Karl Anderson is working in his shop when he stops to answer what should be a straightforward question: How many boats do you own? After a lengthy pause, the 64-year-old responds, “I don’t even know.” Yet the answer can be found with a thorough inspection of the grounds outside the door of Karl’s Boat Shop in Harwich, Massachusetts. What a passing motorist on Great Western Road might assume is just another Cape Cod nautical junkyard has an eclectic collection of vessels ranging from beautifully maintained racers to unfinished projects. Anderson owns a lot of them—some by choice, a few by trade, but most by chance or unpaid invoices.

When I pay him a visit, and our discussion turns to an obscure design by Ray Hunt, Anderson perks up. “I have one of those in the woods out back,” he says. “You can have it if you want it.”

This is not an attempt to bribe a reporter into writing a more favorable story, just a fact that it is there for the taking.

One reason Anderson has so many boats in his possession is because he has always had a fondness for things that float (or should float). He learned to sail on the waters of Cape Cod in general and Dennis in particular, first in Turnabouts and then in O’Day Widgeons. His first Rhodes 18 was a boat that had washed up on shore, upside down with the centerboard stuck in it.

In 1973, Anderson begged his mother for the $800 to buy it, and an older sailor advised him on how to restore it. He started sailing with his friends Chris Cooney and Wick Shepherdson. Four years later, Anderson had sorted the boat and made a name for himself in the class. At the helm of his parents’ Ford LTD station wagon, a water buffalo of a tow vehicle, Anderson and his crew drove north to Biddeford, Maine, for the Rhodes 18 Nationals. Before the team entered the tunnel in Boston, Anderson looked up and noticed his father, who turns 100 this year, waving from a bridge above. The drive home was a fun one, as the team won the national title.

A love of sailing motivated Anderson to open his boat-repair shop in 1983. The firm’s philosophy is summarized in five words: “Have fun working on boats.” And work on them he does. But first, he sails on many of them so he can develop a feel for what they need. One case in point is the J/24. Way back, Anderson started out sailing with sailmaker Dan Neri on his J/24 in Newport and then jumped into a boat with Ken Read. Back in the 1980s, brand-new J/24s needed substantial modifications to be optimized, and he was the guy to do it.

Anderson’s philosophy of boat preparation is the same today. “My method is the blades first. You make the blades the best,” Anderson says. “Secondly, make sure the rig is aligned with the blades, centered side to side. If the rig can’t be centered side to side, what’s the best compromise? Then the bottom. I might even go rigging, ease of use, then the bottom after that because if you can’t tack the boat, it doesn’t matter how good the bottom is.”

Read, now president of North Sails, is a busy man but eager to make time to talk about his boatwright of choice. He quips, “Is this for an article…or a book?”

They started sailing together in the late 1980s and have a lot of time on the water. Read credits Anderson as a critical factor in what he describes as a division of responsibilities.

“Karl was in charge of the boat from the waterline down. Someone else was in charge of the waterline up. I was in charge of the sails. Moose [McClintock] was in charge of the safety gear.”

It was a different era. Professional ­sailors didn’t get paid to sail. They all had jobs, and if they sailed well and won regattas, it boosted their businesses. Anderson worked on boats. Read sold sails, and success on the racecourse was good business. And they still had fun. At the J/24 North Americans in San Francisco, for example, the team could work late into the night to prepare the charter boat. Or they could get most of the work done, knock off early and attend a Grateful Dead show. The vote was unanimous, and Read, Anderson and the rest of the crew saw the Dead in their natural habitat.

After more victories in the J/24 and Etchells than he can recall, Read is quick to credit Anderson. “Karl has a lot of talent and not a lot of ego. I think it comes from a blue-collar mentality. Whenever he introduced himself, he would say, ‘Karl Anderson, Karl’s Boat Shop, Karl with a K.’ He doesn’t mind getting dirty. Anybody who knows how to use tools and doesn’t mind fairing the damn keel himself is naturally going to have less of an ego. It’s work ethic, family, surroundings, what he does for a living. It’s never pretty with Karl, but it somehow works. If you said to him that the bottom needs to be perfect, it was perfect, exactly to the tolerances you were looking for. He doesn’t do things conventionally, but he always does things right. The guy just wins.”

McClintock has sailed with Read and Anderson a fair bit too and says, “Sailing is a sport where you have to earn your respect, and Karl’s earned it with everybody.”

Part of Anderson’s reputation is his demeanor. McClintock says he’s never seen Anderson angry. He’s also quick to note that he’s a great athlete. “He looks like a dumpy guy, but he’s not. He’s quick, he’s agile, he can ski, he can play hockey, and he’s one of the best technical crews you’ll ever see. I learn from him every time I sail with him. He’s really good at making boats go fast.”

While Read is a well-known sailor around the globe, he is not the most famous customer of Karl’s Boat Shop—not by a long shot. That honor belongs to the late, great Sen. Edward Kennedy. For a decade and a half, the senator entrusted Anderson with the care of his beloved Ray Hunt-designed 50-foot Concordia schooner Mya.

Anderson went sailing with Kennedy on numerous occasions. With a grin, he recalls being out on Mya for a sail and saying, “Senator, there are rocks over there.” To which the senator replied, “I’ve been sailing these waters for 50 years; there are no rocks there!”

About two minutes later, the boat stopped—abruptly.

Anderson and his colleague John Sheehan made news when they lost control of Mya during a delivery at the end of the season and put the boat aground in the soft sand of Cold Storage Beach in East Dennis. The famous vessel was later pulled to safety by a tugboat. The damage was minor.

Many sailors on Cape Cod are summer people, so when the crocus and daffodils are popping through the underbrush, so too is the pace at the cluttered boat shop. “We have a very seasonal group that comes here for the summer. They race the local boats, such as the Wianno Seniors,” Anderson says. “They come the first week of June, and then they’re gone the week after Labor Day. They have a certain amount of time, and they don’t want to miss anything, so if something breaks, they want it fixed yesterday.”

Few people in the boat-restoration business are fortunate enough to have created an iconic product that is an embodiment of who they are. The Karl’s Boat Shop tiller is a thing of beauty, a shape that can be identified from afar. In keeping with the philosophy of the shop, the tiller wasn’t a creation based on divine inspiration. It was a sublime answer to a practical problem.

A sailor by the name of Rick Bishop didn’t like the feeling of the stock, straight J/24 tiller hitting him in the back of the legs. Anderson thought about it for a bit and ­created a design with a distinctive bend.

At the time, his shop was laminating ribs for a boat. Anderson gathered up the scraps and fabricated the first of his iconic tillers. “They were made from quarter-inch strips,” he says. “We always said it was mahogany, but it’s really red cedar. That’s how we got them so light. If you don’t varnish them, they will go 10 years. Some guys have them for 20 years. Each tiller receives two coats of sealer, three coats of varnish. The varnish of choice is Epifanes.”

Two of Anderson’s tillers, one for a J/22 and another for a J/24, are mounted on the wall of professional sailor Chris Larson’s home because of the wars they have been through and the great memories they recall. After Read moved on to other classes, Larson inherited Anderson and went on to win the J/24 Worlds with him in 1996.

Larson is quick to corroborate Anderson’s meticulous boat preparation. “Karl was always the master of figuring out what to do next with boat optimization. Once you got the boat back from him, you were confident that it was sorted. You had to have good boat mechanics, get a good start, and if all of that worked out, you were going to have a good event.”

Larson adds that Anderson is the kind of guy who simply gets the job done. “It doesn’t matter what you have to do,” Larson says. “His wasn’t a shop where everything was pretty. It was a get-it-done approach. That’s just how Karl operates. He was always one of those larger-than-life guys, always part of the team. Everybody in the boat park knows Karl. He has a personality that everyone likes and respects. He’s the good part of sailing, the nostalgic history of the evolution of certain classes. In the J/24, he was in the middle of it all, and it would not have been the same without him.”

Professional sailors are not the only customers Anderson caters to. Mark Hillman is a highly accomplished Corinthian competitor who has owned a fleet of racing boats, including five J/24s and a J/70. When Anderson was working on his J/24 (No. 196 named Dr. Feelgood), he arrived to find there were still some details that needed tending to. “We enjoyed a vacation in Chatham while we waited for the boat to be ready,” Hillman says. It was worth the wait; Hillman would later finish third in the J/24 World Championship and win the East Coasts.

A lot of boat shops have come and gone since 1983, but what has kept the doors open at Anderson’s place makes complete sense. “Stay away from building boats,” Anderson says, looking up from an invoice on his cluttered desk. He has built a few ­custom boats and restored countless yachts, but he has never been lured into the production boatbuilding business. It’s too volatile. Instead, seasonal work, hauling and storage keep the lights on. The race-boat stuff is a passion. Then there are the friends who show up with interesting projects.

Anderson has been in the business long enough that some of the boats he has restored over the years are ready for a second restoration. One he’s trying to get back on the water is Wizard, an aptly named 40-foot 1959 Concordia yawl designed by Ray Hunt, which is hibernating in a well-loved boat barn toward the back of Anderson’s property. If he can convince one or two partners to join him, and find the time between a busy race schedule and running the shop, Wizard will set sail again on Cape Cod—someday.

Wizard is a big project, one that will ­consume a substantial amount of time, talent and money. But with a twinkle in his eyes, Anderson says he’s bought plenty of things he couldn’t afford over the years, but somehow he found a way to pay for them. Sweat equity is how, and at Karl’s Boat Shop, there’s plenty of it. The work is dirty. And it’s messy. But the result is always fast.

The post The Magic of Karl’s Boat Shop appeared first on Sailing World.

Three hours after the start of the Fort Lauderdale to Key West Race, Cole Brauer decides to switch up the game plan. “We can’t race the same way as everyone else because we don’t have a full crew,” she vents. “I have to remind myself of that.”

For the past 20 miles, Brauer and her teammate, Cat Chimney, have been short-tacking the Class40 First Light down the Miami coast to avoid the Gulf Stream, which travels north at 4 knots. With a southeasterly breeze building offshore, they must balance current relief with stronger wind offshore, choosing when to tack toward the beach and when to head out for fresh breeze. But with every tack, the competition increases their lead. Class40s aren’t known for stellar upwind speed, and the fact that Brauer and Chimney are doublehanding only makes the maneuvers slower.

“The conditions aren’t the same for everyone all the time,” Chimney responds. “I’m happy for a split here if that’s what you want to do.”

This is the duo’s first race together, and they are still getting a feel for their roles on the boat. Before today, the two had cultivated a strong professional friendship racing against each other in Class40s, often helping each other fix things before the starts of big races. A few weeks before the Fort Lauderdale to Key West Race, the Magenta Project sent them to a training session on the Canadian Ocean Racing Team’s IMOCA 60, and they instantly hit it off as teammates, deciding then and there to do more doublehanded racing together.

“All right, let’s go for a tack,” Brauer says. “We’re not going to gain by following.”

They set up at the back of the boat, with Brauer breaking the jib from her seat at the helm and Chimney trimming the new sheet on the other side.

“OK, autopilot is off,” Brauer says, ­clicking the remote-control puck strung around her neck.

“Copy.”

“Three, two, one, tacking.”

The boat’s bow swings through the breeze, and soon enough they’re headed out to sea. “Nice tack, Cat,” Brauer says, settling the boat onto its new heading.

For Brauer, this race is the latest development in a relatively short career in pro sailing. At 100 pounds and 5-foot-nothing, Brauer is a small person with big aspirations, yet what she lacks in size she makes up for in grit. Beginning as a boat captain, the 28-year-old has become a fixture on various sailing circuits, from distance racing to Etchells, J/70s and Melges 24s. In some ways, she’s a ­typical sailing bum, living in a built-out van so she can go where the wind and the gigs take her. Her career has already had many twists and turns, and she has big plans.

Brauer came late to the sport as a walk-on crew at the University of Hawaii. “I remember when I got to that first practice, people were surprised I was a girl because of my first name,” she says. “By then I was used to it, though. People still think I’m a boy if they haven’t met me in person. It’s common in this business.”

After graduating as a three-time scholar athlete with a degree in food science with a focus in medicine, medical school seemed like a logical next step. But the 2018 Pacific Cup sent her down a different path. “It was my first big offshore race,” Brauer says, “and when we got within 25 miles of shore, I got a blip of cell service, called my mom, and told her I wasn’t going to med school. I was going to go sailing instead.”

Her parents were less than stoked about their daughter abandoning a medical career to bum around on boats, but Brauer stuck to her decision, spending the year after graduation as a detailer, scrubbing teak with toothbrushes and making little money for it. “I was kind of on the struggle bus,” she says. “I could barely pay rent.”

She moved back to her home port in Boothbay Harbor, Maine, to search for sailing jobs. She was coaching to get by when she met a boat captain named Tim Fetsch, who initially wanted nothing to do with her when she asked for an apprenticeship.

“I convinced him by telling him I was small. I fit into tiny spaces, and I’d do absolutely anything to get a job,” she says. After a few weeks of steady badgering, Fetsch relented and gave her a job working on a Swan 42, her first bit of real nipper work. She took up every task thrown her way, cleaning bilges so well you could eat off them, whatever she had to do to make sure she was going to have a job the next day.

Fetsch worked for the US Merchant Marine Academy Sailing Foundation, where he managed about a dozen boats for charters and racing. Brauer started going up and down the East Coast doing deliveries on random boats, from Melges 32s to 80-foot racer-cruisers. “Usually when you’re a nipper, you’re only working on one boat under one captain,” Brauer says. “And now I was working under one boat captain, but we had a bunch of boats that we were working on.”

Fetsch taught her everything she knows, from engines to electrical. He made her install her first 110-volt outlet on a Swan 66. He taught her to see every day as a tryout and to never get too comfortable in her position. “He was brutal,” Brauer says. “But he made sure I stayed honest, made sure I worked hard and never got cocky. Looking back, Tim is the best thing that’s happened to my career. I still use those lessons today.”

Brauer worked for Fetsch for a year and a half. One day, they were walking through New England Boatworks in Portsmouth, Rhode Island, when Brauer spotted a sorry-­looking Classe Mini 6.50 sitting on a trailer beneath a tarp in the boatyard. By then she’d been itching to get into singlehanded racing. She’d done some doublehanded offshore sailing in Hawaii, and she’d been doing doublehanded deliveries with Fetsch, but she wanted to take things to the next level. The Mini turned out to be a Foundation-owned boat, so she asked Fetsch if she could fix it up and campaign it.

Once again, he brushed her off, but Brauer remained persistent. Eventually, she finagled a deal with Warrior Sailing, also run through the USMMA Sailing Foundation, to refit the boat to take veterans out to learn the ropes of offshore sailing. “I don’t know if [the people at the foundation] completely believed I could do it,” Brauer says. “But they were like, ‘We’ll give her this boat and see how she does. She’ll probably give up eventually.’”

But Brauer didn’t give up. By then she’d started to have this insane idea. No American woman has ever raced singlehanded around the world, and she began to think she could be the first. “I get into a rhythm when I’m singlehanding,” Brauer says. “Everything just flows, and it works. I feel the boat, and the boat feels me. We kind of work as one, so I’m never really alone because I have the boat there.”

Eventually, she got the Mini completely refit and ready to do some serious offshore racing. But two weeks before the 2019 Bermuda 1-2, the foundation pulled its support, even though Brauer had paid the registration. “That absolutely crushed me,” she says. “I ended up stepping away from the boat after that.”

As fate would have it, she’d met Mike Hennessey on the dock earlier that season. Hennessey owned a Class40, Dragon, and Brauer started doing deliveries for him when his boat captain quit. Straight away, she badgered him for the job. “I could tell that Mike didn’t want me to take the job at first. I was 24, and I was a girl, and I was small. All these boat captains were big, 250-pound dudes in their 30s.”

Like others before him, Hennessy relented, and the two have been working together ever since. That isn’t to say it’s been an easy ride, however.

There’s a special kind of romance attached to shorthanded ocean racers, often viewed as brawny lone-wolf cowboy types who, for whatever reason, choose to battle their demons alone on the ocean rather than face them on land like the rest of us. Brauer doesn’t fit this mold. She’s good with people, even though she’s better with boats. She isn’t brawny by any means, and in cases where some men might force a repair or rigging job with brute strength, Brauer makes better use of her brain.

“You’re always going to have a tool, even if it’s the wrong tool,” she says. “Sometimes I’ll use a winch handle instead of a screwdriver if I have to.”

She plans her day to the minute, not the hour, and every task she does has a procedure, usually sketched out in long and detailed lists. Her life is not about gazing at sunsets or counting shooting stars, but about engines and electrical, and hauling sails around with halyards because she isn’t physically strong enough to do it by hand. It’s about climbing into the rudder compartment when the autopilot jams and pressing her back against the bulkhead to wriggle loose the ram from the tiller bar while the boat lays over with the kite still up, then having to go back on deck and wrangle in the pieces of a freshly broken tack clutch without getting her teeth knocked in. It’s about sitting in a harness with her legs falling asleep because she has a job to do up the mast, fighting the urge to let herself off the hook and go back down because there’s no shot she’s climbing back up to do it later, not when it’s blowing 20 knots with zero-degree temperatures. It’s about knowing that whatever comes her way, no one is there to save her if she fails.

All these lessons came into use when Brauer and Hennessy lost their rig in the 2022 Caribbean 600. They’d installed brand-new rigging before completing the eight-day delivery to Antigua, but “the ­problem with brand-new equipment is you’re going to have teething pains,” Brauer says. “It’s the same with a brand-new engine. You have to stop every few miles and make sure everything is working properly. You trust but verify, and in this case, I didn’t verify.”

After rounding St. Barts during the race, Brauer went below to rest before she planned to hoist the Code 5. She thought they’d hit a weird wave when Hennessy began yelling, “Rig down, rig down!” Before going below, the sun was behind the mainsail, but when she glanced topside, the shade had completely vanished. When she came up, the rig had toppled over to one side. They lashed the boom to the boat and tried to get the main down, but Class40 mains have luff cars and full-length ­battens. The only way they could have taken it off would have been to get in the water and unwind the battens. Jumping into the ocean was not an option, and the sound of carbon and fiberglass crunching became debilitating. Brauer had never heard anything like it, and to this day, it is the worst sound she’s ever heard. When one of the winches they were using to keep the mast in the boat started pulling off the deck, they knew they were running low on options.

“Mike and I made the quick decision that we were going to lose the rig,” Brauer says.

The two began cutting halyards and unpinning side stays, trying to save anything they could salvage. “I had gone over my safety procedures for so long,” Brauer says, “so I knew where the bolt cutters were. I knew where the knives were.”

Brauer had to hit the last turnbuckle with a hammer when it got to the final thread, and after cutting more lines, they picked everything up and threw it overboard.

They’ve rebounded in a big way, however. Hennessy ended up replacing everything and getting Dragon race-ready before deciding to build a brand-new Class40 to race in France this summer. He sold Dragon to Frederick K.W. Day, owner of the Class40 Longbow, who renamed the boat First Light. Day still allows Brauer to race it as their sparring partner, with the Fort Lauderdale to Key West Race serving as their first outing together.

By the time Brauer and Chimney reach the finish, the sun has been up for two hours. The two didn’t end up finishing as strong as they’d hoped, but the main goal for this race was to arrive in one piece and see how they vibe as a team. In that sense, the test was successful, and morale is high as they tie First Light to the dock.

“What Cole is doing is really unique for her age,” says Chimney, who is eight years her senior. “She’s come into this at a really important time for women in sailing, and she deserves a lot of respect for leveraging it the way she has. These opportunities weren’t available or the culture wasn’t right when I was her age doing similar things.

“Everybody navigates pro sailing in ­different ways,” Chimney continues. “There’s no science behind it. It’s not like you go to college for four years and come out with a career-track job. It’s all about putting yourself in the right place with the right people and doing the best you can, and I think Cole is crushing it in that sense.”

Although she’s got some sweet gigs for the time being, Brauer has her mind set on a solo circumnavigation. She has a designer in mind to one day build an IMOCA 60 to fit her size, and in the meantime, she’ll use the Class40to rack up miles. She will continue to ignore those who doubt her because deep down, only she knows what she’s capable of. She could have taken a different path, could have gone to medical school and worked a nine-to-five, could have lived in a house instead of a van. But there’s a moment she is constantly pursuing, a moment she relishes. It’s those first few seconds after making the correct decision to do a sail change, when the wind does what it’s supposed to and the boat picks up speed, when the sail fills and the autopilot catches and the hull surfs down a wave. This is the feeling she’s chasing. This is the place she calls home, and home is wherever the wind and determination will take her.

The post Onboard With Cole Brauer appeared first on Sailing World.

For sailing fans visiting from ­outside France, the Route du Rhum is a cultural shock, barely to be believed even once seen. It is France’s oldest singlehanded race, first held in 1978, and run every four years from St. Malo in northern France 3,500 miles across the North Atlantic to Guadeloupe. The fleet of 138 boats that assembled for the start in November 2022 was incredible, with an estimated value of 260 million euros—from the implausible 100-foot Ultime trimarans to a record fleet of 38 IMOCA 60s and a similarly impressive fleet of 55 Class40s. Dock sides are crammed with spectators, many hoping to catch a glimpse of the top skippers—some are genuine sports stars. Had the 2022 start not been delayed, French President Emmanuel Macron was to have attended. It’s that much of a big deal.

In the days and hours before the Route du Rhum started, more than 1 million people passed through its race village in St. Malo. In this environment, even non-French amateurs, such as the two US Class40 skippers, Alex Mehran and Greg Leonard, gained celebrity status with relentless autograph signing, selfies with fans and press interviews. Usually outshone by the bigger, higher-profile boats, the Class40 is the most successful 40-footer of all time. While the Farr 40 never topped more than 40 boats at a world championship, this is the second Route du Rhum in which more than 50 participated. To date, 192 Class40 hull numbers have been allocated.

While “Open 40s” once competed in the OSTAR and Around Alone, the Class40 came about independently. Born in France in the early 2000s, two designs defined the class: the Pogo 40 and the Jumbo 40. But the success and longevity of the Class40 is due to its highly constrictive box rule, drafted by a group that includes wise French sailor and journalist Patrice Carpentier, which remains robust 18 years on.

The box rule’s basic parameters are a maximum length overall of 39 feet, 11 inches; max beam of 14 feet, 9 inches; draft of 9 feet, 10 inches; average freeboard of 3 feet, 6 inches; max mast height of 62 feet, 4 inches; max working sail area of 1,238 square feet; minimum displacement at 10,097 pounds; and max water ballast of 1,653 pounds per side. Most brutal are the materials limitations: Carbon fiber, aramid, honeycomb cores and pre-preg resin are forbidden from the construction of the hull, deck, interior structure and fittings; go down below on one and, joyously, thanks to the GRP construction, it is not coffin black.

Carbon fiber is permitted for the mast, boom and ­bowsprit, while standing rigging must be steel rod. Sails are limited to eight, and all but two and the heavy-weather jib must be polyester and nylon. A single fixed keel and as many as two rudders are permitted, but daggerboards and foils are banned, as are canting, rotating masts, mast jacks, and adjustable or removable forestays. However, complex kick-up rudders are permitted. (Although their effectiveness to kick up in a collision is allegedly dubious.) Over the years, displacement and average freeboard have slightly reduced, but the biggest rule amendment has limited “how scow” Class40 hull shapes can be. While the latest foiling Protos in the Classe Mini (the “flying bathtubs”) are fully flat-bowed, Class40 has two max beam limits just short of the bow to prevent this. Naturally, costs have risen, but the rule has successfully limited them; today, a top Class40 costs 700,000 to 800,000 euros.

Those sailing the Class40s in the early days were a mix of pros and amateurs. Today professionals on sponsored boats are the majority. As for aspirant French pro sailors, the Class40 has become a significant stepping stone between from the Classe Mini and Figaro circuits to the IMOCA.

As skipper of Groupe SNEF, leading Mini and Figaro skipper Xavier Macaire says: “The transatlantic races like this [Route du Rhum] are very interesting to us, and the boat is not very expensive. The Class40 is easy to maintain and prepare, and is not a complicated boat like an IMOCA where you need 12 guys. With this, you need two or three, not full time. It is an easy, fast boat.”

With more top pros like Macaire joining, 30 new Class40s have been launched in the last four-year cycle. The most recent Route du Rhum podium, for example, comprised two-time Solitaire du Figaro winner Yoann Richomme (Paprec Arkea) and Mini Transat winners Corentin Douguet (Queguiner-Innoveo) and Ambrogio Beccaria (Allagrande Pirelli) of Italy.

Of the French classes, the Class40 and the Mini remain the most cosmopolitan, with entries from other European countries, notably Italy at present, while the United States, Australia and South Africa were also represented in the Route du Rhum. Far from being put off by the pro element, Americans Alex Mehran and Greg Leonard were thrilled to be on the same starting line. “It is such a privilege to race against some of the top offshore sailors in the world,” says Leonard, who hails from Florida. “It is like playing football against a first team in the NFL—it is that level of quality. There are not that many sports you can do that in.”

Both American skippers came to the Route du Rhum from similar paths. With his Mach 40.3 Kite, Leonard is a professional economist originally from Texas. He campaigned a J/120 for many years with his remarkable son Hannes, who raced his first doublehanded overnighter with his father at age 13. Now 18 and with thousands of race miles under his belt, both in the US and Europe, he is a Class40 expert. For his father, the Route du Rhum was his first singlehanded race.

Over the years, several top shorthanded sailors, notably British Vendée Globe skippers Mike Golding and Miranda Merron, have raced with him, also coaching him. He is very enthusiastic about the Class40: “They are beautiful boats, such fun to sail. When we delivered her to St. Malo, we had 28 to 40 knots just aft of the beam, and we just hung in the low 20s boatspeed, and it was finger-light steering.”

Mehran skippers Polka Dot, which has the perfect pedigree, being Yoann Richomme’s 2018 Route du Rhum winner—a Lift V1 design. Growing up as part of the St. Francis YC Laser squad and subsequently a Brown collegiate sailor, he met Welsh Class40 designer Merfyn Owen in 2009 and raced one of his designs. Remarkably, he won his first major singlehanded race, the 2009 Bermuda 1-2. He subsequently graduated to an Owen Clarke-designed Open 50, in which he set a record in 2012’s singlehanded Transpac. He then went off, had four kids, and developed his commercial real estate business before getting the itch once more last year. He competed ­doublehanded with Owen in the 2021 Transat Jacques Vabre on an old Class40, but as Mehran puts it, “We needed to get ­something scow.”

He too has been receiving coaching from Merron and Golding, among others. According to Mehran, one of the most difficult things to explain to those back home is less the offshore-racing fever that afflicts French fans, but that their skippers are not multimillionaires. Instead, they come from a wide age group and all have commercial backing to either buy a secondhand boat or—if they are higher-­profile, more accomplished or just plain lucky—build a new one. So, returning to the Route du Rhum podium, Paprec’s business is waste disposal (admittedly, its owner races his own Wally 107), Arkea is banking and insurance, Queguiner is building materials, Innoveo is an app-­development platform, and Pirelli makes tires (its CEO has a Wally 145).

Over the last two decades, the Class40s themselves have evolved, despite Draconian design limitations. What started as cruiser-racers with fitted-out interiors became racer-cruisers and are now refined pure racers. They may not be black inside, but the build quality of the latest-generation designs is of the highest ­standard, and it seems no longer possible to buy a cruiser-racer.

A delight of the Class40 is that no one designer is dominant; eight different designs make up the 30 boats built over the last four years. Pogo Structures, last of the original builders, is on its fourth version of its Pogo 40, the S4, designed by Emirates Team New Zealand’s naval architect, Guillaume Verdier (who also designed Structures’ scow-bowed flying Proto Mini).

The man who developed the first blunt-fronted scow Mini, David Raison, produced the Max40, built by JPS in La Trinité-sur-Mer. Also built by JPS are Sam Manuard designs—the Mach 40.4, such as the 2021 Transat Jacques Vabre winner Redman, skippered by Antoine Carpentier (nephew of the original rule’s writer), and now its evolution, the Mach 40.5, of which two competed in the Route du Rhum.

In 2020, VPLP made its first foray into the class with the Clak 40, built by Multiplast, of which four raced in the Route du Rhum, the top finisher being Martin le Pape’s Fondation Stargardt. Etienne Bertrand, another successful Mini designer, had two Cape Racing Scow 40s in the race, while Allagrande Pirelli, believed to be the most expensive of the latest crop and campaigned by last year’s Mini Transat winner, Ambrogio Beccaria, is an all-Italian affair designed by Gianluca Guelfi and built by Sangiorgio Marine Shipyard in Genoa.

However, after the recent Route du Rhum, ­nosing in front in the design race is Marc Lombard with his Lift V2s, of which seven were racing, including Yoann Richomme’s winner, Paprec Arkea. Lombard is one of the longest continuous players in the Class40, and has worked with Tunisian manufacturer Akilaria on its RC1, RC2 and RC3 models since 2006, of which 38 were built. His latest designs have been the Lift, introduced in 2016; Veedol-AIC, one example, took Richomme to his first Route du Rhum victory. The Lifts were custom-built with a hull and deck made by Gepeto in Lorient, but finished off by the V1D2 yard in Caen, and were more precisely engineered and built than the Akilarias. They were superseded this cycle by the Lift V2, the most popular of the new Class40s, with seven competing.

For Richomme, the Route du Rhum was a small distraction from having a new IMOCA built. He entered the Route du Rhum to defend his title and stay race-fit. If the first Lift was an early scow, the present one is at the limit, to the extent that it has a bump in the hull 2 meters aft from the bow at the limit of where the Class40 rule restricts the max beam to prevent such extreme scowness.

The scow bow provides more righting moment, but it also does interesting things to the boat’s hydrodynamics. “With a pointy bow, the keel is more angled and creates more drag,” explains Richomme, who is also a trained naval architect. “When a scow heels, the hull is almost parallel to the keel, so sometimes when we go over the waves, we can feel the keel shudder when it is producing lift. The chine is low and therefore very powerful, and when we heel, it makes for a very long waterline length. Also, we have very little rocker, whereas other [new] boats have a lot, which creates a lot of drag so they don’t accelerate so well when they heel.”

The Lift V2 “is a weapon reaching,” Richomme says. “We can hold the gennaker higher than we used to. Last time, I didn’t even take one. But with the power going up, so have the loads, and we are having problems with the hardware. I have broken two winches already.”

A downside of the big bow and straight chine is downwind, where the technique seems to be preventing the bow from immersing. Paprec Arkea is typically trimmed far aft, including the stack and the positioning of the 1,653 pounds of water ballast (most new boats have three tanks each side), while its engine is 19 inches farther aft, and the mast and keel 11 inches farther aft than they were on his previous boat. They are 77 pounds below the minimum weight, which Richomme admits may be too extreme—during training they broke a bulkhead.

Otherwise, their increased cockpit protection is most noticeable on all the new designs (although not to IMOCA degrees), while most have a central pit area with halyards fed aft from the mast down a tunnel running through the cabin. On Paprec Arkea, a pit winch is mounted just off the cockpit sole. With the main sheet and traveler lead there as well, Richomme can trim from inside the cabin.

Most extraordinary about the scows is how fast they are. Anglo-Frenchman Luke Berry, skipper of Lamotte-Module Création, graduated from a Manuard Mach 40.3 to a 40.5 this year and says: “It is a massive improvement both in speed and comfort. Reaching and downwind, we are 2 knots faster, which is extraordinary.”

The top speeds he has seen are 27 to 28 knots. “Most incredible are the average speeds—higher than 20.”

This effectively turns yacht-design theory on its head, with ­waterline length and hull speed having less effect upon defining the speed of a boat that spends so much time planing. On the Mach 40.5, the waterline is just 32 feet, with a length overall of 39 feet. Compared to the Lift V2, it has more rocker, supposedly making it better able to deal with waves.

Nowhere is the speed of the latest Class40s more apparent than where they finished in the Route du Rhum in comparison to the IMOCA fleet. Paprec Arkea arrived in Guadeloupe ahead of 13 IMOCAs, or one-third of the way up the IMOCA fleet. Richomme says he used to sail on a Lombard-designed IMOCA 20 years ago, when they would make 10.5 knots upwind. “On a reach, I reckon we are faster than them now. We can do 20 to 22 knots average speed.”

Ugly seems to be quick, but when it comes to the Class40, beauty is in the eye of the beholder of the trophy.

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Sailboat racing is all about choices. Go offshore or hug the coast? Change the jib now or wait till the turning mark? Do we spend the budget on new sails or a coach? Every choice is a risk. Get it right and you gain; get it wrong and you lose. But this is sailing, and there is an existential element to the sport that exists in few others; sometimes the choices are more serious, and coming last in the race is the least of your problems. Just such a decision came up on the third leg of the 2017-18 Volvo Ocean Race from Cape Town, South Africa, to Melbourne, Australia.

It was December 12, 2017, and the whole fleet was sailing east, tracking the movement of a low-pressure system, when another, more ominous feature appeared in the forecast. The charts showed a new storm growing with spectacular speed and violence. By the 13th, it would be a fully formed monster with winds up to 65 knots at its core, approaching the fleet from the northwest. If they held to the optimal course, it would chase them down and run them over. Or they could jibe and take a slower, more northerly route that would avoid the worst of the weather.

There were seven boats in the fleet. Two took the northern route: Turn the Tide on Plastic skippered by Dee Caffari, and Team Sun Hung Kai/Scallywag led by David Witt. In both cases, the boats had relatively in­­experienced crews (compared to the rest of the fleet) and not much training together as a group before the start of the race. In both cases, the decision to go north felt like the correct one. It was unlikely they would do better than sixth or seventh even if they had chosen to stay south. They could get that result by going north with much less risk of damage, and they might pick up a place if any of the boats that stayed south suffered damage in the storm.

The opposite was true for the top three boats on the overall scoreboard: Dongfeng Race Team, MAPFRE and Vestas 11th Hour Racing. They had previously taken all three podium places in the first two legs, and all three remained south. Once the storm passed, MAPFRE and Dongfeng Race Team led the fleet by over 50 miles. Vestas 11th Hour Racing was solidly in third place with a lead of more than 100 miles from the next boat. In all three cases, it looked like the right decision to stay south, and going north would have put them out of contention for the overall lead. They also had good reason to believe they could manage the conditions in the south and avoid a bad outcome.

This left two boats: Team Brunel and Team AkzoNobel. Neither crew lacked experience. Skippering Team Brunel was Bouwe Bekking, who was on his eighth attempt at winning the race. And while Team AkzoNobel’s skipper was a first-timer in the role, Simeon Tienpont had won a couple of America’s Cups and been around the world twice before. Tienpont’s crew also included Jules Salter, on his fourth race around the planet, already counting a second place and a win. Chris Nicholson, a six-time world champion, two-time Olympian for Australia, and a ­second-place finisher as skipper among his six previous races, was also on board.

The crews of Team AkzoNobel and Team Brunel nevertheless faced a more difficult choice than the others. On the one hand, they had every right to regard themselves as peers of those on Dongfeng Race Team and MAPFRE. On the other hand, Team Brunel’s crew had sailed together a lot less than those two boats, while Team AkzoNobel had management issues that had disrupted their preparation, which resulted in several changes to senior crew in the early legs. “You can’t instantly replace those people…” Salter said when I talked to him. “If you look at this race again and again, no one has thrown the boat together six months before the start and gone out and done really well.”

Despite this inauspicious background, Team AkzoNobel and Team Brunel both decided to stay south on the theoretically optimal course. By December 14, AkzoNobel was coming up fast on the invisible limit of the Ice Exclusion Zone (a line drawn by race officials to keep them out of known areas of icebergs). They were going to have to jibe in 35 to 40 knots of windspeed. Nicholson was steering, and with all nine of the crew in position and on deck, he went for it. “We had a bad one,” he said in a video to the race office afterward. “I thought we had a good wave to go down. I should have pulled out of doing it, and we probably would have broached, but it wouldn’t have been the outcome that we had…”

They broke battens and pulled the mast track away from the spar.

It could have been a lot worse, but it could also have been a lot better. “On another day, we might have just got away with it; we might only have broken a little bit of track and one batten, and thought, ‘Oh, that was a bit on the edge and off we go.’ I’ve done that before many times,” Salter said. Instead, a crippled Team AkzoNobel limped into Melbourne in last place, well over three days after the leader, and immediately started the next race—against time to get the boat repaired and ready before the start of the next leg.

Team Brunel fared much better than Team AkzoNobel—they kept it together through the storm and finished in fourth place, less than two hours behind Vestas 11th Hour Racing and just over a day ahead of Team Sun Hung Kai/Scallywag. Both Team Brunel and Team AkzoNobel chose the fastest, southerly route; one came fourth, the other seventh and last, but—and here’s the controversial part—there’s an argument to be made that both boats made the wrong decision and took an unnecessary risk. It worked out for Team Brunel, but that still doesn’t make it the right decision, and here’s why: The crews did not fully set what might be gained by their choice against what could be lost. In both cases, the potential losses of going south outweighed the potential gains.

The upside of staying south was limited.

Could either crew realistically hope to beat the better drilled and prepared Dongfeng Race Team, MAPFRE and Vestas 11th Hour Racing in those conditions? Maybe later in the race, yes. But on this first excursion into the Southern Ocean, it was unlikely they would suddenly make the jump to the podium that had eluded them in the first two legs.

So, if there was little to no chance of a third place or better, why not go north with Turn the Tide and Scallywag? They could expect to beat both of them on that same northern route, which meant they would finish fifth at worst, with every chance of moving higher should any of the leaders have a problem or break down in the storm. And if both Team Brunel and Team AkzoNobel had chosen to go north, they would have been racing for exactly the same fourth place that they were effectively contesting in the south, but in much milder conditions with much less risk of damage or worse.

When I put this to Salter, he wasn’t ­convinced—or maybe he was. “There is a balance—I think that showed in the next Southern Ocean leg, where we went a very similar way again, and we got to a point where we thought we’re just going to back off a bit here because we know what damage can do. We did, and we dropped back a bit, not a big distance, but 50 or 100 miles behind the leading group. And on the approach to Cape Horn, we gradually caught them all up again. MAPFRE broke the mast track and the mainsail, and Vestas lost the rig soon after that as well. So, you get yourself up to third by doing that. It’s just picking the right time to play that strategy—and offshore sailing is so much about that.”

These are tough calls, and often they are made on gut feel—or after a long discussion that the most articulate and opinionated can win on the strength of their hand-­waving skills alone. There is a better way, a way to make the decision more analytical using tools based on formal decision-­making systems. The “theory of expected value” assesses the value of all the possible outcomes for each decision and multiplies each of them by the likelihood (the probability) of those outcomes. The results of each of these multiplications [value (V) x probability (P)] are then added together to give the expected value (E) for that decision: E = (V1 x P1) + (V2 x P2) and so on.

Once all the expected values have been calculated, then the decision with the highest expected value is the one to go for. It sounds complicated, but an example will make it clearer. Let’s look at the strategic choices for Team AkzoNobel and Team Brunel as the storm approached. The value for the outcome (V) will be the points available for each position in the leg. These were scored in reverse, and this leg was worth double points, so the winner got 14 points, second place 12 points, and so on down to last place, which was worth two points.

We’re going to make a few assumptions to keep the analysis relatively simple. So, we’ll assume the rest of the fleet made the same choices they did in the race and finished the leg successfully. Two boats went north, both of whom Team Brunel and Team AkzoNobel will beat if they don’t suffer damage, while three boats went south, none of whom they will beat, damage or no damage.

On the southern route, the pairs best possible result was fourth, and that would have been worth eight points. A second potential outcome was seventh and two points, if they suffered sufficient damage to stop them racing competitively but not stop racing altogether. The final possibility was that they suffered more serious damage and were unable to finish the leg, and unable to start the next one. I’m going to give this outcome a score of minus four points, equating to zero points for Leg 3 and a loss of a potential fourth-place finish in the following leg. (The next leg was not double points, so fourth scored four points.)

I’m assessing the probability of them ­racing hard all the way to the finish (and scoring fourth) as 60 percent, suffering moderate damage and coming last as 30 percent, and suffering more serious damage as 10 percent. So, now we can prepare a table:

Southern Route

We could build a much more complex table listing more outcomes and their probabilities, but I think the approach is clear with just these three options. So, the expected value (E) is the sum of the gains from each of these outcomes:

E = (0.6 x 8) + (0.3 x 2) + (0.1 x -4) = 5

On the northern route, the best possible score was fifth, and that would have netted them six points, with the outcome for moderate damage again seventh and two points. The outcome for serious damage was also minus four points.

While it wasn’t guaranteed that they would successfully complete the leg on the northern route, the chances were a lot higher, and I’m going to call it 90 percent, with a 9 percent chance of moderate damage and a 1 percent chance of serious damage. So, the table for the northern route looks as such:

Northern Route

And the expected value will be:

E = (0.9 x 6) + (0.09 x 2) + (0.01 x -4) = 5.54

This analysis produces an expected value on the northern route of 5.54 points compared to 5 points on the southern route. So, any decision based on expected value would be in favor of the northern route, supporting the earlier conclusion.

Now, maybe others would score the probabilities of damage ­differently—and it’s worthwhile to play around with the numbers to see how the outcome changes—but there’s no doubt that the analysis helps to clarify the choices. We’ve swapped hand-waving for assigning probabilities, and that has to improve any discussion and any decision made.

An expected-value analysis can help in other areas of our ­complex sport. One of the big problems facing any race-boat ­campaign, be it an America’s Cup team or a small keelboat shooting for top 10 at the national championship, is there are more ways to improve performance than time or money to pursue them. It’s always hard to make decisions about where to put limited resources when the outcomes are uncertain, and expected value provides an analytical approach, calculating an expected cost for each unit of performance gain.

The process starts by creating a list of the performance projects that are under consideration. For example, practicing for a weekend, buying new sails, or hiring a coach for the season. A simple version of the calculation would be to assess the potential speed improvement (this would be V) for three cases: the best outcome, worst outcome and most likely outcome for each option being considered. We would then assign a probability (P) to each of these possible outcomes and use these three pairs of numbers [speed improvement (V) and probability (P)] to calculate the expected value just as we did for the route choice ahead of the storm.

In this case, we can go a step further: By dividing the ­monetary cost of each option by its expected value, we can generate a cost-effectiveness ratio. This allows us to tackle the issue of balancing resources in a parallel way to balancing risks—and expected value can be just as useful in revealing the trade-offs. There are limitations to the approach; for instance, there is no allowance for how these gains will degrade with time. Nevertheless, it’s still a great way of tackling any problem where resources are being assigned in uncertain circumstances—just one of the many tough calls in sailing that the concept of expected value can help to illuminate.

The post The Weight of Risk versus Reward appeared first on Sailing World.

Using the term “epic” too often makes one a kook. It’s equally uncool to overhype one’s sailing experiences because, let’s face it, there’s always someone who has won more, sailed faster or gone to a cooler place. The summer of 2022, however, was truly epic for Jesse Andrews, the Pied Piper of Hawaii’s Kaneohe Bay, whose followers stormed North America and Europe, and ascended to performance sailing’s world stage. Under Andrews’ direction, these young sailors are charging hard in the Waszp and Olympic iQFoil classes today, and getting serious looks to fill slots on the rosters of youth and women’s America’s Cup development teams.

Kaneohe sailing’s epic and timely ascent into everyone’s collective radar has been a long time coming, but the whole phenomenon was accelerated when the US Sailing Olympic Development Program doubled down on performance youth sailing in 2022. Kaneohe, naturally, was the first proving ground.

Oahu’s sailing teams were chasing ILCA and Club420 medals this past summer too, but most of the kids, whether because of geographic isolation or lack of interest, avoided the traditional path of racing in large Optimist and 420 fleets on the mainland. Instead, they began their careers with O’pen Skiff “Un-Regattas,” and then went on to 29ers and eventually anything with a foil they could get their hands on.

Deconstructing how these junior programs have grown to become a new model for enabling dedicated youth sailing talent despite their ­isolation starts with Andrews, a once-frustrated New England kid who refused to wear shoes and ended up in the Aloha State.

In Beebe Cove, an eel-grass-filled offshoot of Long Island Sound, Andrews enjoyed a traditional sailing upbringing, flipping over horseshoe crabs, and sailing Sunfish and Dyer Dhows. His teen years on the International 420 circuit took him to Europe and Australia, which “was a great experience and lifestyle,” he says. “Having the freedom to drive with other kids. Traveling and having fun is something that should always go hand in hand.”

A few of his teammates went on to Olympic and America’s Cup campaigns after college, and eventually for Andrews, Connecticut lost its appeal.

“I’ve never wanted to wear shoes in my life,” he says. “I was an untraditional kid living a pretty traditional life.” He was also hooked on surfing, and one winter his mother boldly moved him to California. That started to feel right, but then after two years studying and sailing at the University of Rhode Island in the early 1990s, he’d had enough of the cold—for good this time.

He enrolled in the University of Hawaii and found his new tribe on Oahu.

It’s been almost 30 years since his relocation to the land of rainbows. He started coaching the University of Hawaii sailing team after graduating while filling in at Kaneohe YC until becoming its sailing director.

“I’ve been doing the same two jobs for 25 years,” he says.

Today, he faces the same core challenge of his coaching peers: how to introduce kids to sailing and keep them sailing long after they leave the program. If he has a singular philosophy, it is to “do what the kids want.”

“In Australia, New Zealand, Europe, it’s easy to do what makes sense,” Andrews says. “Here there’s so much red tape, but in Hawaii, we listen to the kids. We have a small, great board of trustees, and when the kids asked, we brought in the foiling Waszps.”

Kaneohe YC has long been an outlier to the traditions of mainland American yacht clubs. When the closest national event is a five-hour flight, it’s hard to get excited for or even fund dinghy racing excursions. It’s also hard to hunker down to do mundane tacking drills when there’s surf to be ridden and waves to be jumped.

Ocean sports are “it” in Hawaii, so Andrews has had to be creative with keeping kids excited about sailing. That’s where the O’pens came to save the day, initially. Windfoiling, winging and Waszp sailing developed while Kaneohe’s groms were hitting their teens.

Andrews started “Foiling Fridays’’ in 2021 to keep the kids on the water during the pandemic. “First, it was Waszps and 29ers,” he says. “Then iQFoil and wingfoil all starting at the same time. It’s inclusive. The iQ is a little faster, but if you screw up, everyone’s right on your tail. It’s been a huge hit.”

Partnering with the Hawaii Kai Boat Club, the local kids have had access to 29ers and now a fleet of iQFoil boards, which Andrews says are inexpensive and a fast track to high-­performance ­racing skills. Hawaii Kai sailor CJ Perez is climbing through the International Moth fleet and was one of the first females to join a SailGP team as part of its Women’s Pathway Program.

“We haven’t lost the fundamentals and love of traditional sailing,” Andrews says about the junior sailing program today. “They love all crafts.”

Tapping into watersports stars and new disciplines, Kaneohe hosted a wingfoil clinic with Global Wingsports Tour champion Fiona Wylde. Local superstar and waterman Kai Lenny has even been a guest at the clubs.

Kaneohe’s sailors are now heading to Europe for Waszp and iQFoil tours. “What we were doing [and sharing] on Instagram was all good exposure, and it just exploded,” Andrews says. US Sailing took a keen interest as well and began hosting regional racing camps. “It’s amazing. Now people are coming to us. We’re in the right place, at the right time, with the right venue.”

“The Kaneohe program has a feeling of being ‘loose,’ but it’s really extremely organized,” says Leandro Spina, head of US Sailing’s Olympic Development Program [Editor’s note: Spina has since resigned from his position as head of the ODP]. “We’ve become really good partners. It’s such an iconic sailing venue, and now with the amount of talent in the [iQFoil], it’s ridiculous.”

In 2021, Andrews’ phone started ringing off the hook. The American junior sailing universe wanted what he had. Spina organized the 2022 iQFoil camps, and the US Junior Olympic Sailing Festival that came to Hawaii hosted iQFoil and Wingfoil fleets.

Jesse Andrews’ phone started ringing off the hook. The American junior sailing universe wanted what he had.

Spina says Andrews’ creative training formats and commitment to new classes has inspired him to integrate this approach into his ODP. “It’s what we envision young athletes to do,” he says. “Choose one class but sail everything they can get their hands on.”

When Spina and Andrews met, they quickly started talking about Olympic pathways. Andrews’ tour of European iQFoil events last summer attracted a lot of attention, especially since four Hawaiians qualified for the gold fleet in the iQFoil Youth Open World Championships in Silvaplana, Switzerland. Then came the clinics, plans for an annual performance youth event, and an international regatta. “It happened quickly,” Spina says. “Hawaii is now a new leg on our tour.”

Spina says Kaneohe’s program opened doors to different ways to retain sailors, and using foiling to do so in particular.

“Foiling and these programs are not a replacement; they’re an enhancement,” Spina says. Optimist and 420 participation is still strong. “It creates another path to retain talent. It’s an evolution, more ­opportunities to keep learning. As long as they keep learning, we can retain them.”

The Hawaiian ocean lifestyle, Spina adds, is also something that taps into an enjoyment of learning. “I love to be on the water, and what we’re learning now with the fast evolution of foils is that kids are having fun,” he says. “The boards are light and small. My 11-year-old son went to Hawaii and now wants to surf. There’s no surf in Miami, so now we wingfoil surf, and I’m learning with him.”

Having CJ Perez on the US SailGP team could be enough to affirm the virtues of Kaneohe’s model. The visual of America’s Cup skipper Jimmy Spithill enjoying a wingfoil session is something that draws a direct connection between Andrews’ sailors and the superstar. Perez has made the connection, sought her own path and, with serious ambition, broken into professional sailing.

The grand finale of SailGP’s Inspire Program, with qualification regattas held in many countries, seems to have been designed for Kaneohe sailors. And they didn’t disappoint. Pearl and JP Lattanzi qualified for two American spots in the 2022 final. Early in their careers, the siblings had Andrews as a coach in Oahu and traveled with their parents to O’pen Skiff regattas. They were nicknamed the “Flyin’ Hawaiians.”

Pearl, now finishing her college sailing career as captain of the Salve Regina University sailing team in Newport, Rhode Island, is a top-ranked Waszp sailor and candidate for American Magic’s Women’s America’s Cup team. JP is trying out for the youth team.

“I didn’t grow up sailing college boats,” Pearl says. “The skills have transferred over [in college sailing], and it hasn’t been a hindrance at all. I have a lot of opportunities outside college. I’m not thinking I’m nearing the end of my sailing career like some friends feel. That’s not me right now.”

Pearl, who also sailed with Perez at Hawaii Kai Boat Club, says the lack of big fleets in Hawaii forced her sailing ­diversity. “People like Jesse set us up for fun sailing, keeping us in the newest boats. I was never in a boat I didn’t want to be in.”

The optics of Andrews’ junior sailing approach look, as Spina says, “loose,” and he’s not far off. Andrews’ standard outfit is clashing Hawaiian floral prints and a comically large foam-front trucker’s cap. But this coach is in the College Sailing Hall of Fame, was awarded the Graham Hall Award for outstanding service, and is considered by his peers as one of the best. He has carefully integrated his passion for sailing into a seriously fun and outstanding package that’s now, ironically, a pathway for serious success in sailing.

Pearl says Andrews’ difference is his strength. “Jesse’s not the usual coach,” she says. “He’s so open to learning. In the beginning, we’d just have a big talk after practice. Comparing notes, watching videos online and researching. We were learning together. Now we’re both so knowledgeable about foiling and high-­performance sailing. I wouldn’t have had any of these opportunities without Jesse.”

Andrews has ideas about how to expand junior sailing on Oahu. His sailors are slightly less isolated now that their secret is out. Mainland kids are coming to compete and train on the island. Hawaii Kai Boat Club, however, recently lost its lease and needs a new home, and Kaneohe YC remains too small to grow beyond its footprint.

With racing perceived as the primary ticket to the bigger sailing world, Andrews is wary of focusing too narrowly on competition. Balance, he says, is important. “We can’t take the free sailing out of junior sailing,” he says. “It’s great seeing ex-junior sailors as long-term friends with foiling and current races. They’re not passionate about competing. They love the ocean. They love foiling.”

Sailing and foiling first, ­competition second. That’s epic—an epic shift to the junior sailing paradigm.

The post Performance and Play in Kaneohe appeared first on Sailing World.

Ed’s Note: Ken Legler, the legendary coach, champion sailor and mentor to many passed away on May 31, 2024 after a long cancer battle. His contributions to the sport and sportsmanship remain everlasting.

Forty-five years into college sailing as a head coach, Ken Legler is clear: You can coach starting technique, but only experience can teach it. And nobody wins much without it. And I’m clear that nobody argues much with Ken Legler. So, if you feel a trembling in the power of the Force toward the end of this spring semester, you will know that Legler really has followed through and hung up his coaching tools after ­dishing out experience to generations of Tufts University Jumbos.

Forty-five years, including 43 at Tufts and even more before he became head coach? Heck, he was already coaching when he was still in school. The rest was as natural as learning to smell a windshift. As a coach, Legler’s results speak for themselves. But we can come back to that because if ­championships were all the man had to show for himself, retirement would not be an earthquake moment. It is one because Legler has inhabited the sailing world, pumped it through his veins and made a difference. He was almost apologetic in 2006 when a second round of throat cancer sidelined him for chemo and radiation. What came to mind as he reported from a hospital bed was: “I sailed through mono as an undergrad. I would be fired if I advised my students to do that now. I just can’t get enough of this college sailing thing.”

Cancer and chemo were too much for “sailing through,” and there was also a stroke. As Legler laboriously recovered from each and returned to coaching, the outpourings from friends, admirers and students will perhaps have prepared him for the outpouring (with a capital “O”) coming his way May 12-13, when a tribute is the keynote of Tufts’ annual Alumni Regatta. Or maybe not. When the stories start rolling…

Josh Adams, a three-time All-American and later ­director of US Olympic Sailing, says: “When they do a Mount Rushmore for college sailors, Ken Legler will be there. As a coach, he’s more philosopher than technician. What he’s good at is getting sailors on the water to learn from being on the water. When you graduate Tufts and look back, you realize that all those practice days and all those practice races were led by an exceptional PRO. He’s made a difference in race management in America. When Key West was at its peak, Ken’s circle was always lauded.

“Ken is multidimensional. He’s a historian, and he’s a storyteller—he made sure we understood our heritage. And he’s a great photographer who documented all his sailors through the years. Meanwhile, Jumbos showed up in college rankings alongside a lot of Division 1 Ivy League schools. Ken did that with a small Division 3 school, and you can’t look at his accomplishments without feeling like this really is the end of an era.”

OK, a sampling: In 1978 to 1980 at the US Merchant Marine Academy, Legler coached two national championship teams and four All-Americans. At Tufts he is credited with 20 national championships and 92 All‑Americans. He was an All-American himself at the University of Rhode Island (while he was doing his first coaching, remember).

At the tribute, they really should play “My Way.” The home waters for Tufts is Mystic Lake, where the breeze is as shifty as you would expect in a landlocked Boston suburb. The fleet is the Lark, ­featuring a bendy rig, square-top main and a wide planing transom. That is, Larks are the antithesis of the institutional Flying Juniors and C420s used in the rest of college sailing—­tweakier, livelier, more entertaining. And they’re improved, generation by generation, and perhaps a tad frustrating to other teams when they have to show up and adapt. Legler makes sure that his people are challenged by a variety of other boats too, perhaps 16 per semester, and he regrets the time when kids just goofed around in boats. There was freedom in the absence of organization, and there were lessons.

Tufts sailors do not receive the coddling their talents might earn them elsewhere. Legler knows the programs where, as he says: “Sailors don’t have to work on the boats. They just show up and start roll tacking. There’s no cooking or cleaning, and those things take time, as anyone no longer in college soon discovers.” In an appreciation at sail1design.com, Pearson Potts recalls a sailor who asked about accommodations at the next regatta and received the reply: “What am I, a friggin’ travel agent? You’re an adult now. Figure it out.”

Coddled or not, the Jumbo sailing ­experience includes ample TLC. Current Jumbo Celia Byrne recalls: “After I first visited Tufts, I got a funny text from Ken that made me wonder if it was meant for me, something about a female astronaut. When I went back, I realized it was because he had researched my interests—and read my whole file—and thought I would find it worthwhile. That doesn’t happen everywhere. And that photography he’s known for—he continued through COVID and sent pictures to my family. They were touched at a time when it mattered.”

“Ken was successful because he is meticulous,” says another grad, Stu Johnstone. “The difficult thing at first was a lack of resource. That came later, then really took off when Larry Bacow became president of Tufts and wanted to see the sailing team grow.”

Ken Legler has inhabited the sailing world, pumped it through his veins and made a difference.

Today the three-story Bacow Sailing Pavilion provides boat storage and a repair shop, home and visiting team rooms, a kitchen, a conference room, a coach’s office, a great room for regatta gatherings and an ever-popular observation deck. Small program or growing, Legler maintained the largest roster he could, which today means 50-plus. Every weekend he sends out a fleet of vans to regattas big and small. It’s important to him that all his people, Nationals starters or not, get the full college sailing experience. When spring break rolls around, tradition calls for ­camping out at St. Mary’s, and a week of sailing institutional boats to get ready for Nationals. Legends are born in those weeks.

So, what is it like to be Ken Legler?

“Recruiting is a massive piece of the ­puzzle,” he says. “Letters flood in, especially on Sundays, maybe 150 contacts a year. The first thing I look for is whether the kid is qualified to get into Tufts. Then I think about sailing ability. I can tell in a hurry if someone can sail. What I can’t do is take more than one or two male crews in any class year. Six on the team is plenty, but I could take 20 women, because it’s only the small ­skippers who can sail with most male crew.

“Because of Title 9, we have to take more women to balance out the football team,” Legler says. “As long as we have more women than men, we’re OK, but the school would like it if we had way more women or just fewer men. When Brown went varsity, they cut a deal to have only 10 men for 20 women, with everyone else sailing on the club team. So, yes, we’re looking for women, but they have to be able to get in. Remember, we don’t pick them, Admissions does.”

And how might Legler see the relationship between college sailing and Olympic sailing? That’s a perpetual topic, heated up recently by Paul Cayard as head of Olympic Sailing.

“To excel in college sailing,” Legler says, “you have to maintain a keen focus on academics and a keen focus on the finer points of college sailing at the same time. It’s consuming. Nevertheless, our people are at the top, academically, and it’s amazing what a high level of tactics and boathandling college sailors achieve—but that does not get them any closer to a medal. For a medal, you have to sail Olympic-class boats, and not many people can afford that, either the money or the time. To be a fall and spring All-American and an Olympic campaigner is almost impossible.

“Olympic boats have changed dramatically, except for ILCAs. College boats have remained the same, and I don’t see any big changes coming. Another thing too: Our colleges produce people who make six figures right out of the gate. That’s after working hard through high school and then working like bandits to get through college. They’re not going to give that up to finish second at the Olympic Trials.”

So, how did Ken Legler become Ken Legler? Not by following the path of his students.

“I wanted to go to Tufts,” he says, “but my dad told me I’d have to make up the cost difference between Tufts and URI. That meant I’d be working all the time instead of sailing, so I went to URI and sailed every day. I was not a good student, but I was a good sailor. I took over as coach as an undergraduate, and I was running the team or trying to. When I came out, I was more prepared for coaching than anything else.”

That led to a first job at the Naval Academy, and soon to that head coaching position at Kings Point, and the success levels and impact of the total career we are celebrating here.

Personal challenges weighed in. Legler returned to his coaching job—it’s a mission, let’s be real—after each cancer recovery, and recovery was never guaranteed. Today he says: “I’m down to the same weight as in college, but not with the same metabolism. I eat so slowly that I spend five hours a day eating.”

That was simple sharing, not a sympathy play, and the conversation that produced this writing quickly turned to starting and speed as the first two elements of racing success. Here’s Legler: “We run lots of practice starts and acceleration drills. Lots. That’s how you learn to pay attention and really see what’s going on. Do you notice a header hitting that boat at the other end of the line? Are you ready to react before it gets to you? A coach can talk about those things, but internalizing them, making them instinctive, is all experience. This year was my third winter back frostbiting on Boston Harbor. We sail Rhodes 19s, and those boats are slow to accelerate. It’s not as though I don’t have experience, but I’ve had setbacks. It took a while for my starting chops to kick in. I had to learn to listen to my coaching voice.”

The post Legler Leaves a Jumbo Legacy appeared first on Sailing World.

For Doug Sabin, one approach to getting more of his yacht-club peers active and on the water was simple: adult team racing. Sailing’s energetic and all-­encompassing ­discipline, Sabin knew, would appeal to younger members at Marblehead’s Corinthian YC, and he was right. Corinthian’s success in building a team-­racing program and engaging its membership in a new and exciting way is a great example for any club or organization looking to jump-start its stagnant sailing program.

Team racing is a ­strategic ­battle where boat position, clever tactics, precise boathandling, tactical skill and teamwork are the ingredients for success. The top teams practice maneuvers to gain an advantage. When one team is winning, it is on defense, and when a team is losing, they are on offense. Like other sports, including basketball and hockey, there are man-to-man ­matchups and zone defenses. It is a fast-­moving game as positions change. Sailors must be quick at math as the scores change. The most popular format is three boats versus three matches. Watch a competitive intercollegiate team race and you will see teams attacking and ­trading the lead during fast-paced ­maneuvers at turning marks. Often there will be a lot of noise during these moments, although the best teams are remarkably quiet as they execute their plays. Champion teams are fluid and make it look like ballet.

It’s no surprise to me that participation in team racing has grown dramatically over the past 20 years in ­several yacht clubs—domestically and abroad. Clubs that have invested in building and growing their programs have seen membership rosters grow as a direct result. Sabin, who sailed at MIT, says the stakeholders at Corinthian recognized that providing boats for sailing is one viable way to attract young members.

When they initiated the team-racing program, they borrowed boats, but as the local one-design Sonar fleet faded, the three yacht clubs on Marblehead Harbor (Corinthian, Eastern and Boston) purchased a dozen used Sonars, which allowed them to have two sets of boats for team racing.

“For most of my career, Eastern and Boston were the strongest sailing clubs in the harbor,” Sabin says. “Thanks to team racing, Corinthian is now a very strong sailing club.”

If there’s any doubt to Sabin’s assessment of Corinthian’s competitive standing today, consider that he, along with younger members Wade Waddell, Miranda Bakos and Duncan Swain, won the New York YC Resolute Cup last September. That win qualified Corinthian for the Rolex NYYC Invitational Cup in the fall of 2023, the club’s marquee international amateur keelboat championship.

While the Resolute Cup was a fleet-racing competition, Sabin says their triumph over many of the United States’ premier yacht-club teams was in a large part due to their team-racing focus. “None of us had sailed in the Resolute [Cup] before. The reason we were successful is that we have this tight definition of what keelboat sailing is at Corinthian. So, we could fall into our roles and work together as a team very quickly. We practiced in an RS21 against Eastern YC for about two weeks before the regatta. We all knew how to communicate, and we knew our roles because of team racing.”

For Corinthian to get its team race program up and running at full speed, it tapped two-time Olympian Tim Wadlow. “For us, it was connecting with the college sailors. It’s all about youth and bringing those people into the club. Tim is a team-­racing world champion, and with people of that level, we got into organized practices. He encouraged us to use spinnakers, which really changes the game quite a bit. The game really begins at the windward mark with the spinnaker because you are so much more powerful downwind. Tim understood that and made it part of our practice.”

For a yacht club to acquire a fleet of boats requires a big investment, but the use of small and stable keelboats allows for a wider range of ages to get in on the action. Sabin says they’re hoping to purchase a new fleet of Sonars that would be owned by all three yacht clubs within the next year. “Both New York YC and Seawanhaka Corinthian YC (in New York) have fleets,” Sabin says. “We are following their model.”

The Annapolis YC has ordered a fleet of 14 new Sonars with the goal of upgrading members’ team-racing skills and attracting new members. Past commodore Jonathan Bartlett, who initiated the program, says: “The biggest reason we ordered the boats was to go play in the team-racing arena. We have to learn to sail the boats and how they race. Where is the best team racing? It’s in New England.”

Sonars, designed by Bruce Kirby and first built in 1980, are now being built in England, where the only set of molds still exists. Bartlett credits Annapolis YC’s incoming rear commodore, Ted Kaczmarski, for selecting the Sonar and convincing the club’s board to provide the funding, saying, “It is a good investment.”

Creating a fleet of yacht-club-owned boats is a big operational and financial undertaking. As with all boats, there are considerations and budgeting for storage requirements, routine maintenance, insurance costs, and equitable scheduling of the use of the fleet among members. There is a long list of possible applications for a fleet of boats in addition to team racing, which could include adult-program sailing instruction, recreational daysailing, clinics, weeknight races and invitational regattas. Some clubs maintain two sets of sails for their fleet, one for recreation and instruction, and another reserved for racing. Including the club’s burgee on the sails and naming the boats after club luminaries, donors or famous yachts add to the spirit. Also, it’s important that a fleet be maintained equally so the boats sail at the same speed.

Another important consideration is to make sure the boats can launch easily. Minimal time preparing for sailing or putting boats away is an attractive factor. An organization looking to purchase a fleet for the first time might consider an existing fleet of used boats. A few sources of funding might include a grant from a club, a group of members ­creating a syndicate to purchase individual boats, donations, charter fees (try to keep fees at a modest level) or foundation grants. The class of boat selected is an important factor. The selection criteria centers around the cost, storage, typical sailing venue and number of crew. It must, of course, be a suitable boat for the prevailing wind conditions.

Team racing is practiced by people of all ages—the Hinman Masters and Hinman Grandmasters regattas are popular events—and the engagement goes beyond younger sailors. Corinthian’s program, Sabin says, has boosted participation among female members, which resulted in the creation of the Thayer Cup, its first women’s team-­racing regatta using spinnakers.

A team race event typically engages many other supporting roles as well, from race officials to umpires and volunteers. “We always use umpires for our planned events,” Sabin says. “We don’t use umpires for ­practices or for pickup team racing on Thursday nights.”

Umpires, he adds, ­typically take the time to discuss on-the-water calls with ­competitors after racing, which makes it a learning experience for everyone. They want to make accurate rulings and learn from the sailors’ input. It is a two-way street, and I would add that damage deposits at regattas are an effective deterrent to collisions.

My first article in this magazine appeared in the spring of 1974, and at the time, I advocated for team racing to be included in the Olympic Games. Now, 49 years later, I still believe sailing at the Olympics could use freshening up. The Games hosts 10 classes, and team racing would be a welcome addition and generate top international competition with exciting, fast-paced, athletic sailing on a small course that’s certainly broadcast-friendly.

Perhaps it’s time we have that conversation again.

The post Club Team Racing Gets Its Due appeared first on Sailing World.

Some tacticians like continual input, while others prefer a quiet boat, but the majority of tacticians at least like small amounts of accurate and timely information. In other words, provide the input only when appropriate. Before racing, and especially if you’re new to a team, always discuss the type of information the tactician wants to hear once, and follow these tips after the race is underway to make your input useful.

Sketching Out the Prestart

The tactician will certainly want to know if you spot a last-minute windshift. Indicators are if you notice that you are sailing deeper or higher up or down the line than you were before, or even watching another boat going head to wind or tacking. In a left shift (pin favored) it will take the boat longer to get to the start line. The inverse is also true if there is a right shift or if the boat end is favored. I’ll say something like, “Eyes out of the boat; looks like left shift; it will probably take a little longer to get to the line.” If possible, I’ll add whether it’s a small shift or a large shift.

Traffic is also important to communicate. During the last minute of a start, it is often hard to see everything and everyone. I will often report “shark” or “bogie.” A bogie is someone coming at us that we will have to deal with. Bogies are usually the biggest threat when there’s around two minutes to go and you’re sailing down the line on port. Sharks are boats approaching from behind, like a shark getting ready to bite. When you tack to starboard for the final approach, watch for both sharks and bogies.

The third bit of helpful prestart info can come in the last five seconds. This is where, in all likelihood, the bow person or someone else forward in the boat can let the tactician know if your boat is hidden from the race committee’s view. Sometimes this will let you get your nose poked out in a congested area. Be extra confident with this one, and remember your bow is poked forward of your line of sight. The consequences of getting this one wrong are costly. We only make this call if we are quite sure that boats above and below us are poked well forward and exposed.

Brushstrokes Around the Course

Immediately after the start, you’ll be looking to communicate boat-on-boat relatives. The driver and tactician are looking for comments like, “same speed, higher” or “same height, faster.” With these calls, the trimmers and helmsperson know they are in a good mode upwind. If they hear, “same speed, lower” or “slower, same height,” they know they need to make a change to keep up with the pack.

Where it gets tricky for the person calling the relative modes is when you say things like “faster, lower” or “slower, higher.” In these cases, the commenter must quickly evaluate the VMG and decide if it is a net gain or net loss and make that call. For example, if we are going upwind with a big gap to weather and I say, “Higher, slower, net gain,” the driver and trimmers know that it’s OK to be a little slower because our high pointing is letting us gain on boats around us. The rule of thumb is always talk about your boat when communicating relative speeds and angles. It’s best this information comes from someone in the proximity of the trimmer and tactician so the conversation can be quiet and not too distracting for the rest of the crew.

As we sail upwind, I like to let the tactician know where he is in relation to the laylines. This helps avoid getting too close to a layline from too far away. Many tacticians avoid the laylines early because once you arrive at a layline, your tactical options are limited. This communication also reminds the tactician to start looking at laylines when you’re closer to the mark. I refer to the laylines in percentages with whatever layline we’re headed at stated first. If we are directly downwind of the weather mark, I will say, “50‑50 on the course.” This means that there is equal time to spend on port and starboard before arriving at the weather mark. As we continue up the course on starboard, I’ll look upwind and perhaps say, “30-70.” The tactician will then know that he or she has 30 percent to go to the port layline or 70 percent to the starboard layline. Many tacticians will tack before getting within 10 percent to a layline when they are still far from the weather mark to take advantage of a windshift or leave room to tack back out if you get tacked on.

Calling puffs and lulls helps the tactician decide where to tack, but more importantly, it helps the trimmers and drivers. The trimmers can anticipate and adjust power in the sails, and the driver can pinch or foot slightly to keep the boat tracking properly at maximum VMG. “Short-lived puff in 3…2…1…” lets the driver and trimmers know that only a small change will be needed keep the heel angle the same and the boat sailing along properly. If they hear “more pressure consistently in 3…2…1…,” they will know that a more long-term setup will be required to keep the boat sailing optimally.

RELATED: Downwind Tactics For Planing Conditions

Calling chop and flat spots will help the tactician decide on where to tack as well, but equally important, the calls will help the helmsperson drive the boat. In a choppy section, you often need to foot, and you can really point in flat spots because there is less chop or waves to slow you down. We’ll use verbiage such as “chop in one boatlength,” or “chop continues” or “flat water for a bit.”

Lastly, in some areas, ­calling weed or kelp in the water is important. This can be a little complicated. I like when people keep these communications simple. “Up one, up five, down one, down five” are four of the only six calls I like when I’m driving. If I hear “one,” I know to turn a little; if I hear “five,” I know to turn a lot. I also like to know “clear,” meaning I can go back to driving normally. It can be important to know what mode you are in and where boats are around you. If there is a boat close to leeward, saying “down one” is probably bad when you could have said “up one.” Also, pay attention to boatspeed. Rarely should you say “up five” when the boatspeed is already low. The final two calls are “no lower” or “no higher.” This simply lets the driver know that he can stay on course as long as he doesn’t turn toward the debris.

As with upwind, calling puffs on the downwind leg is important. When soaking, the helmsperson and spinnaker trimmer can work together to make some gains. For ­example, if they know that a puff is coming, they can soak deep a little longer. Normally, after soaking deep, you have to head up to build speed. But if you know a puff is coming quickly, you can stay deep and let the puff help you accelerate rather than heading up and burning distance.

The tactician will likely want to know whether they are in clear air or not. This also helps the spinnaker trimmer. I will often call how many boatlengths of clean air we have. For example, I will say something like, “We have three lengths of clear air,” meaning there is bad air from a competitor three lengths behind us. Then later, if I say we have two lengths of clean air, everybody knows that we need to speed up or sail slightly higher to avoid bad air. Then if I say, “One boatlength of clear air,” the crew knows we are in danger of being rolled.

The rule of thumb is always talk about your boat when communicating relative speeds and angles.

Again, like upwind sailing, it helps to communicate relatives between boats. In some boats, such as the Etchells, the bow person can look behind and make these calls, almost becoming the boat-on-boat tactician themselves. If the trimmer, who is ideally talking to the driver about angles, hears “lower, slower, net gain,” they know their mode of sailing slower but lower is gaining on the competition and they can continue sailing in that mode. However, if they hear “lower, slower, net loss,” they know they need to change modes to achieve a better VMG. The tactician may be interested to hear “lower, slower, net even.” This means that you are simply sailing a different mode, but you are not gaining or losing overall. In this case, the tactician can decide how they want to sail for future positioning. The tactician may want to sail low and slow across someone’s bow so that after a jibe, they are again in clear air.

Last but not least, as you come into a leeward gate or finish line, the tactician can benefit from input on which end or mark is favored. Remember, it is OK not to have all the answers. However, even that should be communicated. Don’t be afraid to say, “I don’t know.” It’s better than giving false information.

The post Racing Tactics: Valuable Input from the Rail appeared first on Sailing World.

You won’t get better or win races if you tell yourself you suck at sailing. Or life. Or work. Or while advancing the sport to a better place.

This is the wisdom of professional snowboarder Kevin Pearce, the morning’s keynote speaker on the fourth and final day of the 2023 Sailing Leadership Forum. The topic at this particular moment in his talk is about negativity and how it’s a barrier to one’s personal fulfillment.

Pearce speaks with authority because he has battled his own demons of negativity—from the moment his head slammed into the icy transition of a halfpipe built to launch him to the Vancouver Olympics. The horrific accident, and the traumatic brain injury that resulted, halted his gold-medal quest and detoured him on a long but inspirational journey of recovery. “Focus on the positive” is the point he’s hammering home to the forum audience. There are real chemicals in your brain at work when you do. Trust him. He knows the science.

Earlier, Pearce had posed a simple question after he stepped onto the stage: Why would a snowboarder be at a sailing conference? To inspire, of course. That’s what good keynoters do, but the real answer would eventually come when he closes with a few important takeaways: Use your brain for good, personally and professionally. Love what you do. Focus on the positive. Pass along the stoke.

And that’s exactly what’s happening across the sprawling conference center—on the beach, in the breakout rooms, at the cocktail parties, the award ceremonies and the afterhours. For anyone in the business of shaping sailing’s future, the biennial gathering is the place to be. This year, in early February, nearly 600 attendees hunker down and get elbow to elbow doing the good work for every level of the sport. Growing it. Promoting it. And living it. In the next seat are officers of yacht clubs big and small, sailing schools new and old, and community sailing centers growing faster than they can manage or afford. There are young and senior race officials, coaches and instructors shop-talking, recruiting, and doing recon for the next great solution. It’s four days of learning from each other—immersive enough to make your brain hurt, but that’s what the cocktail hours are for.

From the thick fog of a forum week, however, clarity does eventually come once you sit back and take stock of it all. At this forum in particular, there was a real sense of urgency and excitement. Sailing is on fire, and while each of us are immersed in our own little corner of the sport, it’s easy to miss all the hustle that’s happening across our waterfronts.

The sport is not dying. It’s diversifying—rapidly. That’s a positive for the future of wind-powered sports. It’s a great time to be a sailing kid. I admit I used to gripe about modern-day junior sailing. It was jealousy, really, of all the coddled kids with parents toting them and their coaches around the country and abroad. Skiffs, kites, windsurfers, wings and foils—come on, now. That’s not fair. Youth sailors not only have all the fun boats today, but they also have what you and I did not: professionally organized pathways to anywhere a kid wants to go in sailing and beyond.

Making lifelong sailors is the goal, says John Pearce, US Sailing’s youth competition manager, who leads a session at the forum entitled “Youth Racing Pathways.” He makes a darn good case for the ­modern-day performance-racing paths. His flow chart maps out the many ways to progress: Start the kids in Optis or whatever boat you have until they’re 14 or so. Then for the next four years, take them up a notch to the ILCA 6, Nacra 15 or 29er. Those who don’t take to the dinghy pathway can advance to small keelboats and aim for the Sears Cup—the granddaddy of all youth trophies. From age 16 to 20, it’s college sailing or a committed tack to the Olympic on-ramp. And if all goes to the Pathway plan, the end of the road is pro sailing, marine careers, coaching, adult racing, race officials and tomorrow’s leaders.

The flow is not always fixed or perfectly linear, however, and we know only a select few will sail to the tip of the spear. And that’s OK. Pearce’s co-­presenter at the breakout session, Maxwell Plarr, director of sailing at Virginia’s Hampton YC, says he has no interest in fueling directly into the Olympic pipeline. He’s happy to let those eager birds fly from his nest early, but his focus is keeping it fun. Over the past few years, he’s led a few junior-boat experiments with the support of the club’s board of directors, and the results were surprising. 

International 420s? Nah. The kids didn’t go for it. 29ers? Now, that they are into, but it takes a more careful approach to skill development. How about adding a couple of wingfoil setups to the quiver? Oh yes, they did.

“If you don’t have a wing in your program,” Plarr tells forum attendees, “get one.”

Hampton’s youth sailing program is healthy, he says, and it’s producing top-level keelboat kids too, but he’s not doing it alone. He’s constantly leaning on the resources at US Sailing, which he says makes his life a lot easier. He’s got Pearce on speed dial. And that’s cool, says Pearce, because that’s what he’s there for. It’s his, and US Sailing’s, responsibility to support every organization.

How US Sailing attempts to serve so many masters is a complicated story for another day and place. The organization is not perfect, but it’s trying. And it wants all of us to be part of the progress. Membership revenues are a significant source of income that trickles out to the sailing community. Benefactors and corporate partners are essential too. There are many mouths to feed, but if there’s one thing US Sailing want us all to know, it’s that it’s bent on serving everyone, which is, of course, easier said than done.

Of the estimated millions of sailors in America, only a tiny fraction are dues-paying members, and I suspect you and I know many in our own circles who are not members either. Reasons run the gamut, but the most common is: “There’s ­nothing in it for me.”

Be that as it may, those among us who sit on their hands and complain about a lack of available crew, bad race management, unfair ratings, high entry fees and the like have no skin in the game. Kevin Pearce would say: Don’t complain if you don’t belong, and take your negativity elsewhere. It’s not helping.

Belonging goes beyond “what we get” for the $79 individual membership fee. Sure, we get the digital rulebook and partner discounts that will save us the same amount. But it’s not the money that’s important; it’s each of us doing our part to advance the sport to a better place for those who follow. It allows US Sailing to invest in retaining those who walk through the doors of community sailing centers, yacht clubs and sailing schools—organizations that need certified instructors and educational programming. Think of it as a down payment on your future crew pool.

US Sailing is committed to improving the capabilities of the important offshore office too, which was understaffed and underfunded for far too long. Here, Jim Teeters, head of the Offshore Ratings Office, is getting the house back in order. At Teeters’ forum breakout session with Stan Honey—the smartest guy in sailing—they reveal they’re working on a tweak to handicap scoring methodology that Honey is certain will create better races, as well as happier owners and tacticians. Applying modern weather forecasting technology, he says, will make handicap racing “more fair and less complex.”

Like Pearce and his Youth Racing Pathway, Teeters and Honey also have a flow chart to explain this novel concept of a “forecast time correction factor.” With the FTCF, Honey explains, sailors will more accurately know their time allowance before the race starts, so they can make better tactical decisions during the race. The forecast part of the FTCF is done by predicting the wind before the race starts using the highest-possible-­resolution weather file. In essence, a race committee would estimate the course, enter the polar file for each entered boat, route each boat around the course using Expedition software or a web-based application (to be developed), and deliver “time correction factors” to competitors shortly before the race starts. 

This is the sort of stuff we learn at the forum, from two of the most intelligent guys in the handicapping space. They’re committed to achieving a better race outcome for you and me, and I argue that this alone is worth a slice of the membership. We can’t complain about our rating or the quality of the outcome if we don’t invest in the game, and that applies to both skippers and crews. Yes, if you’re on the rail and calling the shots, it’s to your benefit as well.

One might say that four days neck-deep in US Sailing has me gulping the organization’s Kool-Aid, but that’s not the case. All we have to do is sit and listen—with a positive mindset—to the many people out there advancing the sport on our behalf. Sailing is on fire because of them, and it’s on all of us to help fan the flames.

Take, for example, Jessica Koenig, the outgoing executive director of Charleston Community Sailing (South Carolina), who collects the Martin A. Luray Award at the forum’s Community Sailing Awards Luncheon on the final day. Koenig closes the gathering by sharing that she introduced more than 16,000 people to the sport in her time at the sailing center, and “that feels pretty special.”

Charleston Community Sailing is but one of many organizations across the country that rely on US Sailing for support in some way, and I have no doubt Kevin Pearce would agree that they’re all winning because of it. When it comes to shaping the future of our sport, they’re making a positive impact, and they certainly don’t suck.

The post There is an “us” in US Sailing appeared first on Sailing World.

American Magic’s AC75 Patriot glides through the water near Pensacola, Florida, and as it picks up speed with the day’s favorable winds, the imposing dark hull rises from the water and begins to plane on its hydrofoils. Crouched near the bow, pedaling furiously, John Croom is lashed by spray. His earpiece crackles with chatter from the rest of the crew. He has watched videos of America’s Cup boats. He’s logged hundreds of hours of training on land. But this is his first time—his first time on any sailboat.

“Still to this day, that’s one of the most euphoric moments I’ve ever had in my career,” Croom says. “Getting the opportunity to sail, and then just feeling that actual takeoff and being on the foils was something super special. That was the day I fell in love with it.”

While some of sailing’s traditionalists bristle at the inclusion of cyclors in lieu of grinders on America’s Cup boats, there’s no turning back now. The technology will be found on every boat in the 2024 America’s Cup.

This novel power-delivery method has opened the door for newcomers like Croom to hop aboard, like throwing a ­drivers-ed student into a Formula 1. It has also led to a revolution in the way America’s Cup teams recruit talent, hone their physiological training, and use cycling know-how to power the AC75’s hydraulic controls.

“We’re finding that cyclors bring much more power to the table,” says Ben Day, American Magic’s performance lead. “Cycling uses much bigger muscle groups; therefore, they can produce more power than arm grinders. And with the new AC75 regulations of reducing crew numbers (eight sailors total), we need to find that power in other ways. So, most teams are looking at cyclors at this stage. Glutes, quads and hamstrings can produce more explosive power and more power for a longer sustained period.”

Day is another example of someone outside the sailing establishment who quickly entered American Magic’s inner circle. Day had a 12-year career as a professional cyclist, racing primarily in North America. Once he retired from racing, the Australian started Day by Day Coaching out of his adopted hometown of Boulder, Colorado.

Not surprisingly, Day and American Magic looked to the cycling world to find athletes to fill their “power teams.” The team had preliminary conversations with Kiel Reijnen, a professional rider who spent six years in cycling’s WorldTour, racing the sport’s premier events, such as the Tour of Spain, Tour of Flanders, and multiple UCI World Championships.

“We focused on leg-­dominant power sports, with similar activities that would fit the needs for racing on the boat,” says Day of the recruitment process. “We have taken time to examine a whole list of athletes that might fit the bill, and then have reached out to consider interest.”

It wasn’t as simple as assembling a bench of top cyclists. The rule book states the combined weight of the eight-person crew must be between 680 and 700 kilograms. Split evenly, that means each person should be between 85 and 87.5 kilograms. Reijnen weighs 65 kilograms. It’s rare to find a pro cyclist that weighs more than 80 kilograms because power-to-weight ratio in cycling rules all. Cyclists can control both variables in the power-to-weight equation. Training can boost power output, measured in watts. They can also lose weight to improve their power-to-weight ratio. Naturally, any given rider has limits for both variables. The best professionals are extremely efficient in their power production and astonishingly lean. It would be a tall order for someone like Reijnen to gain 20 kilograms without compromising their power output.

Croom is uniquely suited to the challenge, having found cycling late in life after playing football in his younger years and at times weighing close to 136 kilograms. Though he slimmed down to about 90, he’d never be suited for road cycling. Track cycling, on the other hand, was a good fit. Since track events are held on a flat, 250-meter track, weight can be sacrificed at the expense of raw power.

Ashton Lambie is another hopeful on American Magic’s power team who never quite fit cycling’s mold. This mustachioed Nebraskan holds the record for the fastest ride across the state of Kansas. He’s also the only human to ever ride the 4 km track pursuit event in under four minutes.

The riders you might see on television at the Tour de France are not going to be aboard an AC75 in Barcelona. Similarly, the athletes who have been recruited to pedal the cyclors aren’t ready to ride on day one, despite their extensive backgrounds in cycling. Intense training is underway to prepare them for the demands of an America’s Cup race.

“There are periods where we spend time focusing more on endurance or strength development,” Day says. “At other times, we’re working more around the high-intensity phases.”

While American Magic has been mum about the specifics of the training and the AC75’s power demands, Croom has posted many of his recent workouts and training rides on Strava, an online activity tracker.

Croom has done extensive endurance work, already logging weekly rides longer than 80 miles in January. He’s also been completing viciously intense interval workouts to build his body’s tolerance for maximum efforts. For example, he was able to hold 371 watts for 20 minutes in one such workout. Simply a statistic, right? I’ve been racing bikes for the last 25 years, and at my best, I can hold 302 watts for 20 minutes. Someone without training or experience would do well to maintain just half of Croom’s wattage.

While the training and performance of these new crewmembers are opaque, the technical details of the AC75 are practically impenetrable. American Magic’s spokespeople and crew did not answer specific questions about how the hydraulic power system works, but what we do know is that the boat has a hydraulic accumulator tank, which stores pressure generated by the cyclors. The crew uses a hydraulic actuator to convert the tank’s pressure into force, which in turn powers the boat’s controls. Any time the boat needs to tack, jibe or simply trim a sail, power is needed.

Sources indicate that the hydraulic accumulator results in a very unusual feel at the pedals for the power team. It’s also believed that as the tank gets full, the effort to add more pressure to the accumulator becomes harder.

“We can change the different inputs to the system,” James Wright, of the American Magic power team, told the America’s Cup Recon Unit, which monitors and reports on the team’s developments. “The different power demands necessitate different inputs from us on our side. The system kind of auto-adjusts depending on the demands from the sails and, of course, what we can give it.”

It’s easy to imagine how the team might strategize its efforts, given the intensity of a 20- to 30-minute America’s Cup race and the essentially limitless power demands of the boat. They might attempt to keep the tank as low as possible with steady, moderate pedaling, and then fill it as fast as possible with maximum effort ahead of a demanding maneuver like a tack. Perhaps some of the four riders would be specifically reserved for all-out efforts to fill the tank on demand, while others would ride steadily to feed power to minor adjustments.

Whatever the strategy, it is clear that the entire crew needs to be in lock-step during a race. “When we talk about the sailing team, we consider the power team part of a sailing team; they have to work in cohesion,” Day says. “The afterguard will request efforts from the guys as they trim the boat, and they’ll learn what they can deliver in terms of power. And the guys will give it their all to deliver what’s asked of them. So, there must be solid cohesion between the two groups; ultimately, we are one team.”

Clearly, the sailors, engineers and coaches are working furiously to optimize the use of the cyclors. There is another area of the sport that has some catching up to do, and that is World Cycling’s anti-doping controls. Even the casual cycling fan is aware that performance-­enhancing drugs have long tarnished the sport’s reputation. Given the massive physiological demands placed on the AC75’s power team, the sport’s governing body, World Sailing, would be wise to heed the lessons of cycling’s past.

In the wake of a major doping scandal about 10 years ago, cycling began rigorously testing athletes out of competition because it was found riders could achieve huge performance gains by doping for training and then cleaning up in time for in-competition controls at races. It stands to reason that this is a major liability for the America’s Cup, given the amount of run-up that the teams have to train for the 2024 event.

Although World Sailing conducted 186 in-competition tests between 2020 and 2022, including anti-doping ­controls at the last America’s Cup, it did not conduct any out-of-­competition controls during those three years. To ramp up efforts for the 2024 Cup, World Sailing brought on Vasi Naidoo as its director of legal and governance. Naidoo has experience with anti-doping efforts at the Olympics and Commonwealth Games, and she served on the Ethics Commission at the UCI, cycling’s international governing body. World Sailing confirmed that there will be out-of-­competition anti-doping tests in 2023, and the testing will include America’s Cup athletes.

Fortunately, on the whole, the interplay between cycling and sailing—two unlikely ­bedfellows—has resulted in a fascinating exchange of technology and science. “The transition to cyclors allows a tech-forward, applied-­sciences sport to pull in a completely separate sport and borrow technology from it,” says Reijnen, who himself is an accomplished sailor, having finished the WA360 event sailed out of Port Townsend, Washington, in 2021. “What does sailing borrow from cycling, but what does cycling then borrow from sailing?”

Even at the person-to-person level, this exchange of information and experiences has been rapid and, in fact, quite cordial.

“The coolest part about being part of this team is that I came into this group of sailors so new and so green,” Croom says. “And they were super-­welcoming, understanding, and trying to get me to learn as quickly as possible. Like, any questions I had, there was no such thing as a dumb question, and that was something special.”

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