Final Results

The 2023 edition of the Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta Series at Marblehead Race Week will be remembered for its challenging light wind but more so for the time local skipper Carolyn Corbet and her teammates outsmarted and outsailed the venerable champions of Bill Widnall’s International One Design Javelin. On the fourth and final day of Marblehead Race Week, Corbet’s team on Elektra won two come-from-behind races to win the regatta and then its Overall Championship title.

“We started the day only 1 point out of first and we’d been going back and forth with Bill—who’s won this regatta for who knows how long,” Corbet says.

In Sunday’s first of two races, Elektra rounded the first mark third, and with the quick sail-handling skills and sharp execution of this team of twenty-somethings, Corbet quickly  jibed, “jumped the fleet,” and at the next mark Elektra took control of the race.

“Ten boat lengths out from the leeward mark we were able to jibe on to starboard, and then we were able to get them [Widnall’s Javelin] on starboard,” Corbet says. “So, we were able to send them off the layline. I have an amazing crew that can pull off that kind of jibing, get the spinnaker down, and then jibe around the mark. We barely missed a beat and that right there probably won us the regatta.”

Corbet, of Marblehead, has been sailing the loaner International One Design for three summers and her team has proven to be a quick study of a boat that can take a lifetime to master, but Corbet says she’s had plenty of help from Widnall and others, and their success this weekend truly comedowns to the collective talent of her teammates.

As winners of their class, but Corbet, Rob Brower, Becker Ewing, Elizabeth Lonergan and Sandra Nygren were selected to represent Marblehead at the Helly Hansen Sailing World Caribbean Championship in the British Virgin Islands in October, where they will race against other overall winners from previous stops of the Regatta Series, as well as the 2022 regatta’s champion.

On the same circle as the IODs, a similar battle was playing out in the J/105 class where Charlie Garrard’s Merlin and Rick Dexter’s Brouhaha set off from their respective moorings in Marblehead Harbor with only 1 point between them. The goal of the day was a simple one for Garrard and his experienced crew: keep Brouhaha close and use their boatspeed to finish the job.

When the seabreeze finally filled after a long morning postponement, the two teams got right to work, tailing each other in the prestart and striking the starting line overlapped. Merlin had the advantage and Brouhaha tacked away. The race from there was all Merlin’s to lose.

“We just had to keep them close and we had to finish ahead of them,” Garrard says. “Even though they tacked away, we felt comfortable going left where there was more wind.”

The pair finished 2-4 and Merlin’s lead grew to 3 points, but in the final race, after leading off the start again, Garrard says they were on the downwind leg and crash jibed to avoid another boat, which lost them one place in the race, but fortunately nothing more—the final winning margin was 2 point and Merlin’s winning streak remains intact.

“I think we got off the line clean every day and the boat is going great upwind,” Garrard says. “As always, it helps to have a great crew.”

The return of the Lightning fleet was marked as another notable moment in Race Week history. According to class leader Bob Shapiro, it has been nearly 40 years since the International Lightning Class has competed at Race Week, and fittingly it was the two “old-timers” of the fleet that took second and first places after five races. At the top of the standings with two race wins was local legend Charles “CH” Ritt with Shapiro as runner up and winner of the weekend’s final race.

The Rhodes 19 Class sailed another competitive regatta with 22 boats providing plenty of action-packed mark roundings, and always ahead of the melee were Matt Hooks and teammate Rob Pascal, who won four of eight races to close with an impressive 25-point winning margin, earning Hooks the coveted Norm Cressy Trophy, which has been awarded to the regatta’s best-performing skipper since 1998.

On the same race circle, the Town Class sailed its New England Championship and after five races, Nick Cann and Andrea Dodgeon on Tonic emerged as the winners, scoring two race wins to finish 10 points ahead of Bill Heffernan and Larry Brown on Sweep.

ILCA sailors were particularly challenged with their first races canceled on Saturday due to weather. The race committee started them early on Sunday and completed one shortened race before the wind died. Once they got going again, it was strong current that caused numerous general recall starts, but at the end of the day, three races were sailed with Bill Rothwell winning the ILCA 7 division and Jeremiah McCarthy winning the ILCA 6 fleet.

Marblehead’s re-emerging Etchells class featured the area’s top sailors as well as experienced teams from outside the region, but none were as fast as Tomas Hornos and his teammates on Bob, which won two of six races and ended the series with a comfortable 10-point win. As the top fleet champion, Hornos also earned the Dave Curtis Perpetual Trophy, awarded by the Sailing Hall of Famer himself.

Henry and Barb Amthor, along with teammate Parker Moore, were the top Viper 640 team after winning the regatta’s final race for a 2-point New England Championship win over Marek Zaleski’s Team Z. Brian Keane and his teammates on the J/70 Savasana eked out a hard-fought win to secure the class’s New England Championship, another title for the team as they head toward the World Championship later this year.

The post Team Elektra Wins IOD Fleet and Overall Title in Marblehead appeared first on Sailing World.

Hoping to complete additional races before the forecasted arrival of afternoon thunderstorms, the race committees of Marblehead’s Corinthian, Eastern and Boston yacht clubs set out this morning onto a placid Massachusetts Bay with the best intentions. Mother Nature, however, had other plans and kept sailors of the Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta Series in perpetual postponement until racing was ultimately abandoned in the early afternoon.

With no additional races to count, the Marblehead regatta’s results remain unchanged with one day remaining, and with the two ILCA fleets yet to complete any races, organizers announced plans for an early Sunday morning start, to take advantage of a short window of a promising wind forecast.

With three important New England Championship titles to be decided for the Viper 640, J/70 and Town classes, each currently close in points, sailors were eager to have their respective series play out. Nick Cann and his partner Andrea Dodge, on Tonic, leaders of the competitive local Town class, said on this way to the racecourse this morning that they were looking forward to more racing and a bit of the same luck they enjoyed the previous day in a pair of races noted for the tricky conditions.

“One race, the left side was favored, and the other race, it was the right side,” Cann said, “and there was plenty of luck involved, especially in the last race when Chris Howes [on Believe It Or Not] forced me to tack away. We got second in that one and he ended up seventh, so that worked out for us.”

The Townies will have to wait another day to settle that score, as will the other 10 fleets, from which one individual winner will be selected as the overall winner and earn a berth at the Helly Hansen Sailing World Caribbean Championship in the British Virgin Islands in late October where they will compete against other individual Regatta Series winners as well as the 2022 Championship’s defending team.

Provisional Results

The post Weather Stoppage for Saturday’s Marblehead Races appeared first on Sailing World.

Marblehead may be old, but in this hallowed New England sailing town, the big summertime regatta known as Race Week never gets old. It’s a regatta that started in 1889—the very same year Washington, Montana, and both Dakotas joined the statehood. Today, with three established yacht clubs working in lock step to support the local scene, sailing in Marblehead is thriving, as it should be, because there’s a new and young energy, a few of the old-timers say, and this coming next edition of the Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta Series at Marblehead Race Week will demonstrate that Marblehead racing is hot.

The regatta gets underway on Thursday, July 27, and carries through the weekend, with upwards of 140 sailing teams competing in dinghy and keelboat classes. Among the fleets are the Marblehead Race Week regulars: The International One-Designs, the Towns and the Rhodes 19s. Ten J/105 teams will be present, as will a growing Etchells fleet and nearly 20 J/70s. Among the J/70s are several pro teams training their way to their pending World Championship. Closer to shore, will be ILCA singlehanded dinghies for youth and adults—a recent addition to the regatta, but a welcome one for the area’s small-boat sailors—and there’s the long overdue return of Lightnings at Race Week. The Viper 640 class will enjoy its biggest-fleet bragging rights with 24 registered for the Viper 640 New England Championship.

“This is a big turnout,” says local fleet skipper Fletcher Boland, who bears some responsibility for providing his classmates memorable regattas in the past and luring them to challenge for the New England Championship title. The class has a popular winter southern series that a core group travels to and many of these road warriors have been drawn to the quality of the racing and the good times to be expected when Viper sailors gather in Marblehead. “Maybe people heard about our party last year, which was certainly a good time,” Boland says. “We’re still figuring out how, or if, we can top that.”

Revel as they may after racing, on the water, it’s always good, fast and tactical racing with these little sportboats. Vipers demand full-effort hiking, knee pads and a preference for planning and that seems to be the attraction for twenty and thirty-something sailors. “There’s a wide mixture of skill and age across the US class,” Boland says, “but the composition locally is skewing to the younger side.”

Boland says this edition of the Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta fleet is an excellent mix of Viper teams, including four from the Canadian side of the border who come for open-ocean racing experience they can’t get back home, so he expects a challenging series on what can often be a challenging racecourse.

It’s the same big-sea experience that appeals to Lightning sailor, Bob Shapiro, as well. Shapiro splits his time between Marblehead and New Hampshire’s Bow Lake (Strafford, New Hampshire) and is thrilled for the return of Lightnings to Marblehead Race Week. He figures it has been at least 40 years since these cult classics of one-design sailing played ball at Race Week. Shapiro and others have been leading a concerted new effort to host more open-water regattas in New England.

“Most of our Lighting regattas are on small lakes,” Shapiro says, “and when we go to the big championship regattas, they’re often done on open water.” 

A recent Lightning regatta out of nearby Duxbury, and this return to the waters off Marblehead Neck are significant growth milestones for the regional Lightning fleet, and especially for Shapiro and fellow skipper Charles Ritt. “We are the only two people [in the fleet] that used to sail in Marblehead back when there was a fleet, so it’s sort of a coming home for us.”

Among the skippers of this small-boat local revival will be Nathan Cunningham, son of a great sailor and another New Hampshire traveler, alongside Greg McGinnis of Squam Lake, up Lake Winnipesaukee way. There’s young Owen Moore and his teammates, enjoying life as beneficiaries of the International Lightning Class’s boat-grant loaner. They’ve been racing the boat all summer, Shapiro says, and they’ll come to Marblehead as an easy favorite. Laura Goldberg is coming from afar—Cleveland, Ohio—to race and reunite with college sailing friends. Bow Lake regular Rob Donie is another youngster, as is William Hall, son of a Lightning world champion from long ago.

“As you can see, it’s a pretty young crowd,” Shapiro says, “We’re working really hard to get younger people in this district and doing what we can to help areas of the sport that need a boost.”

Dave Curtis, the great, is plenty known around town. He’s a National Sailing Hall of Famer and Olympian and his name adorns the trophy for which the regatta’s Etchells sailors will vie. Curtis, 77, is still around the waterfront but not so much on the boats that earned him seven Etchells World titles. There’s something about Marblehead that has historically fed Local Fleet 4 sailors the upper echelons of the class; the likes of other greats and inductees, Robbie Doyle and Jud Smith.

For whatever reason—how the elegant hull presents itself to the local waters, or how knowledge is passed among newcomers and old-timers alike—the Etchells is right at home in Marblehead, says fleet captain Paul McLaughlin, “There’s a lot of old pride in the sailors that have come through the fleet, which has been around since 1971.”

If only space and moorings were easier to come by, McLaughlin says, Fleet 4 would be twice its size or better, but with the space limitations as they are, the fleet has been extending its event calendar ever deeper into the fall. In October, they’ve got their New England Championship, and they’re working toward hosting a North American and world championship soon.

But until then, this week’s assembly of 17 teams in Marblehead features local hotshot pro, Thomas Hornos, the perennial winner of late and the guy to chase around the course. Up from the Florida’s Etchells hot-bed is skipper Chris Lanza, assured to have a top crew. There’s Donald Brush, one of Vermont’s finest, Don Dowd from Connecticut, and Robert Hitchcock from the South Coast’s Buzzards Bay. And that’s to name just a few outsiders, joining several new local teams that have been progressing up the fleet thanks to clinics run by Hornos and others.

“My goal was to get 15 to 20 regularly sailing in Marblehead,” McLaughlin says. “We’re up to 12 and we’re all getting better. We’re building it and the improvements are evident.”

Where other clubs may look for flashy new designs to embrace over time, there’s no denying Marblehead favors its one-design history, and the renewed interest in the class of late, McLaughlin says, has been bolstered by Corinthian YC’s Sailing Committee.

“We’ve gotten a lot of support from them,” he says, “they love the idea of the Etchells and there’s an enthusiasm. It’s just one of those classes that, as a fleet, gets the attention because it’s still prestigious to host an Etchells event.”

And speaking of hosts, it is Corinthian YC’s turn to open its doors to the Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta Series’ competitors, and they do so on Thursday with IODs and Rhodes 19 racing. The remaining fleets join Friday, with ILCAs racing Saturday and Sunday only.

Thursday evening at Corinthian is the enlightening Sailing World’s Speaker Series, an intimate and in-depth conversation with world-class yacht designer Britton Ward, who will share his experience leading the hull design team of the New York YC’s 37th America’s Cup Challenge with American Magic.

The post Regatta Series Brings Out the Best of Marblehead appeared first on Sailing World.

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!

The post Summer Sailing in Marblehead appeared first on Sailing World.

“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.

The post Marblehead’s Marque Classes appeared first on Sailing World.

The Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta Series at Marblehead Race Week, it’s been said, is a regatta of mental endurance. With four days of races and no discards, every race and every point counts. There can be no quit until the final leg is sailed, especially in the waters off Marblehead Harbor where the local sailors know that the wind and weather conditions are never the same from one day to the next. And no lead is ever safe.

“It can be a marathon, and when you finish four days you do feel like you’ve done a lot,” said Jim Taylor, of Marblehead. With his son Nat on the helm of their Rhodes 19 Jabberwok, the Taylors won the highly competitive 21-boat fleet and the coveted Cressy Trophy, awarded to the winner of the regatta’s most competitive fleet.

The father and son team on Jabberwock started their regatta on Thursday with respectable finishes of 5-11-5, and that 11th, said Jim Taylor, was their worst result over 11 races. 

“We had to recover from an OCS (over the starting line early) and that was our one double-digit result,” Taylor said. “We probably sailed the best on Friday, which was a wild day with big windshifts and dramatic changes in the wind speed. We sailed those conditions really, really well. That was about as well as I have ever sailed in those conditions, which are usually really frustrating for me.”

On Saturday, the wind piped up, which favored Taylor and his son, which are on the heavier side weightwise. “Peak winds were in the high teens and we were just plain faster,” he said. “With two Taylor butts over the rail we were fast and were able to just sail away.”

The father and son duo have been sailing the Rhodes 19 together for nearly 10 years, but the elder Taylor won Marblehead Race Week in the 1980s. “It was a completely different thing back then, and the talent level is nowhere near where it is right now,” he said. “It’s very high with college sailors joining the fleet and the one thing we like about the boats is that they are all pretty much equally slow, which keeps the racing close. If you do it right you gain a few lengths here and there, but that’s about it.”

On the same racecourse, the local Town Class, which continues to grow in numbers every year to an impressive 20 entries at the Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta, was equally competitive over three days of racing, and in the end, local sailmaker Chris Howes with Town Class stalwart Bart Snow topped the fleet on the final day—by only 1 point over the crew of Bill Heffernan and Larry Brown, of Needham, Mass.

“This fleet has gotten so much more competitive over the past few years,” said Howes, the 2021 Town Class National Champion who only joined the class five years ago. “Everyone’s coming along and there are better sailors, so it’s getting harder and harder.”

Howes, a sailmaker, says his new sails helped him in the weekend’s windy conditions, and his goal going into the regatta was to be relaxed, have fun, and be consistent. This approach was working until the first race on the final day when he realized after the start that his boat’s centerboard was in the wrong position. “We lost four boats immediately,” he said, “and we went from being first with an 8-point lead to being down by 1 point.”

In the final race, however, Howes and Snow maintained their focus, kept tabs on the boats they needed to beat and finished second, which was just enough to secure the win and the class’s perpetual trophy.

With nearly 140 entries across 10 classes, there were plenty more close battles across the fleet, and especially so in the J/70 division, which had two 2023 J/70 World Championship qualifying berths to play for: one for a pro team and one for an all-amateur squad. The latter was bagged by locals Charlie Pendleton, Jim Raisides, Abi Borggaard and Wade Waddell on Bad Hombres after a roller coaster of a regatta. They struggled on Friday, recorded their best results on Saturday, and then almost lost it all on the final day.

“On Friday, we had our worst ever day at Race Week,” Raisides said, “but it speaks to the resiliency of the team that we went out and there on Saturday and had three top-10 finishes and were the third boat overall for the day—that shows a good team.”

The foursome on Bad Hombres were OCS in the first race of the final day, had to return to the start and managed to climb back to score a 20 in the 30-boat fleet. With only one race remaining, they put their disappointment behind them and focused on getting back the points they’d given up.

“Our whole thing was to just keep playing forward and working for points,” Raisides said. Scoring an impressive 11th in the final race was enough to win the berth by a slim 2 points.

The other world-championship berth went to John Heaton’s team on Empeiria, the top J/70 of the weekend, which stunned the fleet on Saturday by winning all three races.

“It was a beautiful regatta, with epic conditions for Marblehead,” said Heaton, whose team of Zeke Horowitz, Zach Mason and Will Felder mastered the changing winds that spanned from south to west, to light and strong, especially on Saturday.

“A lot of it is due to the guys, and that the boat is set up so I can drive it without intervention,” Heaton said. “I was just driving and the whole time the crew was talking about where the wind was, the clouds and the shifts. We had good starts and good speed, but these guys were banging the shifts perfectly. It was a proud day for me to watch the team click so well together.”

Other class winners were: Ege Özgül in the ILCA 7, Max Dressel in the ILCA 6, Tomas Hornos’ Destiny in the Etchells, Charlie Garrard’s Merlin in the J/105, Marek Zaleski’s Team Z in the Viper 640, Diane Reid’s Ellementary in the L30s, and Bill Widnall’s Javelin in the IOD class. Widnall and crew, which won all but one of its seven races, also earned the regatta’s overall title and a berth at the Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta Series Championship with Sunsail in the British Virgin Islands in October.

The post Taylors and Team Widnalls Tops at Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta Marblehead appeared first on Sailing World.

[instagram-feed feed=10]

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

It’s late July in Marblehead, Massachusetts, and the deep-harbor mooring field is packed from shore to shore with boats and teams preparing for the biggest regatta of the summer: the Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta Series at Marblehead Race Week. This annual Race Week, established in 1889, has a long-held tradition of stiff competition among local sailors, and many of these rivalries will continue this weekend when nearly 150 teams take to the waters east of Marblehead Neck.

“This regatta is the centerpiece of our season,” says Kim Pandapas, the defending champion of the Rhodes 19 class. “It’s the one that everyone wants to win, and as a result, everyone brings their A-Game. It’s really hard to come out of there with a victory.”

What makes it especially challenging for Pandapas and his wife Christina is the high level of experience in his Rhodes 19 division, which is 25-deep and full of teams that have spent decades mastering the deceptively simple boat. “A bunch of teams are sailing really well right now,” Pandapas says, singling out his rivals Peter Frisch and Seamus Hourihan. “They won our East Coast Championship [in nearby Manchester] in June and they didn’t just win it, they dominated it.”

This pair, Pandapas says, has been sailing together for eight years and “are sailing really fast and sailing really smart.” But there’s Nat Taylor and his father Jim, who got a late start to the season and have been dominant in the local races. “They too are going really fast,” Pandapas says. “They’re late, but they’ve arrived with their mid-season form and we will not count them out, for sure.”

Pandapas and his wife have a combined lighter weight than many other teams and they prefer lighter winds, so they may be hopeful the weekend’s forecast of sun and 10-knot breezes holds true. But even a favorable forecast isn’t enough to put him at ease. “This fleet has always been tough,” he says. “There are two ways of winning a regatta: one is to be the last man standing and the other is to just go out and take it. Race Week is different because it’s always been more of a war of attrition. I expect this to be the case, and like last year, it will come down to the last race. It’s four days and people start to get tired and it’s impossible not to shoot yourself in the foot once.”

Local professional sailor, Tomas Hornos, competing in the 13-boat Etchells fleet, shares a similar sentiment in that one key factor is always the weather. “No two days are ever the same,” he says. “That’s what’s unique about Marblehead. It’s an open-ocean venue, so we’re looking at more long-range wind patterns—what the trend will be throughout the day. What’s important is to have a firm understanding of what the likelihood of the wind will be and look for the trend in the forecast models.”

As a tip to visiting teams, of which there are plenty in the regatta, Hornos says there’s typically more wind further from shore, particularly in the morning races, but keep a sharp eye to the right (near-shore) later in the day. The current is a significant factor as well, he adds. “People have the hardest time trying to figure it out, but it’s pretty simple in reality: there is a lot of water moving from Boston and Gloucester, so there is no tidal effect really—it’s just always ripping.”

The Etchells fleet will be packed with top locals, as well as a few top-level teams that have been training all winter in Florida and will compete at the Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta for a coveted berth at the upcoming Etchells World Championship in England in September. The same is true for the regatta’s J/70 fleet, in which 31 teams will be vying for a slot at the class’s Worlds in Monaco in October. As has become the norm with J/70 class racing, the fleet is deep with professional teams—only eight current teams currently qualify as amateur (Corinthian) in what will serve as the J/70 New England Championship as well.    

While the J/70s have pulled in a large national contingent, Marblehead’s Town Class continues to be the fastest growing one-design fleet in the area. Each year, the class grows by one thanks to local shipwright and stalwart Bart Snow who searches for derelict Towns (or those in need of some basic TLC), fixes them up and puts them back into action. With the Marblehead mooring waiting list extending for decades, the Town Class moorings in the far shallows of the harbor allow sailors new and old to get in on the weekend racing action.

“It’s amazing that the class continues to grow one by one,” says Berit Solstad, Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta class champion from 2021, “a lot of this is because of Bart and all the things that people are doing to get newer sailors into the class, running clinics and getting everyone to up their game and sail their boats better.”

The International One Design class, which totals nine entries and produced last year’s overall winner (Bill Widnall’s Javelin), will continue its own long-running tradition of keeping up with Widnall, a wizard on the racecourse. The IODs and Rhodes 19s will kick off the regatta early with races on Thursday, while the remaining keelboat classes (J/105 and Viper 640) begin racing on Friday. The ILCA dinghies race on Saturday and Sunday only and Saturday also features the North Sails Rally Race, a one-day distance race. All on-shore activities, registration and evening parties will be hosted at Boston Yacht Club and on-the-water racing is supported by the top-shelf race management teams from Eastern and Corinthian yacht clubs.

The post Mid-summer Classic On Tap for Marblehead Sailors appeared first on Sailing World.

FINAL RESULTS

The scores of Saturday remained, and with that, Bill Widnall’s crew on the International One-Design Javelin emerged as the top boat of the class’s tiebreaker and keeper of the Norman Cressy Trophy, awarded to the winner of the most competitive fleet of the Marblehead NOOD.

“It wasn’t a runaway win,” said Widnall. “Going into today, any of the top-four boats could have won. It was contestable until the end.

“The lead changed three times over the first three days because the fleet is very competitive,” he added. “For Marblehead there is reasonably strong current, but it’s pretty uniform as far out as we were. In terms of pre-race prep, we always look at the weather and the geographic distribution of the wind across the entire race area. That got us into trouble in the first race of the regatta because we thought the wind would be stronger closer to Boston, but for the first windward leg it was the exact opposite. That was our sixth. But overall, the weekend’s strategy was to get a darn good start and be mindful of the shifts.”

The IODs shared the same race circle as the Etchells and J/105 fleets and today the J/105s were the only class to start a race before it was abandoned when a squall swept across the course. Charlie Garrard’s team on Merlin had started perfectly and were well ahead on the first leg before the race was called off, but five wins in six races over the previous two days was plenty to secure the win over Ric Dexter and the team on Brouhaha.

Ted Hardenbergh and his teammates on Natasha were also hoping to get in more races as they enjoy sailing the classic and deep-keeled Etchells in strong winds, but in the end, they too had plenty of margin—10 points over Michael Jobin’s Magic Dragon—to win the nine-boat class.

On the regatta’s “Halfway Rock Line” with the event’s sportier fleets—Rhodes 19s, J/70s and Viper 640s—no races were started and reports of broken boats and parts were reason enough for the race committee to call it quits. Kim and Kristina Pandapas, on the Rhodes 19 Mo Betta, were plenty happy to go ashore and preserve their boat. As one of the lighter crews in the fleet, however, they excelled over three previous days of light-air conditions to claim the top-spot by 5 points over Joe Fava and Elise Nash’s Dinner Out.

“We had good starts that put us in positions to sail our own races,” Kim Pandapas said, “and that kept feeding on itself. This ended up being a light regatta and that is one of our strengths. It’s about sailing fast and keeping the boat moving in those conditions. Kristina and I have been sailing together for a long time and because of our crew weight and my propensity to sail a bit higher than others we were able to get away clean at times.”

The 89-year-old lapstrake Town-class dinghies, icons of the Marblehead racing scene and reputed to be the fastest growing local one-design class, had 14 boats racing this weekend and after three days, Berit Solstad’s Lille Venn emerged as the top boat, by a mere point, and Solstad says she was happy to not race in the strong winds for fear of breaking a spar or having to bail water all day long. The lighter conditions they enjoyed in the opening days of the regatta suited them and the Town class best.

Harnessing the wind with new sails, Solstad and her nephew Tor did not win a single race, but top-five finishes were enough to eke out a win. “On Thursday and Friday our boat was moving really well, but on Saturday our boatspeed wasn’t as good,” said Solstad. “I think that’s because there were some really strong currents, something I’d never seen before here.”

On the regatta’s busy “Tinker’s Line” racecourse, local ace and National Sailing Hall of Famer, Jud Smith, won the J/70 fleet again (as well as the J/70 Northeast Championship), thanks to a string of race wins on Friday (they won four of six races altogether), but the standout J/70 performance was that of the top Corinthian team led by longtime boat partners Jim Raisides and Charlie Pendelton.

With their teammates on Bad Hombres, Raisides and Pendelton sailed one of their best regattas ever, capped with a race win on Saturday. The outstanding performance in a fleet deep with talented and professional sailors put them second behind Smith in the overall standings, but first in the Corinthian-scored subdivision.

On the same race circle, Marek Zaleski’s team on the Viper 640 Team Z won its division by 4 points, which put them in the running for the Helly Hansen NOOD Regatta’s championship in the British Virgin Islands in October and when they were selected as the regatta’s overall winner and BVI Challenger, Zaleski said he was keen to go and represent the Viper fleet.

“We were just saying the other day that our wives were starting to complain about us sailing too much,” Zaleski said, “and this is the perfect reward that I’m sure they’ll be happy to have us win.”

Sailing with Zaleski was his father Chris and longtime sailing friend, Jake Bradt. They’re new to the Viper 640, Zaleski says, having bought the boat about a year ago as they intend to race the class’s North American Championship in Norton, Connecticut, in early October.

“It’s a class I’ve always wanted to get into,” Zaleski says, “and I’ve always wanted to race something with my dad and Jake. We saved up some money and bought the boat and we’ve been hitting every regatta we can to get familiar with the boat and learn how to get it around the course, focusing on boat handling and what makes the boat go fast. It’s been a big learning experience for us, and while we were a bit slow upwind, we made some big advances with every race. That’s what it’s all about for us right now: learning the boat, the trim and the tuning before the North Americans.”

Kyle Easton and his teammates on Momma’s Boys were the top team of the four-boat RS21 fleet, which consisted of several youth teams using the regatta for the upcoming Sears Cup Trophy (the national youth keelboat championship), and on the Laser circle, which only completed one day’s races on Saturday, Bill Rothwell won by a single point having won four races and carrying an OCS in his scoreline.

DAILY VIDEO HIGHLIGHT REELS

The post Widnall’s Javelin Wins IODs and Coveted Cressy Trophy at Marblehead NOOD appeared first on Sailing World.

The post Helly Hansen NOOD Regatta Marblehead 2021: Sunday Photos appeared first on Sailing World.