the cobwebs.

The post The Lowdown on Long-Course Races in Annapolis appeared first on Sailing World.

The Wayfarer dinghy has been around longer than…well, let’s just say a lot longer than the Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta Series. By a lot. So how is it possible that this internationally-sailed 16-foot dinghy has zero street cred in the one-design hood? Ali Kishbaugh, who’s been racing Wayfarers for about seven years, isn’t sure why, but she’s hopeful the class’s debut at the Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta in Annapolis in early May will help get the Wayfarer the attention it deserves.

According to class historians, the Wayfarer dinghy was originally designed in 1957 by Ian Proctor, the British designer and sailing hardware entrepreneur (Proctor Spars). It was, of course, an international woodie phenomenon until fiberglass came along. With molds passed to and through various builders, including Ontario’s Abbot Boats, the Wayfarer has been modernized over the decades to its current “Mark IV” version, now exclusively built by Britain’s Hartley Boats. The MK IV, aside from modern construction techniques, has improved the original design’s buoyancy and self-bailing issues, and the underdeck spinnaker launching tube now makes sets and douses much easier than from the traditional laundry basket stuff.

The 400-pound centerboarder has a big and open cockpit that can comfortably seat three adult passengers, but class racing calls for only two. It can be coastal cruised (yes, they do…), club raced, and easily handled by beginners or pushed harder by more advanced racers, like other designs of its ilk—the Flying Scot, Lightning or Buccaneer to name a few. Canada’s Parallel 45 Marine is the exclusive importer and distributor for Hartley Boats, but Wayfarers can be shipped direct to the U.S.

The majority of boats being raced, primarily east of the Mississippi, Kishbaugh says, are more the modern-day fiberglass models, but there are quite a few woodies hanging around. “They’re the same hull design, but they sail as well as the composite ones. It’s just that the rigging is a bit different on the newer ones as they’re geared more toward racing. The woodies tend to be more used for cruising, but that’s the one big thing about the Wayfarer—there are the cruisers and the racers and both do very well.”  

There are mainly pockets of local Wayfarer racing, says Kishbaugh, and concentrations today are in Michigan, Connecticut, Florida and North Carolina. Kishbaugh lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and with the boat always at the ready on its trailer she races her Wayfarer in regattas up and down the East Coast. The Midwinter Championship on Florida’s Lake Eustis is always a big gathering, and there’s the Eastern Championship at New Bern’s Blackbeard Sailing Club (NC), this summer’s Nationals in Rock Hall, Maryland, and then North American Championship on Lake Michigan’s Tawas Bay, which typically attracts a strong Canadian contingent.

“The thing that makes it fun and different from a lot of other dinghies is the people,” Kishbaugh says. “I could have chosen a Flying Scot, a Laser or a Lightning or any other dinghy. But it’s the people in the Wayfarer Association that are so welcoming and warm—just fun people. And then there’s the boat. Because of the hard chines, if the wind comes up, it’s a sturdy boat and it does well in strong winds. It moves reasonably well in light winds because it’s not round bottomed.”

In her late 50s and fit as a fiddle, Kishbaugh, includes herself among the older sailors that are drawn to the Wayfarer, many of whom “sail very, very competitively.” Like other legacy classes, though, the class struggles to convince younger sailors to join its ranks. It frustrates her to no end that she knows firsthand that once you race a Wayfarer, you gain a greater appreciation for it.

That’s how it worked for her.

“The first time I sailed one was when somebody came to Catawba to race. I looked at it and thought it was beautiful—a really classic looking boat,” she says.

As her story goes, she crewed for somebody, loved it, and soon after, “on a little lake in Greensboro, North Carolina, I raced a regatta on a borrowed boat, with a crew I’d never met, on a lake I’d never sailed before and I did really well. So that was, for me, the moment I was hooked.”

She bought her first Wayfarer and then “quickly decided I needed a newer one that was a little more competitive.”

Given the Wayfarer has been around for 65 years, there’s not much new to be learned in the way of tricks, Kishbaugh says. “She is what she is and the way that it’s different is how you tune the boat and the sails.”

But her tips for Wayfarer boatspeed ring true for any dinghy and hints at the athleticism required. “Keeping it flat…it needs to be sailed flat because of hard chines…that’s the biggest thing. We may be an older crowd, but we definitely hike hard. Personally, I would rather have more wind than less. In heavy wind, she flies downwind.

“They’re fun boats, but we don’t get a lot of the college kids. Those who say it’s only for older folks are wrong. What I like about it is that it’s more maneuverable inside the boat. A Thistle will beat you up. Our younger sailors are into the 420s, 470s, but I think if people knew more about the boat they would be more interested in giving it a try. We just need to get more people sailing it.”

To that end, Kishbaugh says the elder statesman of the U.S. class is Jim Heffernan, who has raced Wayfarers for more than 30 years, and internationally. He was long the skipper to beat until a much younger Laser sailor named Jim Cook moved to Charlotte for work and joined the Catawba scene. Cook bought his second Wayfarer from USWA Commodore Richard Johnson, and injected his youthful enthusiasm into the class. Cook and his teammate Mike Taylor swept the Midwinter Championship races in Florida in February, but died in a boating accident in late March, an accident that shocked the tight-knit Catawba and Wayfarer family.

 “Jim was an amazing sailor,” says Kishbaugh. “He was a graceful person, and was always humble. He’d walk around and give ideas and pointers if asked but didn’t push his thoughts and was just a good person and a good friend.”

Cook was registered to race the Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta in Annapolis next month, but with his sudden and tragic passing, Kishbaugh says, the fleet will race in his honor, to showcase that the Wayfarer class is full of good people and friends like Cook.

Most of the Annapolis regatta’s participants will have likely never seen a fleet of Wayfarers, but when the racing gets underway on Friday, May 5, there will be no mistaking the half-dozen colorful hulls and spinnakers of the regatta’s oldest dinghy class.

“I’m really pushing our people to do it,” Kishbaugh says. “While it is an expensive regatta for us because of the travel and housing, it’s such a great place to sail, and I think it’s important for the class to be part of something bigger.”

The post Wayfarers Bound For Annapolis appeared first on Sailing World.

Spring brings excellent weather conditions that arguably make it the best time to sail in Annapolis. Make sure your boat is tuned and trimmed properly so you can quickly get where you want to go on the course. Then it’s heads-up sailing to navigate the strong tidal currents and potentially shifty breeze.

Early May might be the ideal time to sail in Annapolis: the average temperature is a pleasant 69 degrees, the average wind direction is west, and the average speed is 7 knots. When you sail in Annapolis, you can almost always count on strong currents and choppy conditions due to motorboat traffic. The current flow in the Chesapeake Bay is tidal − flood tides run south to north and ebb the opposite. Many flowing rivers and large tributaries affect the current in the bay, meaning published tide tables are not 100-percent accurate and highly dependent on location and recent rainfall. It is paramount to keep an eye on the many signs in the bay that can give you hints to the fluctuations in strength and direction of currents, such as the tankers anchored in the shipping channel, the buoys, and the many area crab pots.

These factors make determining when the current will switch in the lighter breezes critical to top finishes. In the spring, the ebb tide is usually much stronger than the flood tide, due to the amount of rainfall and spring tides. Keep an eye on all available signs and remember the current rips in the channel’s deeper water. Also remember to set up your boat for the chop on the weekends. Between swirling currents and boat traffic, smooth water is hard to find in the Chesapeake Bay this time of year.

One of the many challenges Annapolis presents in the spring is the changing wind conditions caused by the approaching frontal systems or the lack of approaching systems. Determining the weather system you are racing in will help you plan which wind direction will prevail in the day’s races.

Here are some tips to understand the local conditions a bit better:

• Clear skies and air temperatures that are warmer than the water temp is a typical spring day, and it’s not a good combination for breeze this time of year. The sea breeze has a hard time developing due to the cooler temperatures, so expect light air overall.

• Southwest is the prevailing wind direction during the year, but southerlies are generally weak in the spring unless accompanied by a frontal system.

• As a front goes through Annapolis, the wind will clock to the west until it reaches the northwest, which is the prevailing cold front direction. Winds will blow from the northwest at 20-knots for a few days and then clock to the northeast and die, depending on the strength of the front.
  
• Westerlies are unstable with 25-degree shifts (or more….) and heavy puffs. Watch for more wind from the Severn River and off the closest weather shoreline.

• Northerlies are somewhat stable in pressure, but with the breeze coming across the land the shifts are fast and typically very large.

• Easterlies are dying breezes and especially weak when following a dying northerly. Often the far right pays because of the new direction and the far left pays because of old pressure. The middle normally suffers.

If you have any questions, reach out to the Quantum Annapolis team or come chat with us during the regatta.

The post Local Knowledge for Spring Racing in Annapolis appeared first on Sailing World.

[instagram-feed feed=8]

The post Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta Series Annapolis 2022 Gallery appeared first on Sailing World.

Maryland’s colonial state capital city is surrounded by vast waterways that stretch deep from the interior into the greater Chesapeake Bay, which is why Annapolis is hailed as a sailor’s playground and residents call it “The Sailing Capital” of the United States. This will be especially true when the national Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta Series hosts nearly 200 racing sailboats and crews over the weekend of May 13-15.

As the Chesapeake’s most popular early-season regatta and an important East Coast destination for keen traveling sailors, the Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta Series Annapolis stop draws locals as well as competitors from 18 different states and Canada who come annually for the high level of competition. Teams of professional and amateur sailors will race in a variety of keelboat classes, ranging from 18 to 40 feet, on four individual race areas established on the waters south of the iconic Bay Bridge. This area of the Chesapeake is known for reliable spring winds but also its notorious and tricky currents that provide an unpredictable element to every race.  

While many teams will splash their boats early to train and prepare for the expected racecourse conditions, the bulk of the racers will launch Friday morning (May 13) from Annapolis’ three active sailing clubs. Regatta host Annapolis Yacht Club, along with Severn Sailing Association and Eastport Yacht Club will provide professional race management.

The regatta’s bigger boats will race on a course set furthest south near Thomas Point Lighthouse while the smaller boats will be spread across three race areas due east of the entrance to the Severn River. On Saturday, organizers will also host the North Sails Rally Race, a one-day distance race in which competitors will sail a long course using navigation buoys located throughout the bay and finishing off the U.S. Naval Academy. Among the Rally Race fleet will be two-person teams as well as bigger boats scored using a time-correction handicapping system.

The bulk of the regatta’s entrants, however, are “one-design” classes; classified as different boat types that are essentially identical in construction. The most popular among the one-design classes today is the 23-foot J/70, which is typically raced with a crew of four or five, coed teams consisting of professional and amateurs together. The J/70 is easily trailered so the class maintains a busy winter racing schedule, and for many teams, the Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta Series in Annapolis is the culmination of a season’s worth of races before teams continue their migrations back to the Midwest and New England for summer racing.

While Annapolis is a popular stop for these traveling teams, the local sailing scene is more robust than ever given the reported increase in sailing participation during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. One-design classes that are traditionally strong at this Annapolis regatta are even more so this year, including the competitive Viper 640, a 21-foot three-person sportboat that’s fast, fun and physically demanding. The Viper 640s, with 27 teams registered, will be the regatta’s largest fleet and will sail for its Atlantic Coast Championship Trophy—in the absence of 2021’s defending regatta champion skipper Tyler Moore.

“Tyler sold his boat and is boat-less at the moment,” says local skipper Mary Ewenson, who was third overall in 2021, “but there are a few new teams that are very good. My team is light [weight], so given the forecast is for lighter winds, I’m liking our chances this year.”

The ever-popular J/22 class, a fixture of this regatta series, which has been held in Annapolis for more than three decades, has 23 teams on the pre-race entry list, with one notable absence in J.R. Maxwell and his teammates, who won this division and the regatta’s overall title in 2021. Maxwell and his crew have switched to the 26-foot J/80 division, which has 21 entries, including several from out of town. The J/80 class will contest its North American and World Championship in Rhode Island in the fall, so many of the teams are using the Annapolis regatta as an early start to their world championship training.

The seven-boat Etchells division will also be using the Helly Hansen Sailing World regatta as a stepping stone to its World championship in Miami next spring as the top team in Annapolis will earn one championship berth.

The regatta’s toughest local fleet will undoubtedly be the J/105 division. With 23 entries—all but two of them hailing from the Annapolis area—this class enjoys its reputation as a lower-cost, harder-to-win racing experience, and with strict rules ensuring each boat is identical as possible, success comes not from the vintage of the boat, but from the skills of the sailors, the teamwork, and mastery of the racecourse.

Ray Wulff, a top-shelf local who only recently made the J/105 switch from the J/70 class, has been fast out of the gate in some early season local skirmishes. He says he has sailed plenty of “other peoples” J/105s over the past 20 years, but now he’s the one with the tiller in his hand. His boat, Patriot, didn’t need much work after sitting on the hard in a yard in Annapolis for a few years. He stripped out its wheel steering and swapped it with a tiller, and replaced the halyard clutches, which don’t get a lot of use these days anyway.

“We are still learning the fast setup,” Wulff says, “but we do a bit of inhauling on the jib, using the weather sheet. We’ll keep that on the weather winch and always play it. We also keep the halyards on the cabin top winches because we are always playing halyard tension. The cunningham? Skip it; sometimes we’ll luff the main for a second and grind the halyard up, so the sail looks like the sailmaker intended it to be. A lot of people rely on the clutches and the boat isn’t as efficient as it could be.”

The critical point, he adds is: “The boat doesn’t have that many adjustments, which makes the adjustments that you do have all the more important.”

In terms of big-fleet and small-course management, Wullf’s advice is to do whatever it takes to get clear air—but don’t look for it in the middle of the racecourse. “With the [J/105’s] giant keel profile and big rudder, these boats throw a lot of bad air and bad water, so we really just try to stay away from other boats and keep our maneuvers to a minimum.”

There are several returning—and now legacy—classes of the Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta in Annapolis, the oldest among them being the classic Alberg 30s, which will contest their coveted Maple Leaf Championship Trophy, which means outsmarting Patrick Seidel, of Trappe, Maryland, and his team on “Laughing Gull,” which went undefeated in 2021. The J/35s, J/30s and J/24s have smaller numbers, but that often results in closer racing.

New to the regatta will be the Beneteau First SE class with owners and crews traveling in from outside the Chesapeake Bay. The Helly Hansen Sailing World regatta in Annapolis will be the first time that skippers of these 24-foot sportboats will have competed against one another and will sail a unique distance race each day before joining fellow regatta participants at the nightly parties hosted by Annapolis Yacht Club.

When the Annapolis regatta concludes Sunday, May 15, one class-winning competitor will be selected to compete in the Helly Hansen Sailing World Caribbean Championship in October in the British Virgin Islands.

For more information on the Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta Series events, visit www.sailingworld.com/regatta-series.

For comprehensive results, photos/videos and feature stories, visit www.sailingworld.com/regatta-series-annapolis.

The post Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta Series On Deck for Annapolis appeared first on Sailing World.

When the race committee hoisted its AP-over-A on the morning of the first day of racing at the Helly Hansen NOOD Regatta in Annapolis, there was a collective sigh across the Annapolis YC’s dry sail lot. Yes, everyone was anxious to go racing after a year of tiptoe racing through the pandemic, but not everyone was keen to scuff off the rust in a 30-knot gale.

So, with coffees in hand, crews tinkered and mingled with friends. A few teams eventually sneaked out to practice in the harbor, but most of Rob Ruhlman’s crew went golfing instead. There was no good reason to go out and practice on their J/111, flogging sails and crew before their big-deal North American Championship. They hadn’t sailed since January, at the class’s winter championship in Key West, but they’d be ready, Ruhlman reasoned. Feeling ready and being ready, however, are two different things.

The one wrinkle they weren’t prepared for was the race committee’s use of a rolling three-minute starting sequence the following morning when starting signals finally got underway. The short countdown caught Ruhlman’s team off guard in the morning’s first race. Twenty-knot gusts only fueled the confusion.

“We had trouble getting used to the three-minute-start thing,” Ruhlman says. “I get it in Lasers, but with 37-footers?”

Without a good start in this class, Ruhlman says, it’s nearly impossible to get to the front. This would, of course, account for his Spaceman Spiff being sixth (of seven boats) in the first race of the regatta. Rust in the boathandling cog of the machine didn’t help.

“These boats are so even, and there are all top-notch guys that travel,” he says, “so there’s no room for mistakes.”

Peter Wagner’s team on Skeleton Key, trained in the big breeze of their ­hometown San Francisco Bay, were ­confident in the day’s chaotic blow and won the first races comfortably. They were able to get off the starting line clean and control their own race, Wagner says.

“That was pretty important because, with the shifts, things were changing quickly, and we had to be able to react to the changes as they happened.”

By the final race of the day, however, Ruhlman’s crew was in its groove. Their score line trended upward, with a second to close the day. Skeleton Key had its first stumble, hung out on the wrong side of a windshift and finishing fourth. “We got stuck a little too far left and couldn’t quite find a shift to come back,” Wagner says. “Our friends on Spaceman Spiff face-planted us at a critical moment, bouncing us back left and sealing our doom. That was a good move by them.”

That fourth also narrowed the series to mere points between the top three boats, with Spaceman Spiff lurking in fourth.

“We went home that day feeling fine,” Ruhlman says, “and not a single person walked out the door in the morning expecting to go out and win the day—or the regatta. We weren’t feeling a lot of pressure.”

Skeleton Key, however, was perhaps feeling the pressure and got caught over early in the morning’s first start.

“An OCS is almost impossible to overcome,” Ruhlman says. “In this fleet, getting back is incredibly difficult.”

Not only did Spiff win that one, but it won the next, inching the crew closer to the top of the mountain. “We always take it one race at a time,” Ruhlman says, “And, in fact, when we crossed the finish line in the last race [a fourth-place finish], my son said, ‘I think we just won the North Americans.’ I know he’s good with math, but I said I’m going to wait and see how the numbers work out.”

The story was similar for J.R. Maxwell and his mates on the J/22 Scooby. Their results after the breezy opening day were what he called “consistent” in the 15-boat fleet, and after winning the next day’s first two races, Scooby was well on its way to winning the regatta. But, like Wagner’s Skeleton Key, the race committee called Maxwell’s number—and it took a while. Looping back to restart, they looked up the course and knew the work ahead.

“We had to grind back from being second to last and finished fifth in that race,” Maxwell says. “It was all about staying in the puffs. It wasn’t always intuitive of where that was going to happen.”

A fifth in that race was good enough for the win. Sailing with Maxwell on Scooby were Jim Schmicker and Matt Spencer (and Bryan Pryor sailing on Saturday only), and as the winner of the J/22 class, they were also selected as the regatta’s overall winners, earning a berth to compete in the Helly Hansen Caribbean NOOD Championship in October in Sunsail-provided bareboats.

The J/35s are a legacy class of the Annapolis NOOD, and while the fleet was smaller in numbers this year with only four to show, the battle at the top of the fleet was a mighty one, with Roger Lant’s Abientot winning the tiebreaker over the perennial champions of James Sagerholm’s Aunt Jean. It took everything they had, Lant says, plus a little luck.

“Aunt Jean is very, very fast upwind, so if you let them get away, it’s a tough battle after that, so we worked on a strategy to deal with them on the starting line,” Lant says. “But we carried out our plan, and it went well.”

What exactly was that plan?

“The boat that won the start won the race,” Lant says. “They were looking for space on the starting line, and we were looking to engage, so [on the first day] we engaged them fairly hard.”

When Aunt Jean won the day’s first two races the following morning, Lant had only one option: to win the final race. He who wins the last race wins it all.

“We knew we had to control him at the start,” Lant says, “but we also had to win the start and get clear.”

They also needed top-shelf crew work.

“I’m the most fortunate skipper on the course,” Lant says. “I have a core crew that has been sailing together for three years, and the skills keep building, and we had some of the most fabulous crew work I’ve ever seen on the boat—exceptional.”

Lant, of course, got his win and local bragging rights—for now.

On the same circle were the J/80s, also an Annapolis NOOD legacy class. Conor Hayes and Jeff Kirchhoff’s J/80, More Gostosa, didn’t have a stellar first day, but on the second, “flawless crew work” saved them.

When it’s said that every point counts, Hayes would agree because one point was ultimately the difference. Having won the penultimate race, Hayes knew the points were extremely close between his team and Daniel Wittig’s Turbo Sloth, but he had no idea how close. All he could do for the last race was keep Sloth in his wake.

“We had a tough start in that last race,” Hayes says. “We wanted to start at the pin but got shut out. We were able to tack out immediately onto port and were in phase. From there, it was a matter of staying in more wind. It helps to have boatspeed and a good crew to be able to get out of bad situations.”

Similar accounts were common across the 153-boat regatta, even over on the 40-boat J/70 line that was so thick with professionals, you could practically see dollar bills streaming behind in their wakes as pro-am teams fought tooth and nail for narrow lanes and clean air.

Travis Odenbach’s Honeybadger was king for a day after the first, but the late assault came from USA 419, with Terry Hutchinson on the tiller. Even he had to pull off a few miracles.

In the start of Sunday’s first race, for example, Hutchinson doubted his GPS starting instrument, hesitated, and was immediately buried after the start. “We didn’t trust the Velocitek,” Hutchinson says. “We were poked, and I didn’t pull the trigger. It was a rookie mistake.”

Hutchison? Rookie? Pshaw.

With the focus of his crew, Scott Nixon, Dan Morris, Gil Hackel and Jennifer Wulf, they clawed their way back to an eighth-place finish—no small feat when the flood tide was running in at full tilt. It was this comeback, Hutchinson says, that ­ultimately won his team the regatta.

“It’s amazing how hard this racecourse is in Annapolis,” Hutchinson says of the home waters he’s supposed to know like the back of his hand. “The course location was hard because the current was good on the right, but there was pressure and shift on the left, so you had to balance the two. You did not want to be in the middle. In the first race, the leader came out of the right, and in the second, the leader came out of the left. Each leg was unique to itself, which kept us on our toes.”

Over on the J/30 line there were 10 boats, but the battle was really between the top three—Bob Rutsch and Mike Costello’s Bebop, Bruce Irvin’s Shamrock, and Tristan Keen’s Infectious Smile. The three of them were passing ones, twos and threes like hot potatoes, but Bebop ultimately snagged the win. “My crew had not raced together since 2019,” Rutsch says, “so to get back together and go out in 20 knots and not break anything was amazing. We had a killer first race—with a monster lead—on the first day, and that really got us going for the weekend.”

Rutsch has lost track of how many times Bebop has won the NOOD since his father bought the boat in 1983—maybe 11 times—but winning it never grows old. “I used to say to my dad, in the ’80s and ’90s, ‘Man, I hope we’re still around after 25 years like the Alberg 30s.’ We’re still out there. They’re still out there. It’s a beautiful thing.”

Speaking of the Alberg 30s, it was Pat Siedel’s Laughing Gull that set one of the regatta’s picket fences, often finishing five minutes ahead of the fleet. “When it was really sporty on Saturday, most of the guys were flying No. 2s and blades,” Siedel says, “but we opted to reef down and go with a No. 1, and that really helped us. Plus, the guys were all over the crew work.”

Flawless boathandling is also what got Jose Fuentes and the Caramba Etchells squad to the top of its fleet. Fuentes, who lives over the border in Washington, D.C., says the NOOD is his No. 1 regatta, and this one felt especially important, sailing in honor of former crewmate and local sailor Geoff Ewenson, who recently passed away. Ewenson, he says, would have been proud. “I don’t think we had a speed edge over the rest of the boats,” Fuentes says. The big difference was the crew work. It was flawless—every tack, every ­rounding, every jibe.

Making easy work of the regatta in the J/24s was Tony Parker’s Bangor Packet. Tyler Moore’s squad prevailed in the Viper 640s, and Bill Zartler’s experienced team owned the 21-boat J/105 fleet from start to finish. In the new North Sails Doublehanded Distance Race, Mike Beasely and Chris Coleman conquered the windy 20-mile racecourse to win on Beasley’s GP26, Rattle N Rum. ν

The post Racing Back to Normal at the Annapolis NOOD appeared first on Sailing World.