Teenage brothers Gaetan and Antoine Ismael, junior sailors in Annapolis, were looking to take their dinghy sailing higher. After begging their parents long enough, they found themselves sharing a Waszp and together have been helping each other climb the learning curve. The skills they’re learning on foil are transitioning back to their Club 420 racing, but more importantly, their parents say, the brothers are spending more time on the water having fun with flight. We caught up with them at the Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta Series to learn more about their new obsession.

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• FINAL RESULTS
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The skipper and owner and lead character on the J/70 Casting Couch, Cate Muller-Terhune, of Annapolis, is plenty familiar with sailing fast under pressure. As a top-level helmswoman in the class, she was confident that her team’s boatspeed would be the tool they’d use to break a tie going into the final race at the Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta Series in Annapolis.

Terhune felt they’d been fast upwind all weekend and today was no exception.

“It was hard to go fast upwind,” says Muller-Terhune, whose crew included her husband Alan, Olympian Dave Hughes, and Colin Kirby. “Maybe we were too tight on the rig compared to other boats, but when the boat felt the fastest and highest it was the most difficult to drive. We were constantly adjusting the sails, communicating and making little adjustments, which was definitely key. It was just a really fun group. We had a great practice day on Thursday and let it roll from there.”

The J/70s were racing on the regatta’s busiest racecourse, which included the J/88s, and the regatta’s two biggest classes—the J/80s and J/105. That, combined with an atypical breeze direction and the usual strong current, made Casting Couch’s win all the more impressive. “That sort of takes the middle of the course out of play, but sailing to leeward of the pack because of the current and the wind direction ended up being pretty advantageous for the most part. It was an interesting and complicated weekend for sure,” Muller-Terhune says.

The win is also a nod to the strength of the Annapolis area racing scene, and several fleets that have robust local participation. Among them is the Annapolis, Fleet 5 Harbor 20 fleet, 18 of which made their debut at the regatta. A majority of the 30-boat fleet that sails the local Wednesday night series turned out to race the weekend series. Ed Holt, owner of Trinity, and his grandson, Tyler Russell, won the class with a perfect scoreline on the final day.

Fleet 5’s Bell Carty finished third with Puffin but also earned the regatta’s sportsmanship award for her work as fleet captain and her team’s efforts to grow and join the regatta series weekend. “We don’t do a lot of multiple-day events,” Carty says. But with some lobbying, appealing to the all-ages crews and the promise of fun convinced the fleet to give it a try. Carty says she was “overwhelmed” to be recognized for her efforts. “I think sportsmanship is the key to promoting our sport: it’s about having fun with your family and friends,” she said. “So, this is really an honor.”

If regatta wins are on the registry for two Maryland-based sailors, the Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta Series Annapolis delivered early wedding gifts this weekend. Bride-to-be Alisa Finney, owner of Fahrvergnuggen, won the Cal 25 class, and her fiancé Patrick Seidel took top honors with his boat, Laughing Gull, in the Alberg 30 class.

A second in Sunday’s distance race kept Finney at the top of the class after her win on Saturday. On the Alberg, Seidel sails with multiple generations from one family with an age range of 28 to 68. “It’s a good mixture of long-time experience with youth energy, drive and passion so it works out really well,” Seidel says. “Plus, our boats are prepped really well.”

The 19-boat Albacore class sailed 10 races over the weekend with Barney Harris, of Arlington, Virginia, winning the event. No one could accuse him of not knowing the boat well: he has raced Albacores since the 1980s, builds them, owns five and even lent one to a fellow competitor for the event.

“I’m the guy that builds the boats, fixes everybody’s boats and teaches people how to sail,” Harris says. He chose Gale Warning for the weekend racing, calling it the “best boat I have” and leaving at home the wooden version he sails in wooden-boat regattas.

The Albacore class made its debut at the Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta Series in Annapolis this weekend as the Virginia-based fleet looks forward to its World Championship in Hampton, Virginia, in October. “We’re a class that has been around for a while, has dedicated sailors, and we thought the Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta Series Annapolis was a great venue for us to show off the boat,” says Tyler Phillips, of Washington DC, who is the vice president of the class. “It’s a boat from the 1950s that can sail in all the conditions: from the heavier wind we had on Friday to the light air we had on Sunday.”

The 15-boat J/22 fleet finished 10 races over the three days, and thanks to a strong start, the team on Jeff Todd’s Hot Toddy, of Annapolis, Maryland, could overcome some bottom half finishes in the final few races.

“We didn’t have a very good Sunday but we hung on by a thread and won in a tie breaker,” Todd says. “There was lighter wind today, and it was hard to read. It was very light, and we didn’t know whether to go left or right. People made out on the left, mostly. But it’s a very good fleet, very good competition where anybody could win any race. It’s a very tough fleet.”

Todd’s team will race one weekend per month through the summer and in the Thursday night series before the J/22 World Championships that will be held in Annapolis in October.

In the J/24 class, Hillman Capital Management, skippered by Mark Hillman, of Bethesda, Maryland, hit a patch of no wind that slowed them for about 100 yards and allowed another boat to pass them earlier in the weekend. A second in that race spoiled what would have been a perfect series of first-place finishes. Still, Hillman was pleased. “Today was about staying in pressure, which we did most of the time,” he says.

Hillman credited years of sailing together with some of his crew and two days of practice before their Saturday-Sunday racing. “We built enough teamwork over those two days to get around the racecourse,” he says. “We thought this regatta would be the perfect tune up for the Corinthian Nationals in a few weeks.”

The J/80 class was the biggest in the event with 26 boats. Sarah Alexander’s More Cowbell, of Annapolis, pulled out the regatta win with a second-place finish in the one race held on Sunday. The two-day class leader Kopp-Out (aka The Lasso Way) owned by Thomas Kopp, of Grosse Pointe Farms, Mich., couldn’t match the local knowledge in the light air, and Alexander credits her team with consistency. “We started middle to pin, going for the breeze on the left, and then nothing too crazy on the first upwind. We tried to jibe early on the downwind and just keep going fast,” she says.

In the J/105 class, Ray Wullf’s Patriot, of Annapolis, reclaimed the top of the standings where they were on Friday. After racing that day, the team won the Mount Gay Cocktail Competition with a Patriot Punch recipe, but Wulff refused to blame those festivities for the team’s slide into second on the racecourse on Saturday.

“It’s just as important to win off the water as one the water,” says Wullf, whose team won the regatta in 2023. Sunday’s light air, he said, meant they didn’t change any of the routines. “We just did the same thing we did all three days: consistent sailing,” he says.

On the Etchells 22 course, Greg Hryniewicz, of Annapolis, Maryland, owner of Caramba, admits to “trying everything we could not to win the event.” In the first race on Friday, they were over early. In the second race, they missed the offset mark after a course change, had to reach up to make it, rounded up and a crew member fell overboard. (They retrieved him safely.) In the third race, a crew member lost his balance and cracked a rib, which turned into a full break during the fourth race that day. Hryniewicz found a substitute crew, someone he had never sailed with, and finished the weekend 1 point ahead of the next boat.

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Preliminary Results

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On the second day of the Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta Series in Annapolis, the full breadth of the 222-boat regatta bonanza was on display with the addition of the regatta’s distance racers, 16 hardy teams that were dispatched on a long multi-leg course on Chesapeake Bay on a raw and rainy day.

Among the distance teams were three one-design Beneteau First SE 24s, and the first one across the finish line was Sebastian Vallee’s team on Jef, from Quincy, Mass., which finished the course in less than 2 hours.

The second one-design distance fleet featured the classic Cal 25s, and here Alisa Finney, of Laurel, Maryland, skippered her Cal 25 Fahrvergnuggen to victory. After a “pretty good start,” Laurel held a short lead on the first of several legs, and to preserve their position on the downwind leg, the team chose a more conservative approach and flew one of their smaller spinnakers. “They had predicted stronger winds than what showed up,” Laurel says. “We took our time, so we didn’t have any struggles with the spinnaker.”

The seven-boat ORC distance-race division showcased some of the Annapolis’ best big-boat race teams, some of whom are using the regatta’s distance races as warmups for major races this summer, and today’s relatively quick Bay tour went the way of Benedict Capuco’s Aerodyne 38, Zuul. The blue 38-footer made its winning move right off the start by immediately separating from the rest of the fleet, a tactic that set them up well for the rest of the day.

James Sagerholm’s J/35 Aunt Jean followed them across the finish line, with Bruce Irvin’s Colby 40 Time Machine notching a third in its first official distance race with a boat that’s new to them. A second distance race is scheduled for Sunday with a forecast for stronger winds and seas, which surely will be an early season test of crew work, hardware and sails.

While the distance racers were enjoying their one long race, the regatta’s other one-design fleets continued to rack up races in the day’s 10-knot easterly, which came with plenty of shifts and surprises. Local skipper Jimmy Praley and his teammates on the Viper 640 Robot Flamingo now lead the fleet as they inch closer to locking in the class’s Atlantic Coast Championship title. With seven races counting so far after two days they’re sitting on an 8-point cushion over Peter Beardsly’s Glory Days, from Shelter Island, New York. 

Praley’s assessment of his team’s results so far is on account of good starts, safe tactics, and being hyperactive with sail adjustments in the day’s variable winds.

“We’re constantly adjusting,” Praley says. “One thing that we do really well is, if the boat doesn’t feel well, we don’t sit and wait for something to change. We’re immediately on it. So, if for example, we feel sluggish, I’ll put the bow down a little bit, Max [Vinocur] will ease the jib, Austin [Powers] will pop the vang off and ease the outhaul if we need to. As soon as we get back up on the rail and hiking fully, all the controls come back on. We never wait for something to change. We change as soon as something else.”

It wasn’t all easy sailing for Praley and his teammates, however. Far from it. The 24-boat fleet is deep with talent and they’re sharing the same racecourse with several other classes, which puts a priority on managing traffic and finding open space for better wind. They won the first race and finished fourth in the next, which required a bit of a comeback after a bad start.

“We got flushed on that one but were able to tack out pretty early on to port,” Praley says. “We found a lane and we just worked our boat speed as best we could. We were able to get back into it quickly enough to save that one.”

That also required them to be vigilant being around so many boats. “It’s really hard when you have boats that are so different,” Praley says. “We’ve got Melges 15s that are planning all the time, and then we have the J/30s that go straight downwind, so they kind of close down the middle of the course. We are fortunate that we have the first start, but we’re always talking about where the traffic is and trying to separate as much as possible.”

In the J/80 class, the largest of the event with 26 boats, Kopp-Out (aka The Lasso Way), skippered by Thomas Kopp, of Grosse Pointe Farms, Michigan, maintained his lead for a second day after posting all thirds on Saturday. He credited his tactician for keeping the team out of trouble and praised the rest of the crew for its sail handling and getting around the marks cleanly.

Kopp and the second-place boat, More Cowbell, skippered by Sarah Alexander, of Annapolis, have a comfortable lead on the fleet, but Kopp says the racing has been tighter than the results would indicate.

“We finished overlapped in one race, and there were three different winners today. It just goes to show you the strength of the class,” Kopp says.

On board More Cowbell, Alexander says, the strategy was simple. “We tried to sail conservatively and not do anything crazy. We got lucky on a couple of the starts and steered clear of some messy situations. From there, we just tried to keep it pretty simple with how shifty it was and not tack too much.”

On the very same racecourse, local Cate Muller-Terhune’s team on Casting Couch, cut into the lead of Brian Keane’s team on Savasana, from Weston, Mass., by putting up two top finishes and a win in the day’s final race. The two teams now sit tied with 13 points apiece, but Alec Cutler’s Hedgehog, from Bermuda, is only 6 points in arrears. With J/70 World Championship qualifying berths on the line tomorrow, these three common rivals will no doubt apply more offensive tactics in what is one of the most challenging fleets in sailing today.

Another overall lead change on this action-packed one-design circle is in the J/105 fleet, with 24 boats, where Bill Zartler’s Deja Voodoo went 4-1-13 to move to the top of the scoreboard. Friday’s leaders on Ray Wulff’s Patriot went 1-13-6 to slide to second overall, but the difference between them is only 2 points.

The regatta’s newest fleet, 18 Harbor 20s, joined the action today for the first time, on their own racecourse set closer to the entrance of the Severn River. This race area is notorious for swift currents and geographic wind effects, which makes it extra challenging, and this much is borne out in the results with three individual race winners, only 2 points between the top-two boats, and tight scores further down the results.

Yellow Jacket, co-owned by Jeffrey Sholz, Cornelius Sullivan and Rudolph Joseph Trejo, of Annapolis, were plenty quick and had a handle on the conditions, posting finishes of 1-1-3. Ed Holt’s Trinity with crewmate Tyler Russell were consistent as well with a 2-2-5. Local sailing celebrity Gary Jobson, joining fleet captain John Heintz were in the mix at times, but Jobson admitted they had their challenges, including being over early in the first race and finding themselves on the wrong side of the race course in the last. A fifth in the second race, however, gave him some solace going into tomorrow’s races.

“In our worst race, we went the wrong way and we were slow and that’s a bad thing in sailboat racing,” Jobson says. “Jeff and his team had an astoundingly good day and they’re really fast. But tomorrow, we’ll be better and faster.”

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There’s a bizarre, but now seemingly sacred tradition in Annapolis these days where, come the spring equinox, boaters of all ilk gather round at the Maritime Museum and toss their token stinkers into the flames at the annual Sock Burning Festival. And not long after the embers die, boatyards are chucking boats into the Chesapeake at a harried pace. Annapolis YC’s Wednesday-night racing series kickoff comes next and then there’s the big season-opener: the Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta Series. With more than 200 boats—224 to be exact on the eve of the regatta—and all area yacht club hands are on deck and this year’s edition is expected to be a spicy one. And we’re not talking Old Bay.

In taking a look at this year’s gathering, let’s first take a dive into the scratch sheet and the three new classes bringing some new blood to the regatta’s traditional lineup. The Albacore Dinghy fleet, which will be racing its North American Championship, has pulled in an impressive 19 boats, with nearly half of the doublehanded teams hailing from Canada, a hotbed of Albacore racing.

“There are 80 or so of them up there,” says Albacore stalwart Barney Harris, of Alexandria, Virginia, who has been racing the doublehanded dinghies since 1983 and has built most of the modern boats. “[In Toronto] they get somewhere between 30 and 40 boats on a regular night, and most of them very good.”

Harris has been building Albacores at his home since 2007 and is responsible for 17 new hulls, with No. 18 on the way, and he has raced every Albacore US National Championship since 1983. A diehard indeed, he’s also the reigning US National and North American champion and has an appreciation for the boat’s simplicity. “It’s not overpowered, but not heavy either [at 240 pounds],” he says, “simple but sophisticated enough to maintain my interest for a long time.”

While there are not that many Albacores local to Annapolis proper itself, the opposite is true for the regatta’s other hot class,which will be launching from Annapolis YC’s dry sail lot this weekend—the cruisy but competitive Harbor 20s. As a steadily growing fleet at AYC, this group has sat out the Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta Series in years past as they prefer a more low-profile weekend experience for owners, but after a bit of cajoling from organizers, 19 of them are joining the fun for Saturday and Sunday only, on a racecourse set closer to shore where they prefer to play.

The Harbor 20, built by WD Schock in California, is best-suited for either two or three crew, and the class has strong pockets in the US, especially venues with protected harbors. With a deep and protected cockpit, a self-tacking jib and no spinnakers to fuss with, the Harbor 20 is as user-friendly as a one-design keelboat can be, and that’s the appeal for Annapolis’ Fleet 5 wrangler Bell Carty, who says, “We make sure that everything we are running is fun.”

Speaking of fun, there will be heaps of it for the sailors of the foiling Waszp one-design fleet, which is bringing out a big youth contingent with a couple of adults mixed in, including Annapolis YC’s own junior sailing coach who will be racing a few of his own charges for the first time. The regatta will also be his first time racing the Waszp that he bought a few months ago. The demands of high-school sailing coaching have kept him off the foil, so he has no lofty aspirations, but is happy to see juniors having fun.

“A lot of my kids are doing high-performance events around the Bay, so I figured I’d get into it too so I can see for myself what it’s about,” says Mitchell Powell. “As this will be my first one, we’ll see how it goes.”

What’s unique to the Annapolis stop of the Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta Series is the strength of its established one-design classes, especially the J/105, J/80s and Viper 640s, that each have drawn in 25 teams per class. The J/70 fleet only beats that number by two. Each fleet has something on the line: for the Viper 640s, it’s the Atlantic Coast Championship title, for the J/70s it’s the coveted world championship qualification berths, and for the J/80s and J/105s, it’s simply local bragging rights, which locals know is a big deal in these ultra-competitive amateur fleets. Six of the J/80 teams are sailing for their own interclass bragging rights as participants in the American Sailing Association’s Performance Race Week + Regatta Experience, which includes two days of onboard coaching clinics before the racing starts.

There will be plenty of other Regatta Series regulars as well, including the classic Alberg 30s and Cal 25s, the J/22s and J/24s, and Etchells classes, each of which have their returning champions back to defend. The J/30s, however, have lost their defending champion, Bruce Irvin, who was selected as the regatta’s overall winner in 2023 and earned a berth at the Caribbean Championship in the BVIs in October. Irvin, has traded in his J/30 for a custom 40-footer that he intends to race in Newport Bermuda Race someday.

As he and his crew are only now coming to grips with the boat, the Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta’s two days of ORC racing will give Irvin and his young crew a chance to better learn the ropes and the choreography of their new-to-them yacht. Annapolis YC’s opening Wednesday night race in late April was their first official outing after a winter’s worth of boatwork.

“Mechanically it all went well,” Irvin says. “We’re just getting aware of all the lines, but to be honest, the boat is easier to sail than the J/30. Our goal this weekend is to hoist the ORC trophy, but first we’ll focus on getting it around the racecourse OK and getting some hours under our belts.”

The ORC fleet will race only Saturday and Sunday alongside the regatta’s other distance racers in the Beneteau First 24 division, and while all area clubs will be hosting fleets on the water, evening socials will be hosted by the Annapolis Yacht Club, with packed schedule of food, parties, games and a special, live Speaker Series evening with Ocean Race winning skipper and Rolex Yachtsman of the Year, Charlie Enright, on Thursday evening at the club.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What are your thoughts on dealing with the current?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That’s how it worked for her.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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