With the 2023 Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta Series bidding farewell, and thanks to the sun-soaked action in St. Petersburg, Florida, in February, the series swapped coasts in March for the second stop in San Diego, birthplace of West Coast civilization and the California burrito, and a mecca of year-round sailing that churns out champions. Ninety-six boats across 13 fleets set out from the San Diego and Coronado yacht clubs each morning to the dual racecourses of San Diego Bay and the vast Pacific. On the ocean course, local Beneteau 36.7 sailors witnessed one of the greatest upsets in modern class history when Peter Cochran’s Rode Rage crew halted the 11-year regatta winning streak of Chick Pyle and his team on Kea. It was indeed a battle of the Bennies that came down to the final races. In the first, Rode Rage escaped from a crowded start and put up its first win of the day while Kea had to battle back from a botched start to finish third. It was enough for Cochran and company to simply cover Kea in the final race, and it was all said and done—until next time, Pyle says.

The San Diego regatta also featured Para Sailing for the first time, with Martin 16s and Hansa 303s trading tacks in the protection of Coronado’s Glorietta Bay. It was a sight to behold, with Hansa skipper Jim Thweatt using his Hansa series win to boost awareness of Para Sailing locally and abroad.

Next up came Annapolis, a hive of one-design racing that makes this Chesapeake Bay capital the sailing-crazed town it is. With 154 entries across 13 fleets, the regatta encompassed the most popular one-designs of the area: J/105s, J/22s and Viper 640s. It also featured the inclusion of two new-to-the-regatta doublehanded dinghy fleets: the modern Melges 15 and the classic Wayfarer Dinghy class, which has been active for decades in the US but assembled in Annapolis to join the fun and a challenging weekend of races.  

Chicago is never one to be outsized. True to form, the only freshwater regatta of the series welcomed 162 teams and 15 fleets, as well as the DragonForce 65 remote-­control racers, who traditionally provide the Saturday-night party entertainment. The addition of ILCAs and a special appearance by six-time Formula Kite world champion Daniela Moroz at the regatta’s Speaker Series were highlights for the area’s junior sailors. In the Windy City, the breeze cooperated for the most part and allowed the J/70s—the regatta’s biggest fleet—to put six quality races on the scoreboard over three days. Richard Wizel’s Rowdy won by an astonishing 15 points in a fleet stacked deep with talent; many teams were using multiple stops of the series as stepping stones to the J/70 World Championship in St. Petersburg in late October.

Straight from the bustle of Chicago’s vibrant lakefront, the series transitioned to the sleepy seaside town of Marblehead, Massachusetts, on the outskirts of Boston. With a harbor jam-packed with boats and locals soaking in the finest and waning days of their New England summer, the place was abuzz with 142 entries across 10 classes. On the waters of Massachusetts Bay, the Viper 640, J/70 and Town class fleets gathered to contest their New England Championship titles, with the big-fleet Vipers pulling in a top-shelf Canadian contingent. The return of the Lightning class to this edition of Marblehead Race Week—after a nearly 40-year absence—was celebrated by all, including National Sailing Hall of Fame inductee and local legend Dave Curtis, who made a rare appearance for the awards to present his trophy to Etchells fleet winner Thomas Hornos and his crew on Bob, which pulled a double by also winning the fleet’s Mixed-Plus Trophy.

The Mixed-Plus initiative is aimed at getting more women onto keelboats and into key roles. The effort began in St. Petersburg in 2022 and has been embraced across the sport and at each of the Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta Series stops. Inclusion and diversity among the regatta’s sailors and fleets is the goal of sailing events director Sarah Renz. As the colors cannon boomed from Corinthian YC’s yardarm on a beautiful Sunday summer evening, the series drew to a fitting end, sun-kissed from start to finish and celebrated coast to coast, a national regatta series more diverse and exciting than ever.

The post Regatta Series In Review appeared first on Sailing World.

When boatspeed comes up in a debrief with your team, ask yourself: Did we put ourselves in a position to be fast on the racecourse? If the answer is no, do not waste your time on the topic. A few things have to be good enough before you leave the dock. Will your sails and hull allow you to be competitive? Is your team close to the overall target weight? The best sailors can make slow boats and old sails go fast, but for most of us mere mortals, it’s much harder with bad gear.

There are a few more caveats on the racecourse. If your upwind lane is compromised, you cannot evaluate your boatspeed. Even the fastest sailors in the fleet cannot defy the physics of being on another boat’s windward hip. Instead, they are usually better at tacking away before too much distance is lost. Also, a boat can be optimally set up, but improperly trimmed sheets or an erratic hand on the tiller will make it perform like it’s towing a clump of weeds. 

All this is to say it’s critical that you make sure your team is doing the big things well—getting off the starting line, choosing smart moments to tack, and executing reasonable trimming and driving technique—before blaming boatspeed. 

Aside from boat-specific equipment optimization, any speed-­related problem-solving on board requires solid communication between the skippers and trimmers. The words we use matter; onboard communication related to speed should be concise, direct and actionable. On board the 49erFX, for example, my teammate Stephanie Roble will often tell me the “boat won’t release” when a puff hits. When I hear this, I know we need more twist in the mainsail. Here, Steph is giving me feedback that I can act on and address. When using adjectives to describe the boat’s performance, make sure you’re all on the same page about the meaning of terms such as “sticky,” “wobbly” or “narrow groove.” Ultimately, if the boat is set up properly, speed-related communication should be mellow. A quiet boat is a fast boat.  

The tiller gives us some of the most valuable onboard feedback about the setup of the mainsail and jib in relation to each other. When sailing upwind with the sheets fully trimmed and the crew hiking appropriately, have the skipper release their grip on the tiller and take note of what happens to the bow. If there is a strong reaction to leeward or windward, you might have an imbalance in the setup of the mainsail and jib. If the bow gets pulled too leeward, away from the wind, it can indicate that your jib is too powerful or the mainsail could take more leech load. The opposite might be true if the boat wants to naturally round up when the skipper eases their grip on the tiller. If so, your mainsail might be too powerful. On most dinghies, the helm will not ever be totally neutral, but an extreme windward or leeward helm tug indicates you can find a better balance between the mainsail and jib. To keep things really simple, sometimes I ask Steph, “Are you pushing or pulling the helm?” 

When you sail upwind to check settings, ensure the skipper and trimmer are aligned on wind strength and where it leaves you in the power curve. Are you searching for power, trying to use the max power available, or needing to depower your setup? The answer usually varies across the day’s wind conditions, such as: “Overpowered in the puffs, but OK on average.” This analysis should lead you to the next decision about whether you set up for the puffs or lulls. The sea state will influence which way you hedge. In flat water, you can feather into the wind when a puff hits to depower more easily. In a wavy sea state, you have to drive around the waves, so your setup will need to allow a wider groove. 

To simplify the many decisions needed to properly set up your boat, let’s rely on data whenever possible. Your tuning guide for the rig should be scaled to wind strength and sea state. Your homework before the day of racing should include understanding the ranges of wind strength you are likely to see and memorizing or recording the high and low tide times. The easiest but rare days are, of course, those with consistent wind strength. But on days when you get every windspeed possible, it’s helpful to understand where you are at any given moment in the greater trend. Knowing if the puffs you’re feeling are reaching the maximum forecast for the day, or vice versa with the lulls, should help you hedge your settings for the upcoming race. It really helps us decide on the rig setting when we can say something like, “This lull is the lightest velocity we were meant to see, so let’s anticipate a build from here.” 

It is critical for trimmers to identify which sail controls will have the biggest impact. On a hiking or trapezing boat, sacrificing crew weight in the right place to make a control adjustment, like the cunningham or vang, comes with a cost-benefit analysis every time. On the 49erFX, for example, which weighs about 100 kg, the crew’s body weight of approximately 70 kg makes a bigger difference in most puffs than one last inch of cunningham. In an ideal world, control adjustments would happen before the puff or lull hits. But if you get caught out by a puff, before leaning in, ask yourself: Will easing the mainsheet a little more or having the extra bit of cunningham on help us more at this moment? And more so, if the puffs are short-lived, you should not aim for perfection. On high-tempo, transitional days, Steph and I will agree that we are going for 80 percent boat performance, and we both try to find a forgiving and versatile setup on our sheets.  

Lastly, keep in mind that if you’re caught out at the wrong rig setting, it’s likely the majority of the fleet is as well. Don’t let it become a mental distraction during the race. Announce to the team, “We are overpowered; the boat is not going to feel great.” Doing so can help eliminate any distracting input and focus everyone’s attention on going as fast as possible in the moment.

The post The Path to Consistent Boatspeed appeared first on Sailing World.

Rain needles Ketchikan’s harbor as Paul Bieker assesses the damage to one of his beloved designs. Dark Star, Jonathan and Libby McKee’s Riptide 44, just won the 2022 Race to Alaska, but McKee and crew found a log at 18 knots. I’d texted Bieker the photos, and he’d just arrived with a plan and his son, Leo. Minutes later, they begin sanding, layering on epoxy, mating, adding more epoxy, then resanding, skipping lunch and disregarding the on-off precipitation. Nothing about the scene suggests the presence of a two-time America’s Cup-winning naval architect. “It’s not beautiful,” Bieker says that evening, “but it’ll keep water from hydraulically separating the layers of carbon if we’re going fast.” Fourteen hours later, we depart for Seattle by way of Vancouver Island’s west coast.

In the world of high-performance sailing, few names are more synonymous with speed than Bieker’s, yet few Cup-winning designers have kept a lower, more grounded profile. This is by choice, and it suits; flannel shirts, wool sweaters and foredeck-battered fleece often define Bieker’s attire. Look past the Pacific Northwest camouflage, however, and one discovers that Bieker’s mind relentlessly drills on design and engineering problems. Coloring him the smartest guy in the room—while accurate—is lazy writing; his mind doesn’t stop seeking until he wrestles down his solution. Other naval architects may have seen more boats launched than Bieker, now 60, but few have created boats that are still setting racecourse records decades ex post facto.

It started with a car accident.

Bieker was born in Portland, Oregon, in October 1962. He’s the oldest of three kids born to a father who had a penchant for fast cars. This ended in (circa) 1968, when Fred Bieker rolled the family’s Mustang with his family aboard. Bieker’s mother suggested that her husband pursue a safer hobby. 

He chose sailing. 

Paul Bieker made his first tacks when he was 5 or 6 years old, and has amassed tens of thousands of miles since then. This began with trips up and down the West Coast with his family aboard their keelboats—first a Coronada 25, then an Erickson 35, then a Standfast 40—for races and cruises. As a result, Bieker became obsessed with sailing and with boats. “Before we’d go on a cruise, my mom would get me a 500-sheet ream of typing paper, and I’d sit down there and just draw boat after boat,” he says of his 11-year-old self. “It was a little nutty.”

By the early 1980s, Fred Bieker had upgraded to a Swan NYYC 48. In 1980, the Biekers sailed from Portland to San Francisco, then on to the Marquesas, the Tuamotus, the Society Islands, Rarotonga, Christmas Island, Hawaii and then home. For Paul, this year-and-a-half-long journey introduced him to Polynesian culture. He temporarily jumped ship and joined two German cruisers for a leg that involved sailing through a hurricane near Mururoa, where they were boarded by a French frigate. 

“It was super memorable for a lot of reasons,” he says. “It was just great to spend that much time on boats—you really get a feel for what it’s like to live on one.”

Despite his love of yacht design, this didn’t feel like a practical profession. Come college, he enrolled in the Rhode Island School of Design’s architecture program. However, a middegree epiphany made him reconsider his path. In 1987, he graduated with high honors from the University of California at Berkeley with a degree in naval architecture.

Bieker first worked for Bay Area designer Gary Mull, but the fit wasn’t right—the shop was analog. “He wasn’t using any [computer-­design] tools,” Bieker says. “PCs had just come out while I was in college,” he adds, noting that his studies included writing lines-fairing code. “It felt like that was where the future was.”

Swapping boards, Bieker took a full-time position as a commercial naval architect with Guido Perla & Associates in Seattle in 1988. Aside from providing steady work, Perla had written some sophisticated code for CNC-cutting steel plates, and the firm was using state-of-the-art design and lofting tools. This gig lasted two years, and Bieker learned career-defining skills. “I applied those techniques to yachts,” he says. “I’m pretty sure I was one of the first guys to use computer-aided construction at that level in the yachting world.” 

Thirty-six hours into our delivery, I awake to a joyous smell. Bieker mans Dark Star’s single working burner and stirs 2 pounds of morels into a frying pan sizzling with olive oil, garlic and onions. A block of Parmesan cheese that he brought home from Sardinia—a perk of working part time for Luna Rossa during the 2024 Cup—sits nearby. 

While decadent, these aren’t some pricey farmers-market fungi; Bieker foraged the morels himself—high in Washington’s North Cascade Mountains—just for this meal.

We soon tuck in. It’s hands-down the best dinner I’ve ever had at sea. Bieker just smiles, happy to gift his shipmates with some Pacific Northwest bounty.

Moths seek flames, and Bieker gravitated to Seattle’s Shilshole Marina after moving to town. He found the local International 14 fleet and was soon racing, designing and building these development-class skiffs. 

“We built two boats and got first and second in the 1991 US Nationals,” he says. People wanted boats built to this design, but Perla didn’t allow moonlighting. “So, I went out and got a part-time naval architecture job and worked half-time building Fourteens,” he says, explaining that this is where he started learning about high-end composites. “That was an experience that I don’t think many designers get because you’re sailing the boat, designing the boat and building the boat. It’s experiencing the full circle of the process all inside one head.”

It also exposed him to working half-time while reserving bandwidth for his own designs. “It’s more interesting that way,” he says.

Nights and weekends found him designing a 21-footer, dubbed The Red Boat, using the computer-aided patterning skills he’d learned in the commercial marine world. While Bieker admits that it’s a stretch to call the triple-trapeze rocket ship a keelboat, his next commission was for a 55-foot performance-minded offshore cruiser. Rocket Science was one of the first commercial projects designed using CAD modeling software to computer-cut parts, and its innovation list included water ballasting, twin rudders, a deck-stepped carbon rig with swept spreaders and running backstays, a masthead asymmetric spinnaker and retractable centerline sprit pole, and hard chines. 

Remember, this was 1994. 

The next keelboat call came from his friend and Olympic gold medalist Jonathan McKee (a longtime Sailing World racing editor), who wanted an offshore-worthy racer-cruiser that could achieve high percentages of its polars with a doublehanded crew. The resulting two boats, dubbed Riptide 35s, each carry 1,750 square feet of off-the-wind cloth and displace just 4,700 pounds. 

Impressive metrics, given that both boats sport cruising interiors.

Both Riptide 35s entered the 1998 Pacific Cup, with McKee and three shipmates racing aboard his Ripple while Bieker raced with three others aboard Terremoto!. The results remain the stuff of Seattle sailing lore: Ripple won its class, Terremoto! took second, and the two Riptides beat all of their classmates—including a Schumacher 46, a Santa Cruz 52 and an Andrews 56—across the line, save for one optimized Santa Cruz 50. 

Decades later, Bieker still describes this as one of his best offshore experiences. Better still, both boats are still sailing, and Terremoto! set a course record during the 2023 Swiftsure Race. “Watching the original Riptide 35 still being fast—what, 30 years later? That’s pretty satisfying,” he says. 

Next, Bieker began developing a new International 14 rudder that situated the hydrofoils higher on the rudder stock. The goal, he says, was “to make the waves think the boat is longer.”

It worked. Kris Bundy and Jamie Hanseler beat 115 other teams at the 2000 International 14 Worlds. “That’s probably one of the brighter things I’ve done,” Bieker says of the foils. “It was worth about 100 yards in a first weather leg.”

This didn’t go unnoticed. “The America’s Cup work that I got was directly related to my first foray into hydrofoils on the Fourteen,” Bieker says, explaining that Bill Erkelens, Oracle Racing’s CEO for the 2003 America’s Cup, was a former Fourteen sailor. Erkelens was seeking a design liaison between Oracle’s sailing and design teams, but Bieker knew that working with structures would be a better fit. “Between my social skills and my knowledge of America’s Cup politics, I figured there was no way I’d survive in that job,” he says. “I had this combination of knowing the [composite] materials, knowing how the materials handle, and having an engineering background.” 

He was hired part time for Oracle’s next two unsuccessful campaigns. While not an auspicious start, Bieker experienced two cycles of Cup design and witnessed boatbuilding’s highest standards. 

I’m doing a lousy job of keeping the kite filled without oversteering. Pacific Northwest fog shrouds our horizons, some 40 nautical miles northwest of Vancouver Island’s Brooks Peninsula, white-rooming all visual references. Worse, the choppy seas are incongruent with the breeze, which—for me—is a little thin to keep Dark Star rumbling. 

I hear stirrings belowdecks, and Bieker emerges. He’s (rightly) not impressed with my driving; I happily relinquish the helm and watch.

Bieker leverages his skiff skills, and Dark Star responds by settling into a VMG-pleasing rhythm I couldn’t play: The kite fills, the bow lifts, and the compass card freezes.

When asked about some of his proudest engineering feats, Bieker points to the system that BMW Oracle innovated for the 2010 Cup for raising and lowering the wingsail on their 90-foot trimaran and to the boat’s foils. “That was a pretty big jump in how foils are built,” he says. 

BMW Oracle swept Alinghi 2-0 in 2010’s Deed-of-Gift match on the waters off Valencia, Spain, and the newly crowned Defender began drafting the Protocol for the 2013 Cup. The new AC72s were a big advance, but some technologies were transferable. “The [foils on the] AC72s were just an elaboration of what we did on the big trimaran, but more refined,” Bieker says.

While the Defender almost always has an edge in the Cup, ETNZ was the first to foil their AC72, and come the Cup’s start, theirs was the fastest horse. BMW Oracle found themselves looking at the wrong side of an 8-1 match-point scoreboard deficient, but rather than imploding, the team came alive. This started at press conferences and continued through all-night design-and-build sessions aimed at finding extra speed. It worked, and the team pulled off one of the greatest come-from-behind wins in sports history. “There were a lot of reasons why we beat them,” Bieker says. “One of them was having ­better foils.”

The trimarans were swapped for even faster cats (AC50s) for the 2017 Cup, and Bieker was named lead design engineer for Oracle. This full-time position required that he and his wife and two sons relocate to Bermuda for two years, but it allowed him to be heavily involved in creating the AC50 class’s one-design hull shapes and rigs, and later with the design of the Defender’s race boat.

Unfortunately for Oracle, ETNZ introduced “cyclors” to the sailing lexicon and beat the Defender 7-1. The Auld Mug went to Auckland, and Bieker took a Cup hiatus. However, this coincided with the launch of SailGP, which employs “F50s” (read: modified AC50s), and he kept innovating the design. Now, almost a decade after their conception, F50s remain the world’s ­fastest multihulls. 

This break from AC work also allowed him to pursue more diverse projects, including keelboats, Moths, and even some powerboats. This latter list includes designing the electric-powered and hydrofoil-borne Navier 27, and reengineering the composite lifting foils for a low-wake passenger ferry.

In 2020, Bieker and the Seattle naval architecture firm Glosten joined forces to create a zero-emission foiling ferry. “It can transport people over water using one-third of the energy [of] the next best thing,” he says. “You don’t get the opportunity to make those kinds of improvements that often.”

I join Bieker on deck at 0200 for my last night watch of the delivery. We’re near Port Angeles, on the American side of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, in the kind of thin wind and negative water that parks up most ­monohulls, yet we’re still making 5 knots.

This is wonderful; we’re almost out of fuel. 

Bieker grips a coffee mug, and we joke about how lucky we got—following seas, downwind angles, almost zero rain—on this gentleman’s delivery, which is now almost complete. “This one could have gone either way,” he says, recalling other trips down Vancouver Island’s desolate west coast. Once, he says, during a Van Isle 360 International Yacht Race, Dark Star blew out a portlight while slugging into heavy seas off the Brooks Peninsula and started onboarding enormous volumes of seawater. 

He’s too modest to mention it, but I know from McKee that Bieker solved the problem using a hard foam bumper, rope, a ratchet and quick-but-careful thinking. 

“I think I’ve laid some pretty good performance boats down in my own little way,” Bieker says. To date, roughly 30 Bieker Boats have been constructed, and he views them all as his intellectual offspring. “Every new boat that you design and build should be trying to push the art forward. It should feel like the world is a little bit of a better place with that boat.” 

While Bieker acknowledges that other naval architects have built more boats, he also admits that he’s allergic to repetition. “It’s a more time-consuming and expensive way to work—to re-create the wheel each time—but it means you learn.”

This is evident at Bieker Boats’ offices in Anacortes, Washington, where Bieker works with his business partner, Eric Jolly, and designer, Evan Walker. Massive monitors display projects being created using the latest computational-design tools; the shelves are populated with exquisite one-off carbon-fiber bits from various campaigns. 

“I don’t advertise,” he says. “My dad always said, ‘You get the work you deserve,’ so all of my work has been word of mouth. That way, you get good clients.”

When queried about what his dream project would be at this stage of his career, Bieker envisions a career circumnavigation. “It would be to design a performance cruiser,” he says. “That 55 was my first shot at that kind of boat, and it would be fun to do more.” 

Given that Bieker and McKee describe Dark Star—a 44-foot carbon-­fiber build that weighs 10,300 pounds—as a cruiser-racer, this sure wouldn’t be some bloated dock condo. It could very well have a foil or two, and will most certainly look different than every other boat in the marina.

The post The Brilliance of Paul Bieker appeared first on Sailing World.

I’m kicking myself because I’m late for the first start—there’s a lot of current for 5 knots of breeze, and my timing to the line is way off. I’m last across the starting line. I’m “Deep 6.”

But this is three-versus-three team racing, so I’m not alone. Ahead, my teammates are scheming how to advance me to the front. They round the first windward mark in second and third. They’ve done their job well, and my crewmates and I claw our way forward. Having practiced how to convert this losing combination, they immediately slow the pace of the race and consolidate against our opponents’ 4-5 positions as we round mark two of the box-shaped racecourse and turn downwind.

If you’re unfamiliar with “3v3” team racing, pay attention because there’s a lot going on as this plays out: Because I am in sixth—and last—place, I’m in better proximity to cover my opponents, but the real gain will be made at mark three. My teammate Ashley Love and her crew are in second place, known as “the 2” in team racing. Meanwhile, once inside the two-boatlength zone (two is standard for team racing), our teammate Janel Zarkowskey and her crew obstruct the opposing team’s 4-5 combination without losing control of either boat. The inside opponent is forced to slow and honor Zarkowskey’s mark-room. The other boat must avoid Zarkowskey and sail extra distance around the outside. The extra maneuvers slow my opponents while I sail past the mark with speed. We are now in a stable winning 2-3-4 combination and notch our first race win—and impressive “double passback”—in the 12-minute race.

After the race, I apologize to Zarkowskey for the hiccup in our start. “This is why we race as a team,” she replies.

With us on this drizzly and still morning in Marblehead Harbor are seven other teams, all in Sonars. We are all here for the National Team Race Invitational for the Thayer Trophy, hosted by Corinthian YC. We have 42 races to finish to complete the double round robin over the next two days. My team, a crew of Chesapeake Bay sailors, is sailing for the Chesapeake Bay Yacht Racing Association. For the third year in a row, Love, our team captain, has secured a grant through CBYRA to cover having 12 of us here, representing the entire Chesapeake Bay community. We’ve competed in this event ever since Corinthian first hosted it three years ago, and we’ve been practicing for it for the past three months. The Gibson Island Yacht Squadron and member Tom Price have been providing generous access to their club-owned Sonars every Monday night; Price ensures the boats are race-ready and even sets marks for our self-organized practices.

Before each Monday practice, Love sends out a call to around 65 sailors from Annapolis, Baltimore, and Washington, DC. Over 12 weeks, men and women with a range of team-racing, keelboat and dinghy experience come to help us build a team and train for the event. This is an intricate and dedicated community effort, and this Thayer Cup is what brings us all together. “The Thayer brings sailing back to a sport with actual teams that people can root for,” Love once told me. “Teams, as opposed to individuals, who are spending time practicing and proving themselves to their clubs or associations. Ultimately, building a team that represents something.”

In our case, we are working to build a women’s team of competent team racers and keelboat sailors. We practice boathandling in the Sonars, try out different crew positions, run passback drills, and orchestrate textbook team-­racing combinations. For some, this is an introduction to team racing. Others enjoy the chance to try new positions for the first time. I’m here to improve my team-race and keelboat skills, and this year, I’m here to win the Thayer Trophy. Having placed second and third in the previous editions, this time I think we might actually be able to win this thing.

But we’re not the only team that’s been training hard. No one is at the Thayer to give team racing a try—it’s an invitational, after all. Through a careful selection process, the Thayer Trophy pulls in the top women’s team-race talent, and in his opening remarks, Corinthian’s commodore, Jim Raisides, gives me chills with his on-point message. “We wanted to create the most competitive three-versus-three with spinnaker women’s team-racing regatta in the country,” he says. “We really felt the opportunity to get incredible talent in the room, intense competition, with something everyone would want to circle on their calendar for the regatta that can’t be missed.

“The first thing was, let’s make this the one that everyone will support, let’s make this the one that everyone spends some time actually practicing for, let’s make this the one that you make that phone call to that bow person you can’t live without and say, ‘Can’t you just miss that wedding to go to the Thayer?’ And hopefully, it’s the one that, by preparing all this time in your local harbor, you strengthened team racing in your area just by the fact that you ­prepared, practiced and introduced new people to it or brought ­people back to the sport.”

This is exactly the case for all of us. We are surrounded by All-Americans, Olympians and national champions. As Raisides speaks, top female sailors from around the country nod heads in agreement. One thing is certain: The excitement for team racing has attracted many talented sailors to this harbor, and we’re all prepared to win.

It’s no surprise then that the racing is tight. After the first day, we are in a four-way tie for second, and Rhode Island’s Bristol YC is in the lead with one extra win. Over wine with my team on Saturday night, we all agree that this is the most competitive Thayer Trophy field yet. This is no coincidence. Miranda Bakos, the regatta chair, says that over the last two years, the event “has been in a growth phase as teams built out their programs, most of which started women’s keelboat team-racing programs from scratch. Now the bar has been raised, and everyone is competitive. It’s less about ­learning and more about perfecting and executing.”

It is difficult to understate the nature of participating in a team-race regatta with more than 80 competitors, an all-female team of umpires, and countless race-committee volunteers and event support. We enjoy dinner together, socializing with women of like minds and enjoying the view of Marblehead Harbor. The band has us dancing on the deck until they stop taking our requests. Whether it’s the music, the exhilaration of team racing, or the crisp glass of rosé, the camaraderie is strong. We are celebrating more than the day’s racing. We are celebrating the work we put in to get here, the support from our communities and clubs, and that together we are part of something greater.

Day two brings Champagne team-racing conditions. My team finishes the second round robin with a score of 6-6. Having lost to a few teams we bested in the first round robin, I’m unsure whether we’ll qualify for the gold round. The top four of seven teams advance, and we know two of those spots are taken by Bristol YC and California’s Newport Harbor YC, which are tied for first with eight wins apiece. That leaves two more teams to advance.

Crackling over the radio, the race committee announces the standings. We lean in to listen, the anticipation hanging heavy in the building breeze. It’s a three-way tie for third: my team, Marblehead’s Eastern YC, and the team from Boston’s MIT Nautical Association. Due to the tiebreaker, one of us will not advance. The race committee then announces that it’s not a clean tiebreaker because we each have a win and a loss to each other across the two round robins. This means the tiebreaker comes down to the places we scored in each race—a nerve-racking cliffhanger. Hanging on to every word coming from the radio while searching my memory for how we placed in each race, we finally hear that we’re fourth. We’re the last team to advance to the gold round. Relief quickly morphs to motivation. We have nothing to lose now.

With scores carrying over from the double round robin, we sit two points behind Newport Harbor and Bristol. Each win in the gold round is worth two points, which means we need to win all three of our races. In our first race against Bristol, we’re outmaneuvered and handedly beaten. Winning is out of the cards for us. Nonetheless, we rally in a close one against Newport Harbor right after and add two points to our score.  Finally, it’s our last race of the regatta. We round mark one with a 2-3-4 against MITNA but lose “the 4” on the downwind through a double cover. I manage to sail straight and fast, barely entering the mark zone ahead to get “the 1.”

Now my job is to pass my teammate ahead. Boosted by a series of boathandling issues from our opponent in “the 2,” we gain a solid hold on the race. It is super close racing, but we beat MITNA to earn ourselves two more points. We have at least clinched third overall, with the final standings determined by the last race.

Our future now depends on what transpires between Bristol and Newport Harbor. Bristol is over early at the pin and red-flagged by the umpires, meaning they must restart and exonerate themselves with a two-turn penalty. This puts them in the Deep 6 right off the bat. Newport rounds mark one with a 2-4-5 combination to Bristol’s 1-3-6. This race will come down to which team is able to execute its passback more effectively as they attempt to convert to more stable winning combinations. On the short leg between marks one and two, Newport converts to a close 2-3-4, but the race has now slowed enough that Bristol’s Deep 6 is back within striking distance. 

Newport holds the 2-3-4 on the downwind, but things get interesting from mark four to the finish. Newport finishes in “the 1,” and while only 50 yards from the line, a Bristol teammate turns her attention behind and begins to aggressively slow her opponent, allowing her teammate to move forward. Meanwhile, on the right side of the course, the third Bristol team manages to pin their opponent, preventing them from tacking until they’re on layline to the finish, beating them to the finish by mere inches for a 2-3-4 race win.

Newport Harbor’s loss in the final race means we tie them for second overall. But because we beat them in our gold-round head-to-head race, we win the tiebreaker and claim second overall. While I had high hopes of winning this year, I am smiling. This is a fantastic outcome for us. Bristol YC demonstrated their deserving position atop the podium, having won all their gold-round races. After a weekend of hard-fought team racing, they are the clear winner.

“This was the most competitive year we’ve seen,” Bristol’s Dani Neri says afterward. “There were no giveaways. Our three losses in the double round robin actually went to the three teams who didn’t end up qualifying for the gold division.”

The Thayer Trophy was created to honor Joan Thayer and her mother, Ellie, for their “decades of breaking ground for women’s sailing,” Raisides says. And Joan is still plenty active in Marblehead’s sailing scene. “If it’s got a sail in it, Joan is going to race it, and she’s going to be fast,” Raisides adds.

Enjoying a bowl of clam chowder and a beer before the awards ceremony, I find myself standing next to Joan and ask her what makes women’s sailing different these days. Without skipping a beat, she says: “Women are stepping up and not shying away. They’re saying yeah, and the clubs are giving them their support. This is what it’s about for me.”

With more women’s events popping up in the last three years, we are seeing this trend expand across the sport. After all, women are the largest untapped pool of sailors. “The fact that this event requires clubs to pull together 12 to 15 women is incredible because a lot of clubs don’t have or didn’t have that many available,” Bakos says. “Creating that excess of opportunity for women is the driving force that sailing needs. A lot of times, women get pigeonholed into certain roles on the boat. This event gives women the opportunity to try new roles, to get repetition and build confidence.”

Invitations for the Thayer are issued to teams provided that at least 70 percent are from the invited yacht club or sailing organization. “This fosters community-based enthusiasm,” Bakos says. “It may mean introducing more seasoned keelboat sailors to the sport of team racing, or allowing recent college graduates with team-race experience the opportunity to step onto a keelboat. Either way, yacht clubs are asked to place a focus on cultivating their ­women’s talent.”

Only three years ago, Corinthian barely had three drivers, but today it has tripled its roster. At Newport Harbor, I’m told, more women are stepping up to participate in team-race practices. By creating the need for more skilled positions, women are enthusiastically filling those roles. The objective of the Thayer is certainly taking effect and serves as an example to all sailing groups to the benefits of supporting and prioritizing their women sailors financially, providing boats, running club practices and hosting events. 

In three years, the Thayer Trophy has raised the level of women’s team-racing tenfold. The excitement for me is being on the helm for high-energy, fast-paced racing. I’m motivated to put in the time and enjoy the process of learning team-racing moves, improving my plays, and reinforcing my understanding of the rules. I am inspired by the thought of winning this high-caliber event someday, and I’m confident our team will return even stronger next year. And when that happens, I won’t be late for the start.

The post The Hot Combination appeared first on Sailing World.

Sarah Newberry Moore’s son, Iren, just turned 2. Not only is he already wreaking havoc at the New York YC—scattering Goldfish crackers across the manicured lawn at Harbour Court and spilling his grandmother’s wine in the prestigious club library—but he’s also beginning to know his way around a Nacra 17 better than most adults.

Iren was, for all intents and purposes, born into the current Olympic quad, so it’s not surprising that he is quickly learning the ins and outs of elite sailboat racing, just as his mom and her sailing partner, David Liebenberg, have had to adapt to having a baby in the campaign mix. It’s an arrangement that is working out just fine.

“If you ask Iren what momma does, it’s ‘sailboat with Uncle Dave,’” Newberry Moore says with a smile. “Any time he sees a man with brown hair, he says, ‘Uncle Dave,’ and any man on a sailboat is Uncle Dave. Luckily, his dad looks very different. Dave has been showing him how to do boatwork, and he loves touching all of the parts of the boat and pulling on the lines.”

Raising a small child and training as an Olympic hopeful have several things in common: Each is an exhausting and challenging mission. Few US Sailing Team athletes vying for an Olympic spot in the current quad shoulder the additional responsibility of child-rearing: Stu McNay (Mixed 470) is a father of two (5 and 8), and Nikki Barnes (470) recently had her first baby. For Newberry Moore, the pandemic provided her with the time to determine that having a child was what she wanted in addition to continuing to race at the highest level of catamaran racing.

“The day I decided I wanted to have a child, we were in lockdown, the circuit was shut down, Dave and I weren’t sailing, although we had already planned to do another campaign,” she says. “There was no training or racing happening, and I realized if I didn’t do it then, I didn’t know when I would be able to. Dave was the first person I called. I said to him, ‘I think I want to have a baby,’ and he replied, ‘Ah, let’s talk about this later. I’ll call you back.’”

Newberry Moore acknowledges that from the beginning, Liebenberg found a way to support that process and believed in her ability to do all of the things related to motherhood and Olympic campaigning.

“It wasn’t a big surprise when she told me,” Liebenberg says. “I understood that it would help her develop as a person and an athlete. We’ve adjusted as a team with scheduling and so on; it really hasn’t been that big of a jump from my perspective, but more so for Sarah.”

Austrian Olympian Tom Zajak (bronze medalist in the Nacra 17 in Rio 2016) has known Newberry Moore since she won the Nacra 17 event at the Sailing World Cup Miami in 2013. He’s been coaching the pair since last summer and, as a dad himself who parented through an Olympic campaign, he understands the challenge.

“Sarah manages it really well,” Zajak says. “She needed time to find a good rhythm, and she has built up a good structure for her that is working really well; she is a role model for many sailors and athletes in many sports who are planning a family. What also works well for Sarah and Dave is that they have been sailing together for a long time; I think the glue that keeps them together is that they are quite different personalities, which is very important because the Nacra 17 is very demanding, and if you bring different skills to it, you have a bigger range of performance skills and approaches. It’s most important that they have a goal together to compete at the Olympics, and this is probably the biggest bonding they have—that makes them a strong team.”

Newberry Moore says she’s never been as good at what she does as she is now. It’s paramount to ensure that her valuable time is honored, both at home and in the boat park.

“I have become a far more focused person, and the time that has been eliminated is that time when you indulge yourself, whether it’s doubt or celebrating yourself,” she says. “My focus is either being a mom or being efficient with my time in the campaign. It’s also built my confidence as an athlete, as Dave can attest. This journey as a teammate and as an athlete inspired a deep level of self-confidence that I didn’t have before, where I started to advocate for what I needed and whatever the baby needed or wanted.”

Getting back on the boat after Iren’s birth was as much about getting her body back in shape for the intense workout the Nacra 17 demands as it was about the mental conditioning. “I may have looked whole, but coming in off the trapeze wire was an accomplishment,” Newberry Moore says. “I was the only one who knew what my core strength was, and the big goal each day was how smoothly I could get off the wire. My own internal journey was experiencing, ‘Cool! Good entry! You didn’t fall off the boat!’ It was so different to Dave’s reality.”

It didn’t help that the pair is campaigning the most difficult boat in the Olympic fleet. The Nacra 17 has been the equipment for the mixed multihull event since Rio 2016, the first time there was a mixed discipline. After Rio, the boat became a foiling catamaran. By 2020, the boats were foiling downwind, and for the 2024 quad, the boats are foiling upwind and downwind.

As the only US team actively campaigning a Nacra 17 currently, it has been virtually impossible for Newberry Moore and Liebenberg to train domestically and ride out the learning curve brought on by changes to the boat. The pair has had to train in Europe mostly, which has impacted routines related to traveling with a baby and training in a full-time program of some 200 days with early starts and late finishes.

“The boat is now much more challenging to sail,” Liebenberg says. “Downwind we would be pushing with intensity, but upwind we could take a breath and look around a lot easier. But now, in a lot of ways, it’s more difficult to sail upwind than downwind. We need to be much more fit; all of the alignment on the systems—the rudders and the rigging—matters a lot more. It’s been really exciting, a lot of fun, and a learning curve for the entire fleet, but it’s more boatwork and more time in the gym.”

Newberry Moore adds: “I think we were quick to adapt to upwind foiling. We had moments when we were going the same speed as top athletes—everybody was learning very quickly. It was like climbing a mountain that was growing. We’d figure something out, then see that someone else was doing it much better than we were. It was constant adaptation and required being very open-minded. You have to really like the process, often not having an answer and always being open to change. If you can enjoy that, then it’s a great boat to be ­sailing.”

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When I tell people my ­husband and I race competitively together in a two-person dinghy, the usual response is something like, “No way! We’d be divorced,” or “That would be a marriage-ender for us.” While I completely understand this sentiment, for Jonathan and me, it’s been just the opposite—a marriage-builder. We came to sailing together as part of our courtship, and it’s a foundational piece of our life together. I sailed Lasers and 470s at the national and international levels in the 1980s and, of course, Jonathan was pretty accomplished himself. Our first regatta together was the US Tasar North Americans in 1988, which started a 35-year relationship with the class and racing as a team. Since then, in addition to many local regattas, we’ve sailed eight Tasar World Championships, winning four, and finishing second in three and fifth in one. In January, we’ll be heading to the 2024 Tasar Worlds in Melbourne, Australia. 

To state the obvious, sailboat racing is intense, especially dinghy sailing. It’s physically demanding and mentally challenging, and not every day goes as planned. On those days, things can get a bit strained, which can be tough on a relationship. Like any team, we each have our roles. Jonathan steers, trims the main and calls tactics. I manage the weight, hike, and adjust the forward controls while talking about the wind, compass, course and the other boats. On those days when things are not going well, my responsibility is also to stay positive, be forward-thinking, and convey confidence in him—and in us as a team. I work to feed him useful information so he can make the very best next decision and the one after that. 

At a regatta some time ago, we found ourselves in the bottom third of the fleet, rounding the leeward mark of the first downwind leg. Our spirits were already low when the mainsail clew shackle gave way. After a quick repair, and the fleet sailing away from us, Jonathan looked deflated and asked, “Now what?” I immediately responded, “We’re racing!” And off we went to rejoin the race as best we could. Racing every minute until the very end of every race is something I had learned from him in the past, so I gave it back at the right moment. 

Crews in doublehanded boats are often underappreciated. It’s assumed skippers do everything, with crews taking orders. At the top of the fleet, that simply doesn’t deliver winning results over time. But it’s hard to see what top crews are doing differently. Success begins with confidence in your skills as a sailor and as an equally important part of the team, even if you don’t have your hand on the helm. It also blends opposing concepts: equal partnership with a hierarchy of tactical decision-making; separate roles in the boat combined with synchronicity of movement and boathandling; being of service to one’s skipper but not subservient. Practicing these concepts in addition to the normal things like starting, speed tuning and maneuvers makes them second nature and accessible during the intensity of a race.

Some time ago, I realized I can communicate disappointment or doubt from the front of the boat without saying a word. Needless to say, this vibe is not great for skipper confidence, results or the dinner table. Since then, I consciously set an intention to emanate support and belief in Jonathan regardless of what’s happening in the race because I know he’s already putting in 110 percent for our success.

The 2022 Worlds was a real test for our partnership. Jonathan’s sister had died suddenly a month before the regatta, and during the lay day, his mom passed away after a long illness. Hearts broken, we leaned into our sailing community and the comfort of racing together for support and healing. The tone in the boat was different. We were still focused on competing with excellence, but it came with a halo of gentleness and an awareness that the friends and family who surround our lives and our sailing are what really matter.

Over the years, I have begun to see sailing with Jonathan as a way to increase our mental and emotional alignment, with the goal of bringing out the very best in each other. We don’t always live up to our ideals in this regard, but the number of race days spoiled due to one of us being in a bad mood or letting our egos get in the way are increasingly few. Foundational to all this is respect for what the other brings to the team and a deep faith in the team itself. This inspires investment in getting better and working out the issues that inevitably arise when you’re part of something meaningful—like a marriage.

The post Two Is Better Together appeared first on Sailing World.

Hailing from Geneva, where she started sailing with her parents as a child, 36-year-old Justine Mettraux is something of an enigma. You won’t find her talking herself up or striking a pose for the cameras. She’s an athlete who manages—in this era of sponsor-driven exposure and social media—to maintain a relatively low profile.

But her record speaks for itself. Mettraux was the first female sailor to finish on the podium in the series class in the Mini Transat, when finishing second in 2013. She was part of the Team SCA crew in the Volvo Ocean Race in 2014-15, then part of the winning Dongfeng Race Team in 2017-18. Most recently, she has been a key member of the victorious 11th Hour Racing Team in the first IMOCA Ocean Race.

Mettraux has also achieved impressive results in the Solitaire du Figaro solo championship—she was seventh in 2017—and is now a force in the upper reaches of the IMOCA fleet at the helm of Jérémie Beyou’s former Charal 1. Now rebranded in the colors of her longtime sponsor TeamWork, Mettraux finished seventh in the 2018-vintage VPLP-designed foiler in the 2022 Route du Rhum. The next big challenge is the 2024 Vendée Globe, in which a top-five finish is by no means out of the question.

So, who is Mettraux? What is making her the most competitive female sailor in this area of the sport? And what attributes does she have that make her so effective? Simon Fisher, the veteran British navigator with the 11th Hour Racing Team who sailed doublehanded with Mettraux during the 2021 season and again as part of the crew in The Ocean Race, knows her as well as anyone.

He says the woman he refers to as “Juju the Machine” is deceptive. “When you first meet Juju, she is quite shy, but underneath that exterior is actually a fierce and determined competitor, and I’ve certainly seen that sailing with her both crewed and doublehanded,” he says.

Fisher reckons there are few in the sport who are more committed to their chosen calling than Mettraux. “We call her ‘the Machine’ because we are pretty sure she thinks about sailing almost 24 hours a day,” he says. “And certainly, when everyone else is thinking about a day off, she will be the one thinking about getting back out there. She’s got an incredible appetite for our sport. She’s incredibly focused on it and, based on her level of commitment, I am sure she will put together a great Vendée Globe campaign.”

All who have sailed or trained with her mention Mettraux’s methodical and thorough approach to learning and racing. She is famous for taking notes throughout her races and training camps, notes that she stores away and uses in race debriefs and to remind her of settings and techniques that otherwise would be forgotten.

Her rival female IMOCA skipper, Pip Hare, remembers being on a training course with Mettraux in Brittany in the buildup to the Mini in 2012. She paints a picture of a hard-­working athlete determined not to miss a thing. “From the first moment of meeting her, you could see that Justine is a really serious person,” Hare recalls. “There was no question at all, she was there to absorb everything. In everything that we did, she was meticulous. She asked questions in the debriefs, and it was always Justine leading the questioning. I remember her taking heaps and heaps of notes. Her attention to detail was unbelievable. And on the water, I really rate her—she is a phenomenal sailor.”

Tenacity, stamina and determination are all qualities that get mentioned when people talk about Mettraux. Fisher says her capacity for hard work on a boat is endless. “I always tease her because she loves stacking—she’ll take any opportunity to move a few hundred kilos of kit around the boat if she thinks it’s going to improve performance, for however brief a period of time. She’s incredibly hard-working,” he says.

Mettraux is also noted for keeping her emotions in check, and she rarely, if ever, gives much away. Friends say that should not be mistaken for a coldness in her personality and talk of a warm and caring character. Mettraux herself says keeping a level emotional state is part of the winning game. “As a solo sailor, when you do offshore races, you go through highs and lows,” she says. “You have to keep a steady mood all the time. For sure there are tough moments or there are good moments, but it is all about consistency, and managing my emotions helps me to focus more on performance.”

Tenacity, stamina and determination are all qualities that get mentioned when people talk about Justine Mettraux. 

Mettraux comes from a remarkable family. She has four siblings, all of whom are top-class professionals in the sport. Her brother Bryan sails on the Alinghi America’s Cup boat, her sister Elodie-Jane has sailed in two Ocean Races, and sister Laurane is on the Swiss SailGP team. They owe their passion for the sport to their parents—her father is a retired policeman; her mother worked in the Swiss post office—who bought a cruising boat that they enjoyed on Lake Geneva as kids.

There was no racing. “They never pushed us,” Mettraux says, speaking in fluent English, a language she delivers in a rapid-fire staccato. “They were really not into competition. So that’s maybe why we all do that because it was a personal choice for each of us. Although they didn’t plan it, they are happy to see we can enjoy our passion and that we are in good shape and enjoy what we do.”

Mettraux started sailing on her own at 16, inspired by Ellen MacArthur, whose first book she bought and devoured. For almost 10 years she served her apprenticeship, training with Swiss sailing camps, learning to be a skipper and how to manage a boat. In 2009, she joined Donna Bertarelli’s D35 Ladycat Racing on Lake Geneva, and the visibility gained from that led to her Mini Transat campaign.

When talking about motivation, Mettraux, who trained as a school teacher, always mentions performance. The level of it is what obsesses her, and improving it is a constant goal. “I put a lot of energy into my projects, always trying to keep improving, to improve my performance,” she says. “That’s what motivates me.”

These days, the big goal is the Vendée Globe, and Mettraux is approaching it with modest ambitions. “My goal is to finish it, for sure,” she says. “I don’t have a new boat, but I have a good second-generation one, so yes, I have the opportunity to do well. It is hard to look for a certain result in the Vendée Globe; you have to give it your best, try to sail a good track, keep the boat in one piece, and try to be happy with the way you sailed. If you do all that, then I think you will have a good result.”

A striking feature of her career has been the long relationship with her sponsor, which started with the Mini campaign and has continued ever since. TeamWork is a Swiss management consulting and data analysis company whose CEO, Philippe Rey-Gorrez, and his wife have become close friends of Mettraux. She is not the only sailor or athlete the company sponsors, but the way TeamWork has stayed with her and backed her successively through Figaro sailing, then Class40s and now the top echelon in IMOCA tells you all you need to know about her qualities as an individual.

“It is really a relationship based on trust,” Mettraux says. “I was 25 when I started with them, so I was a lot younger. But they always thought I was doing my best in my projects, trying to work seriously. It has always been transparent in terms of how the budgets are managed and where the money is going. And over the years, it has become a really friendly relationship, or a family relationship, and that is how they manage their projects in general.”

Mettraux says she is the sort of person who finds it hard to sit still. When not sailing, she enjoys the outdoors, wingfoiling, surfing or biking. Indoors, she takes refuge in novels on the rare occasions when she finds time away from the sea. But the dream now is all about the Vendée. “That’s the big goal for me, for sure,” she says.

A lot of people will be watching to see how she gets on, not only on the course around the world, but also in the big IMOCA races that lead up to it, including this fall’s doublehanded Transat Jacques Vabre. One person who has full confidence in Mettraux is another of her crewmates from the 11th Hour Racing Team, the impressive Italian sailor Francesca Clapcich, who has trained with Mettraux and raced in The Ocean Race in-port series alongside her.

She says the Swiss sailor has the mental and physical toughness to do well on the global course. “I think her work ethic got her to where she is now,” Clapcich says. “In a few months, she will go around the world by herself, and she has absolutely 100 percent got the capacity to do it and do it really well. And that doesn’t come for free. It comes with a lot of work and a lot of perseverance.”

The post Justine The Machine appeared first on Sailing World.

Walk the docks of an ORC regatta, a one-design championship, or even a beer-can race and you will notice how many boats are now equipped with some version of a floating headsail lead. With the broadened range of lead positioning available and the ability to make fine adjustments, knowledgeable trimmers can contribute substantial performance gains to any boat they step onto. Understanding the proper balance of foot depth and leech twist to achieve target performance numbers is, of course, the first step toward accessing these new gears. But knowing when to stray from the perfect setup in order to power through asymmetric chop, hold a tight lane off the start line, split low and fast out of a crowded leeward mark, or extend from a closely trailing boat on the offset leg will set you apart from the crowd of average trimmers. Let’s take a look at each axis of lead positioning and its effect on the sail.

Fore and aft: Optimizing the longitudinal jib-lead position

Fore and aft movement of the lead position primarily controls foot depth. Moving the lead forward will increase depth in the lower part of the sail, while moving it aft will flatten it. The side effect of this movement is leech twist control. As the foot gets fuller, the leech becomes straighter and more closed at the top of the sail. As the foot gets flatter, the leech becomes more twisted. This has historically been the most common axis for adjustment because, in a basic sense, both flattening the foot and twisting the leech are methods of depowering the sail. When we factor in the nuances of sea state, vertical wind shear, tolerances of groove width, and efficient mode shifting, longitudinal control alone limits the versatility of our headsail.

Inboard and outboard: Optimizing the athwartships jib-lead position

Controlling the athwartships position of the lead is typically referred to as inhauling. Moving the lead inboard narrows the angle of attack. All else equal, this means the boat must point higher in order for the wind to view the headsail the same way as it was before being inhauled. The major limitation here is when the slot between the headsail and mainsail becomes too narrow and the flow coming off the jib inverts the front of the mainsail.

The goal of setting the athwartships lead position is to set the jib leech close enough to the main that it compresses and accelerates the wind between the two sails and forces the flow over the back of the main to remain attached farther aft than it would otherwise, but not so narrow that it bubbles the front of the main and creates an unreasonably thin groove for the driver. When I decide where to set the inhauler, I typically check for just a touch of visual feedback (light fluttering) in the main luff and communicate with the driver about how easy it is to keep the boat tracking well. In a lumpy sea state, for example, the driver will need a wider angle of attack in order to have adequate freedom to maneuver through the waves.

Up and down: Optimizing the vertical jib-lead position

The up and down control of your lead position can be seen as having a similar effect as the fore and aft control does. However, changing the up and down position has a more direct effect on the leech twist and a more indirect effect on foot depth. As headsails have become higher-aspect, having more precise control of the leech twist has become increasingly important. This is likely why vertical lead adjustment has been added to many boats or replaced the longitudinal adjustment altogether.

Now that we understand the impact of each control axis, how do we find the sweet spot for our floating jib lead at any given moment? A good starting point is to follow the classic guidance of achieving an evenly breaking luff. The jib clew should be low enough that the luff telltales at the head aren’t breaking drastically earlier than the ones closer to the foot are, but not so low that the upper leech telltales are stalling from too little twist.

The clew should be far enough forward that there is enough power in the foot to achieve target speeds at upwind polar angles, but not so far forward that the depth induces too much drag and the upper leech is, once again, stalling. The clew should be inboard enough to maximize upwind pointing ability, but not so far inboard that it overly compresses flow through the slot, disturbing the luff of the main. 

Of course, we don’t have the luxury of each adjustment functioning in isolation. We must also understand how each control impacts the complete setup and how to correct unwanted impacts. Inhauling the jib can also increase the foot depth, so to achieve a narrower angle of attack without creating unwanted drag, we must move the lead up, shift the lead back, or pull the sheet on harder. Easing the lead up can allow the clew to fall to leeward, so we can inhaul more to bring the angle of attack back to where it was. Because of this interconnected relationship between the floating lead control lines, it can be difficult to make reliable marks and repeat settings precisely. This means trimmers need to be overly discerning when it comes to the proper look of the jib. We need to check in regularly on the luff telltales, leech telltales, and feedback in the main to visualize the flow over our sail. 

Adding one more layer to the puzzle of determining jib-lead setup is input from the tactician. Aside from the methods outlined above for achieving efficient upwind trim, floating jib leads are also beneficial to short-term mode shifts. For example, if there is a tactical call for a high mode off the start line to clear or protect a good lane, the headsail trimmer should inhaul the jib as the main trimmer moves the traveler up. The groove will be narrow and speed will suffer slightly, but when done efficiently, the task can be completed quickly before transitioning right back to the best VMG mode. When sailing off the wind, the floating lead allows for much greater ability to keep the sail trimmed properly without requiring flattening sheets or outboard leads.

A good trimmer knows how to make their jib look nice and perform well. A great trimmer will cross-reference their settings with the main trim, helm balance and tactical mode to increase the performance of the entire system.

The post Headsail Trim Tips For Floating Leads appeared first on Sailing World.

At a recent coed Grandmasters Team Race Regatta, a teammate told me he didn’t understand why there were women-only sailboat races—as if to say, what’s the point? His comment was a brave one in today’s “woke” world, but it’s something that men and women alike probably think about a lot more than they talk about. Yet it raises a valid conundrum as our predominantly male sport pushes toward wider female inclusion: Why isolate women to their own sideshows when the long-term goal is organic integration across the sport?

As I listened to his comments, many of which I’ve heard before, I thought about the fact that several signature women’s events, like the International Women’s Keelboat Regatta and the Santa Maria Cup, are either dead or not as popular as they once were. And later, as I reflected on our discussion, I took stock of our competitors at the Newport Harbor YC Palmer Trophy. Eight of the 54 sailors—15 percent—were women.

“It’s important to have this dialogue,” says Nicole Breault, the first woman to earn St. Francis YC’s Yachtsman of the Year. Breault is a one-design champion and currently competing in the revived Women’s World Match Racing Tour. “Segregation,” she says, “is part of the process of developing a deeper talent pool among women.”

And in a coed environment, she adds, women may defer to men to take leadership roles or are simply pushed aside. “When you remove men from a group, women assert themselves more, show more initiative, and don’t step back to allow the role to be filled by a man.”

Women’s racing also offers opportunities that don’t always happen on coed teams, says Kim Ganley, rear commodore at New York’s Rochester YC and a veteran of the club’s women’s racing program. “When all women are on a boat, every position is open to a woman,” she says. “And when a women’s regatta encourages female race officials, the opportunities expand even further.”

Such opportunities, or the lack thereof, are the common sentiment I hear when having this discussion with other women sailors. Cory Sertl, World Sailing vice president, experienced this firsthand as a youth sailor. “My brother would get invited as a 14-15-year-old, and I never got an invite,” she says. “I was more excited about it than he was, and he was two years younger, but I was never invited. They never thought of me.”

Opportunity is also the driver behind one of the most popular events on San Diego YC’s regatta calendar. The annual Women’s Winter Invitational Regatta was first held in 2018 with a simple goal of encouraging women to participate in keelboat racing, and it was a hit. The 2023 edition hosted 24 yacht-club teams from across the country, with crews spanning from college sailors to septuagenarians. 

The regatta’s co-chair, Jessica Sweeney, says she thought long and hard about the role of women-only events before she agreed to chair it. “Women-only events have a place in the overall sport of racing to do a couple of really important things,” she says. “They create an on-ramp for women that counteracts the prevailing societal narrative—women have messages telling them this isn’t for them. These events create an environment where women can gain mastery in a way that isn’t influenced by the gender dynamic. Many women need a safer place, and this is it for them to gain mastery in competitive sailing and regatta management.”

Sweeney speaks from experience and says she has been “pushed” plenty of times. “To this day, there is one sailor who will still take a line out of my hand while I am hoisting the halyard and physically move me out of the space.”

There’s also something to be said of the camaraderie undoubtedly unique to such events. “The all-women environment is nurturing and fun in a way that men have had for years and years and years,” Sertl says. Breault also appreciates the all-female dynamic. “There is something special that happens, a lot of smiles that happen at the end of a collective experience, among not just teammates but everyone involved.”

The visibility of these events is paramount to bringing awareness to a wide and underappreciated talent pool. As Sweeney notes: “When we create women-only events or crews, we are making it impossible to ignore that women can do this. It becomes impossible to say we don’t get full credit for our contributions.”

Different-size and -shaped people sail boats differently, regardless of gender. As Breault puts it: “There are lots of ways to objectify a sailor for what you need.” Sailors can leverage their physical forms differently. When women sail with other women, it encourages them to sail the boat in a way that works for them. 

Renee Mehl, director of the US Naval Academy Offshore Sail Training Squadron, says: “On Heineken (the all-women’s entry in the Whitbread Around the World Race), the loads were huge, and things weighed a
ton. We just threw more
people at it.”

“When we rigged the J/22, it was all about how to set up things for four people so we could have women and people who could be smaller, like our kids at the time,” Sertl says. “It’s all about figuring out the maneuver and how to make things efficient with the people you have. Brute strength is helpful, and if you don’t have it, double up, work purchases, make things easier.”

Younger women, like Sarah Alexander, a skipper from Annapolis in the Snipe and J/80 classes, have been a source of new growth in the sport. The J/105 class, for example, with the leadership of Breault and others, recognizes the potential for growth in women and has been funding women’s events throughout North America.

The class sees women as both future boat owners and crew, increasing the long-term value of the boats and the class. The same is true in the J/70 class, which has supported a movement called Mixed-Plus, aimed in its early days to get top female professional sailors into properly paid roles on J/70 teams. The movement has furthered momentum already afoot in other classes. 

The IC37, J/105 and Melges 15, for example, now require or incentivize having female crews. At the 2023 Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta Series in St. Petersburg, Florida, with several Mixed-Plus classes, women made up 15 percent of the registered skippers. In the J/70 class, women were 20 percent of skippers; in the Melges 15, they were 30 percent. It’s a fast trend going in the right direction.

With her experience at US Sailing and World Sailing, Sertl takes a higher view of sailing and says the goal for the good of the sport is to build and attract sailors. “The future of the sport is kids who are 15 to 25 and have the earning power to get involved. Hopefully, as many women and girls as possible,” she says.

“Sponsors today,” she adds, “increasingly want to support events that embrace diversity, inclusivity, fun and sustainability.” 

Dawn Riley, a pioneer in women’s sailing, also shares a holistic view of the sport. “All parts of sailing need more people and more sincere efforts to create diversity,” she says, and women are a key part of those numbers and that diversity.

All-women’s events have led to additional efforts to get more women into sailing in integrated ways. Breault and Ganley, for example, have both skippered all-women’s teams in coed events. “That is the frosting on the cake,” Breault says. “Isn’t it great if I can actually sail in open events and also have an all-women’s team without it being an agenda? It’s just what works the best.”

“We won a race last year and were very encouraged and celebrated by male counterparts,” Ganley says. “There are a ton of all-male crews, so what’s the big deal with a boat having an all-­female crew?”

In other words, champions will be champions, regardless of gender.  Still, Riley says: “Women’s events are relevant conditionally, as long as your goal is to get to the point where they are no longer needed. It might be an indefinite time before we get there, and we might need to circle back and reboot with each new generation.”

In the meantime, she adds, “Mixed teams are the right way to go.”

There were a lot of laughs on the docks at San Diego’s Women’s Winter Invitational and a vibe that makes it special enough that teams hustle for coveted invitations every year. “I didn’t expect that it would be so much fun,” Sweeney says. “I was so gratified to hear from women about the positive experience that we had.”

Having fun is what sailing is all about. If we can all agree on that much, my dear teammate, all-women’s events are more than relevant. I’d say they’re essential.

The post Women’s Racing Brings Strength in Numbers appeared first on Sailing World.

Monica Morgan has come a long way from working at a Subway in Chicago as a teenager to raise money to join the racing team at the Chicago YC at Belmont Harbor. Now, at age 39, she has become a highly sought-after dinghy and keelboat crew. Her name is on a lengthy and growing list of championships, including four J/24 North American titles, two J/24 National Championships, the J/24 Midwinters, a pair of Lightning Masters Championships, a Lightning North American Championship and the Bacardi Cup in the VX One. And those are only the ones she can remember. 

When not racing, you can find her deep in fiberglass work at Morgan Marine, a Florida speed shop she runs with her husband, Chris. On any given day, you might find her recoring a deck, longboarding an Etchells or a Lightning hull, or doing repairs no one else wants to do. And that’s when she’s not taking care of her 9-year-old son, Oliver, diving to clean boat bottoms, or doing CrossFit workouts. 

At an inch or so over 5 feet tall, Morgan’s height might not be imposing, but her VX One skipper, Austin Powers, of North Sails, says: “Pound for pound, she’s probably the strongest sailor in the world.” As an example, he notes how she usually completes their spinnaker hoist well before any of her larger male counterparts. “She’s definitely a large part of the reason we won the 2022 Bacardi Cup.” 

Growing up, Morgan sailed with her father on a Rhodes 19. In a family on a tight budget with seven kids, she didn’t have access to much of what typical yacht-club kids enjoy. She and her brother cleaned boat bottoms and usually got a bag of fun-size Snickers as payment. At age 15, she started frostbiting in a Penguin with her friend David Stix.

“We sailed at this place called Skokie Lagoon, just outside Chicago,” Morgan says. “He must have seen something in me because he pushed me to learn more. After our first capsize, he called my mom and said, ‘Monica needs to buy some gear. She can’t keep sailing in sweatpants and a rain jacket.’”  

After high school, it was off to Florida State, where she did minimal collegiate racing. The sailing connection had not yet been fully realized. “After graduating, I became a social worker in Chicago for a homeless shelter run by the Salvation Army. One of my friends asked me to sail a Lightning regatta over the weekend in Chicago, and I asked for time off, which I didn’t do that often. No one else wanted to work on a weekend, so it got denied. At the time, I was also getting my masters in school social work. I suddenly had this moment. I realized I would be destined to work inside for the rest of my life and not sailing much.”  

So, she quit her job. “My parents were so mad at me. I did everything I was supposed to, but I realized, at age 25, I was not living up to my potential. I put a hard stop to everything, saved up money and put a plan together. I went on this couch-surfing regatta plan for the winter in Florida. I did all these things to keep going, like painting houses in Key West after Key West Race Week. I did regattas everywhere I could.”  

One of those opportunities was on a J/24. “I had never even seen one before, but I did the J/24 Midwinters with Kirk Reynolds, and that’s where I met Chris.” 

She kept traveling and sailing, and eventually heard from him again. He offered her a job helping him work on a J/35. “My first task was to vacuum the bilge. The boat was a mess, and he needed someone to clean up after him. At the end of the day, Chris said, ‘You didn’t complain much the whole day, and you did some pretty gross and tough work, so you can work for me. You passed the test.’ I never thought I’d be working on boats the way that Chris does, and that’s really cool.” 

In time, she learned to work on bottoms, keels and rudders, as well as to repair collisions. “I love wet sanding, and I love buffing the boat out because it’s like the finish. When you start the project, you’re really excited because it’s something new, and midway through you’re like, ‘Oh, this is never going to end.’ Then you start getting ready to prep for paint, and then you unmask everything and hit that window of where it’s really nice, smooth wet sanding. I play the song ‘Kodachrome’ when I do the final buffing because it’s the final picture where it all comes together.”  

One of those boats was the J/24 American Garage, which required a complete rebuild before winning the 2022 National Championship and the 2023 World Championship. Mike Marshall, of North Sails, who owns and skippers the boat, says: “That boat was out on the Cape, looking pretty shabby. They did the whole restoration project, the interior, the bottom stuff. Most of the time, it was her and Chris working on it. They recored the deck, rebuilt the interior; it was a huge amount of work. I can’t think of a more motivated person in sailing than Monica. She doesn’t back down from any challenge.”

Morgan commands the bow on most boats she sails, but that is not always evident. Powers says: “You don’t see her in any of the photos because she’s hiking so hard. She’s on a whole other level, usually hiking harder than anyone in the fleet.” 

In large part, that’s because she maintains a serious regimen in the gym, including CrossFit three to four days a week, which she’s been doing for years, with powerlifting on the side.

“I started CrossFit after a tough regatta four years ago and made a commitment to myself that I would never let my strength be a limiting factor in my sailing. I love being strong because it’s so empowering. The biggest thing I’ve learned through this whole process is that the amount of confidence you can create in yourself is so powerful. It doesn’t mean you’re cocky. It just means you know you can do things, that you’re sure of your abilities. It’s a great feeling.” 

She’s also meticulous about her diet. “When we go on the road,” Powers says, “she even brings her own food.” 

Then there’s her attitude while racing. “Every minute, she’s like, ‘How can I do that better, or how did that work out?’” Powers says. “She checks all the boxes that you look for when looking for someone to sail with.”

Her VX One skipper, Austin Powers, of North Sails, says: “Pound for pound, she’s probably the strongest sailor in the world.”

Morgan comments: “I’m fortunate because the people I’ve sailed with and have had the most success asked me to crew based on my abilities. It has never been a weight thing, never a gender thing. It was always, ‘I want you on my boat.’”

She had a great run on the J/24 with Will Welles, winning three North Americans, a Nationals and a Midwinters. “He could have sailed with somebody 20 pounds heavier than me to make weight, and I never thought about it until later, but he sailed based on people’s abilities as opposed to their size or gender. The same with Travis Odenbach and Ched Proctor. I’ve been fortunate that I’ve been sailing with people based on my abilities.” 

Proctor recalls: “She’s very good at reacting to the unexpected. I remember going around a weather mark, we hoisted the spinnaker but didn’t get the guy back in time, and the spinnaker filled. Before it tipped us over, she had the presence of mind to let the spinnaker halyard go, and it saved us. After it was over, she asked me, ‘Do you think that was the right thing to do?’ I said, ‘Yes, otherwise we’d have been swimming.’”  

Her question reflects her modus operandi. “I allow myself to make a mistake once, learn from it, and prevent it from happening again so that I have room for new mistakes. Mistakes are part of the process, and learning from them helps me become better every day.” 

Along with Welles, Odenbach played a big role in helping her realize her potential. “He asked me to sail my first major regatta after having Oliver—the J/24 Worlds in 2014 in Newport. We finished fifth, and although it was a tough regatta, it was the biggest lesson for me of how I could perform better, physically, mentally and at the boat shop. He set an expectation for me that I thought was unreasonable at first, but then I realized that he truly believed I was capable of achieving those goals. He has become a great mentor for all of my current sailing. If it weren’t for him, I probably would have been a stay-at-home mom and sought a different career.” 

At the end of the day, she adds, her motivation is knowing she put in maximum effort—whether hiking, longboarding, or doing whatever it takes to win. “It’s exhausting sometimes, but it’s mostly just for myself,” she says. “I love sailing, and I love working on boats. It’s so cool to see what you can do with your hands, what you can create.”

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