It’s a cool fall day with a brisk sea breeze bending the seagrass on the low-lying peninsula that is the northernmost tip of Rhode Island’s Aquidneck Island. A lonely figure, clad in waders, moseys across the beach, shale fragments and Lady Slipper shells crunching underfoot. He pauses at the water’s edge, tinkers with the sailboat in hand, and then rhythmically waves it through the air, back and forth, watching the boat’s sails with a critical eye. He then steps gingerly across the shallows and treads into deeper water before slipping the 39-inch craft into the bay, watching it heel onto its lines and sail away straight and true.

The waterfront residents here are used to fishermen who pass and cast, the shell collectors, and the dog walkers. But this guy is new, and now he’s a regular. Three times a week or more, he comes alone, launches his remote-controlled sailboat, and guides it back and forth and around mooring balls. After each run, he steers the little yacht back to shore, tinkers again, and repeats the pattern until the sun goes down or nature calls.

The neighborhood ­gawkers have no idea that this guy who comes and plays with what appears to be a simple toy sailboat is one Ken Read, the decorated yachtsman. And his little yacht is anything but simple. It’s a new International One-Metre and his latest fascination. It’s good for his soul, but it’s even better for his results in real boats.

“I am totally convinced I am looking at the water better, seeing the breeze, working on the importance of boat balance, and tactically thinking ahead,” says Read, president of North Sails and a recent convert to remote-control sailboat racing. “I like what radio sailing is doing for my big-boat sailing.”

Read got his start in the talent-­rich local DF95 one-­design fleet that his brother Brad started a few years ago, off Sail Newport’s docks, but the elder Read is now neck-deep in the International One-Meter world, the grand prix of model yachting, if you will. Whereas the DF95 is essentially a boat-in-the-box, the IOM is a box-rule class for serious tinkerers.

“The DF 95 has some little tuning tricks, and it’s easy to get into the class,” Read says. “The IOM is a different animal. It’s a lot heavier, mainly in the bulb, and has much more sail area. It’s a bigger boat, which makes it behave more like a real keelboat—it glides through tacks and jibes.”

The winches are faster, he adds, which makes boathandling a bit more challenging.

“There is a lot to play with on the boat, so you have to understand how tuning really works to sail an IOM well,” he says. “I love that aspect of sailing, but you have to be ready for playing in a custom class. For those of us who can’t afford a TP52, which is also a box rule, this is a pretty good option.”

Read, who regularly cleans up in the Newport DF95 fleet, got his first taste of IOM sailing a few years ago. A friend in Connecticut loaned him a BritPop design a few days before a local regatta. He finished fifth, and the hook was set. Afterward, he connected with Zvonko Jelacic, a world champion and IOM boatbuilder from Croatia (the company is called Sailboat RC). “Jelacic reached out and asked if I was interested in trying one of his boats, called a K2, and sailing the 2023 IOM North Americans [hosted at the Hobe Sound Radio Sailing Club’s model-yacht pond in Florida],” Read says. “My only condition was that I could get hold of the boat I was going to sail at least two months earlier so that I could start to learn what I was dealing with. When he ships a new boat, it’s rigged and ready to go, and then the tweaking starts.”

Remote-control sailboats are no different than real boats in that balance is the goal: neutral to no lee helm and the ability to take one’s thumbs off the controls and have the boat sail straight through gusts and lulls.

“The objective is to be higher and faster, and the boat kind of sails itself, so you can spend time looking for the next shift and don’t have to stare at the boat to stay on track,” Read says. “Nothing new here: Good start, first shift, go a little quicker than the competition.”

His IOM tuning matrix details the familiar adjustments that must be preset before sending the boat out to the racecourse unmanned: mainsheet, jib sheet, rake, jib-tack position, mast ram, backstay, shroud tension, spreader length and angle, jib and main cunningham, and outhauls for both the main and jib. The next step is memorizing settings for different conditions—every knot of windspeed and every type of sea state.

“There’s a lot to sort out, which proves the fact that the good sailors doing this for a while are really good at it,” Read says. “Currently there is a whole new method of setup that is trying to make the sails and mast much more dynamic. When a puff hits, there’s nobody on the boat to trim or ease or pull on the backstay, but imagine if that happened on its own? Stand by.”

The IOM Class calls itself the pinnacle of remote-­control sailing, so it’s natural for Read, who’s checked boxes at other pinnacles (America’s Cup and Volvo Ocean Race) to be lured into a realm that the class says demands “precision, tactical skill, and technological expertise.” It’s been around since the late 1950s, and as with most development classes, new shapes come and go, but today, there are a handful of go-to designs.

“Rigs, weights, sail area and hulls all have to fit into a box, and from there, it is a free-for-all,” Read says. “But what is remarkable is with all of these differences, how close everyone is in speed. K2s are rumored to be better in a breeze, and Venti may be a bit better in the light. The V12 that Ian Vickers makes is an all-around boat, and the BritPops are just fine.”

With the North Sails design team and their tools at his disposal, it’s not surprising that Read is keen to put some of his own skins in the game. “I am talking with Zvonko about throwing some science at his one-piece molded sails,” he says. “North Sails invented one-piece molded sails, so that seems like a good fit, but we shall see. The sails on all the boats, if set up right, are impressive, so there aren’t huge gains to be made here.”

This past December, Read left his waders at home and packed his shorts for the 75-boat North American Championship. The Hobe Sound boat park, nestled between the roaring Florida Turnpike and Route 95, was littered with RVs, a rainbow of hulls, coolers, toolboxes, and bins of spare parts. “The whole thing was surreal,” Read says. “People take it  very seriously.”

He knew a few of the big names, and while most of the thumb yachters knew of him, he was still a newbie among the many masters who embraced him and showed him the way. “Mark Golison and Peter Feldman (world champions in numerous RC classes) were very willing to tune pre-race,” Read says. “I was lucky that they would line up with me.”

Over five days, in ­abnormally wet and windy conditions, Read battled his way to the top of the fleet and remained there throughout, finishing third overall, but earning the IOM North American champion title because Jelacic and Vickers are internationals. “RC racing has this crazy scoring system where you go up and down flights depending on where you finished. The goal is to make it to A fleet and stay there,” Read says. “I think I was the only person who never got pushed down a level, which I was proud of. As the regatta went along, all of a sudden it was clear that I was in the hunt, which was both shocking and exciting.”

With a new trophy to add to his pile, Read returned home with a newfound enthusiasm for the class, and while staying true to his DF95 brethren of the north, he’s now also recruiting for Newport, Rhode Island’s first IOM fleet. There’s even talk of hosting the 2025 IOM North Americans. “We have a great group of folks here who love remote-control sailing and the camaraderie,” he says. “Bringing others along and helping them tune will only make me better nationally and internationally, so that is always part of the deal.”

While Read’s north-shore neighbors might see more of him in his waders this spring, honing his little boat, he assures his co-workers and bosses that it’s simply a hobby and a healthy obsession that keeps him sharp and connected to the sport for 30 minutes a day. “It would take a lot of IOM sails to make up for one jib for a 100-footer,” he says. “Believe me, I know where my bread is buttered.”

The post The Allure of the IOM appeared first on Sailing World.

Tony Gonsalves’ thumbs caress the sail and rudder joysticks on his remote, making millimeter adjustments to his DragonFlite 95’s trim as he silently wills the 37-inch one-design through the leeward gate and toward the 12-foot-long finish line. When his boat’s blunt bow finally breaks the line, the Bajan radio sailing champion from Florida emerges from his flow state with a long and deep exhale.

“Sometimes, I forget to breathe,” he says with a grin, his competitive juices draining from his broad and tensed shoulders. After thumbing 21 races, he’s finally bagged one on account of a good start, a lucky shift, and a clean getaway in a breeze barely strong enough to rustle the leaves of a nearby oak.

These zephyr conditions, which would leave traditional sailboats at the dock, is nerve-racking stuff on Dallas’ White Rock Lake, where experts of various model-yacht classes have been invited to the inaugural American Model Yachting Association’s Champion of Champions Regatta. Their host is DragonFlite importer and racer Chuck LeMahieu, who supplied 17 complete boats with custom graphics and sails.

The vision of this championship, LeMahieu says, was to gather the greats of American radio sailing on one dock, put them in identical boats, and demonstrate to the world at large that remote-control racing is just as fun and competitive as traditional yachting. This is real racing among real sailors, he says, most of whom have or continue to race in bigger boats as well.

“The AMYA has talked about doing something like this for like 20 years, as far as I know,” LeMahieu says. “For it to finally be a reality is exciting—and a lot of work. What’s cool is that all of these guys also race DFs in addition to their other classes, which is pretty unique. Because of the one-design nature of the DF95, we’re finally able to do something like this.”

An experienced radio sailor knows how to build their own boat, regardless of size, and that’s what competitors must do as they trickle into the Corinthian Sailing Club, a one-room overwater facility surrounded by Flying Scots nestled in boat lifts. With handshakes, bro hugs and fist bumps, the champions greet each other as old friends do before diving into boat assembly, a harried pace of gluing, miniature knot-tying, fine-tuning rigging, and adjusting the digital end points on their controllers. These guys do in a few hours what would take a day or two of meticulous ­amateur building.

The Corinthian Sailing Club, says LeMahieu, who lives a Texan hour away, is an excellent venue for radio sailing. The club’s aluminum upper deck ­provides an elevated vantage point over the course—and more importantly, the starting line. The typical southerly allows them to set a course mere feet from the club, which means it takes 30 seconds or less to get from the dock to the starting line, allowing for last-minute tweaks. When it comes time to launch, some racers gently place their hull into the water, while others lob the boat and then sprint up the clubhouse’s external staircase to claim elbow room at the railing.

“On the clock in one ­minute!” shouts the young local pro before he presses a button on a starter/loudhailer that’s resting on a picnic bench next to the scorer’s clipboard. It’s the first morning of the regatta, and the frigid wind is gusting to 20 knots, well past the edge of A rig conditions. (LeMahieu ran out of time to build smaller B rigs.) Success in this wind strength is all about tacking and not pitch-poling downwind, says Steve Landau, who hails from Atlanta, and is a pre-event favorite on account of him being the DF65 national champion (a smaller version of the 95).

During the first of dozens of two-minute countdowns to come, the diminutive boats—each bearing graphics to represent the model-yacht class of which the skipper is champion—jockey for position, bobbing and weaving through each other. There are hails of port and starboard, of windward and leeward, and groans when rigs get locked or someone gets stuck head-to-wind. And just like any other sailboat race, one or two boats shoot forward from the scrum with full-speed starts. Those in the second and third rows scatter to the sides in search of lanes and clear air. Squint and you might just think you’re watching faraway footage of a keelboat regatta.

Just like any other sailboat race, one or two boats shoot forward from the scrum with full-speed starts. Those in the second and third rows scatter to the sides in search of lanes and clear air.

Once a race is underway, the dock gets eerily silent as the sailors keep sharp focus on their respective yachts, straining to see telltales from 100 feet away and judging crossing situations that are near misses measured in centimeters. The only sound is the aluminum floorboards creaking under the load of heavy feet shuffling back and forth to get a better vantage point at the railing. The silence is only occasionally broken by right-of-way hails, which reach a fevered pitch as boats pile into the weather mark on both laylines.

“Starboard 6!”

“I need room 13!”

“Protest acknowledged. Doing turns.”

The tactics employed by these top-level sailors are all very calculated, and while there’s plenty of touch-and-go contact, it’s like any other sailboat race where the first boat around the offset and away from the fray gets launched, especially in the big breeze and steep 10-inch swells. Like any race, the downwind game is all about speed and clear air.

From dawn to dusk the race committee nets 21 races, a relentless pace even for these world-caliber model yachties. With so many scores, a handful of throw-outs will eventually redo the math, but the top pecking order is set, with the likes of Landau; Peter Feldman, a Soling One-Meter class champ; Mark Golison, a DF95 ace; and even Ken Read, the president of North Sails and two-time Rolex Yachtsman of the Year. He’s got the watchmaker’s royal crown insignia on his sail, and his boat looks just like the big red-and-black sneaker he once raced around the world. What the heck is Ken Read doing here in Texas anyway?

The not-so-secret is he’s a DF95 addict representing the Newport, Rhode Island, fleet that his other famous brother, Brad, started a few years ago during the pandemic. The two of them trade 1-2 on a weekly basis back home off the Sail Newport and New York YC docks all summer long and through the New England winter. Brad (who is supposed to be here as well, but COVID-19 kept him home) is one three celebrities LeMahieu invited, including Hall of Famer Ed Baird, who dabbles in DF95 racing with his sons on the canal behind the family home in St. Petersburg, Florida (aka “Club Ed”).

As talented as Baird may be, however, he’s fully aware he’s out of his league with these guys. On the opening day, he takes a more conservative approach to his starts by hovering outside the starboard end and swooping in late. When that doesn’t work, he tries the middle but keeps getting flushed, so he tries the leeward end with better results, but even that isn’t good enough to crack the top 10.

Only on the 21st and final race of the day does he get a top-five result: A keeper third to celebrate at the post-race gathering organized by LeMahieu at the American Airlines Arena, where the NHL’s Dallas Stars put up a pitiful performance.

The first day’s big blow is a distant memory, however, when competitors arrive for the second day. An unfavorable wind direction forces the race ­committee to set a course on the far side of the docks, where competitors must stand shoulder-to-shoulder and try their best in the millpond conditions. Seven light-air races produce a few new faces into the winner’s circle: Gonsalves, Ron Stephanz and Brig North (multiple classes), Jack Ward (Micro Magic) and Bar Batzer (RC Laser), who closes the regatta with a nail-biter. But it’s Landau who offsets two poor finishes with a pair of race wins to be anointed the first-ever AMYA Champion of Champions. Feldman is second, and Read is third to complete the podium.

For good measure, the regatta concludes with an impromptu exhibition match race between Read and Baird. This one’s for bragging rights. Read cops a pre-start port/starboard penalty, allowing Baird to get away and around the weather mark first and down the run with a few boatlengths between them. Halfway up the second beat, however, they were back at each other with Read on the attack until they coast into a textbook midcourse dial-up.

In agonizingly slow motion, Baird is able to peel away first, but Read soon sneaks past with a better lay on the offset leg. Down the final run, the boats zig and zag, with Baird attacking from behind, skills he’d honed in the old days of the America’s Cup before there were foils. With one final smooth jibe, he connects with a random puff, scoots away, and leads into the finish.

Once a champion, always a champion, no matter the size of the yacht.

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A select group of elite remote control yachtsmen are invited to Dallas for the inaugural Champion of Champions regatta to do battle in one-design DragonFlite 95s.

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That’s right, come wintertime, there’s plenty of round-the-buoys action down at Chicago YC’s Belmont Station where DragonForce fleet founder Daniel Burns is found holding court behind the glass panels of the floating clubhouse’s upper deck. Bobbing in the harbor are as many as 20 miniature sailboats crossing tacks and past anchored marks. There are no crews, nor shouting between boats, nor spinnakers going up down, rather elbows bumping in the clubhouse, joysticks clacking and the regular banter of model yacht racing enthusiasts. The rate at which the fleet is growing, Burns may have a leg to stand on when he says it’s the hottest wind-driven racing action in Chi-Town today.

“This time last year, there were five boats, with me and a few friends,” says Burns. “Now, there’s about 107 in our fleet.” The variety of remote wielding sailors runs the gambit he says: kids, older seasoned sailors, local hotshots, and even the club’s flag officers.

The instigators were Burns and his friend Mikey Whitford. Not long ago they were looking at getting into “small” boat remote control sailing. They considered the RC Laser, but the Chinese-made DragonForce offered an attractive low-cost entry. The base boat can be had for $200, and the upgraded remote another $35. “They’re not hard to store or tote around,” says Burns, “some members just keep them in their sail locker.”

Burns never saw Chicago’s DragonForce fleet getting as popular as it is today but the low-cost and one-design nature of the class are appealing. There are other DragonForce fleets elsewhere in the country, mostly small in numbers, but nothing compares to the Chicago set.

During the winter “Iceberg Series,” he says, on days 40 degrees or warmer, competitors will bring the action outside at Belmont station, and using Bluetooth speakers and a pre-recorded starting sequence, they’ll knock off 10 races — easily. There’s little demand for race committee: just someone to manage the start, call the line, and record finishers. Once the turning marks are set, they stay put.

The most recent Iceberg series had 54 registrants with 33 boats typically on the starting line. The transmitters are digital so there’s plenty of room in the airwaves to prevent signals crossing. The only challenge, says Burns, is when competitors lose track of which boat is theirs. “We use the 2.4GHZ range, which is pretty quick,” says Burns. “The weirdest thing is when you’re looking at the wrong [someone else’s] boat.”

The pilot’s ability to tweak the DragonForce’s performance is limited once on the course, but before shoving it off to race there are plenty of adjustments to be made: forestay tension, jib-halyard tension, mainsail Cunningham, vang and outhaul as well the backstay. “We’re always trying to set it right for the conditions,” says Burns. “The sails like a lot of twist.”

Once underway (no adjustments once the starting sequence is live), two motors (servos in RC-speak) allow adjustments of the rudder and the sails. The main and jib trim simultaneously to match leech profiles. “You’re either eased to 80 degrees true-wind angle, or fully trimmed in,” says Burns. There’s not much to be gained between the two macro trim settings.

The countdown alerts to one minute to warning, followed by a 1-minute countdown. “The starts can be chaotic as boats pace to leeward of the starting line. Burns prefers to hover above the line, swoop in and dip start with speed.

Once in irons, or slow, he says, it’s a challenge to get the boat to full speed again. A short beat and rounding of tether balls as race marks makes for one-lap races that run 6 to 10 minutes apiece. They use triangle courses as well and, occasionally, starboard roundings just to keep things interesting. “One time around minimizes the confusion of who’s going upwind and who’s downwind,” he says.

Burns, who regularly mans the pit on the local Farr 40 Hot Lips, is one of the top DragonForce dudes in the area, but there’s Lee Edwards, “an older gentleman cruiser and really smart.” He wins a lot of races.

While a passerby may see adults messing about with toys, the racing is in fact highly competitive says Burns. There’s plenty of bumping and grinding on the course, most of it incidental. “I was winning a race once when someone just T-boned me, and I think it was just because he didn’t know what to do. There wasn’t any damage, of course, but stopping a DragonForce is the worst thing possible because it can be hard to get it going again.

But all is good so long as everyone does their penalty turns, he says. “It’s like real sailing, just in a miniature form.”

Racing in anything more than 20 knots of wind is “harsh, but doable,” says Burns. The true challenge to the remote-control sailor is wave amplitude. The scale is like one foot to 10 feet in a real boat, so tacking is almost impossible when the waves get too big because they push the boat around. The Belmont Harbor’s protection, however, keeps the big-wave activity in check, so when conditions are deemed to sporty for racing big boats, you can be sure Chicago’s DragonForce sailors are plugging in fresh batteries and putting their antennas and egos on the line. No one’s getting wet, and the beer never spills.

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It’s early on a Saturday morning in October, and the parking lot is already jam-packed at Lake Somerset within the gated community of Sun City, in Beaufort, South Carolina. From trucks and SUVs, men and women unload boats and lay sails neatly on the grass. It has the bustle of any other regatta, but in this case, the boats are small. Really small.

It’s the Sun City Model Yacht Club Regatta, and the sailors are here to practice for the upcoming East Coast 12 Meter National Championship, hosted by Turtle Pond Model YC in Peachtree City, Georgia, on the outskirts of Atlanta. Fran ­DiTommaso, the regatta coordinator and a competitor himself, says competitors have traveled from the Carolinas, Florida and Georgia for the two-day gathering.

The EC 12 Meter class is an active group with a national ranking system and a keen following up and down the U.S. East Coast, as well as Australia, Canada and New Zealand. A new boat costs $3,500, but good secondhand boats can be found for half.

Despite their competitive spirit on the water, these radio-control helmsmen and -women are a welcoming group. They’re excited to talk shop and fraternize among themselves, comparing modes and setups of different rigs and how each baby 12 Meter is tuned. Some of the rigs are aluminum, and others are carbon twigs; all are built and cared for with the precision of an America’s Cup shore team.

Launching an EC 12 is not as simple as removing it from its cradle and placing it into the water. Each 24-pound boat measures 59 inches in length, and the mast stands 72 inches above the deck, holding up 1,300 square inches of sail. To ease the task, Bob Dudinsky, an EC 12 sailor and owner of RMD Marine, a EC 12 supplier in St. Petersburg, Florida, has developed an ingenious boat lift for transporting the boats to and from the water. This apparatus, with powder-coated tubular aluminum and foam wrapped around both ends, hooks perfectly under the EC 12’s bow and stern. The design allows a boat to be lifted using the medically recommended lifting method — from the side of the body and a straight back — when the boat is fully rigged.

On the racecourse, orange foam buoys are placed strategically to allow for changing wind directions. On the water level of the tree-rimmed lake, especially, winds change often. Gusts are unpredictable and erratic. The most eager of the remote-­control yachtsmen have their model boats on the water long before the 0930 skippers’ meeting, practicing tactical maneuvers before the first race of the day.

Racing commences with a booming ­prerecorded countdown from a handcrafted wooden cassette player.

“Three … two … one …”

Then the hollering begins: “Don’t come down!” “You can’t go in there!” “You have no room!”

Sound familiar?

It’s amusing to watch the sailors, shoulder to shoulder, elbowing each other to get ahead. Caught up in the excitement of the races, not a single competitor worries about disturbing the resident gator. Conditions range from light to gusty, depending on what cloud rolls over the racecourse. ­Reichard Kahle, of Charleston, South ­Carolina, manages the venue best and is crowned the Sun City Regatta champion.

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