• PRELIMINARY RESULTS
• PHOTO GALLERY

Marblehead Harbor was placid at first light. Pure sheen. Not a whiff of wind. And it remained that way as the Race Committees of Eastern, Boston and Corinthian YCs soldiered out to the open ocean with best intentions. The sailors followed. And wallowed until nothing came. Yet while the others drifted on the swirling currents of Marblehead Channel, race officials of the Archers Line made a calculated retreat to inner reaches of the Harbor where the Town class regularly sails.

The Lasers retreated as well, and while fleets from the offshore circles motored past en route to their moorings and hoists, a round green weather mark was placed 100 feet from Eastern YC’s launch dock. 

Soon, a dozen Lasers were slaloming through one of the most densely populated mooring fields on the East Coast, and then doing the same downwind, fighting for clean air between themselves, and swinging Grady Whites, Regulators and Sunday afternoon harbor strollers.

Yarmouth, Maine’s Jamie Carter won the race and the Laser series. And that was that.

The Townies were next, with nine competitors of the original 13-boat fleet piling up at the weather end with 20 seconds remaining. To leeward and forward of the group was the distressed black hull of Albatross, skippered by the wise ‘ol Rex Antrim from down in nearby Nahant.“We’re ahead in points,” Antrim says when interviewed before the race. “So far so good.”

The tips he shares for speed in the Town class are simple: “Don’t sail with any weather helm, if you can. And sail around the course faster than the other guy. Sail the shortest distance.”

His daughter Heidi is crewing with him today. “He’s had a different crew with him every day,” she says. “My mom, my daughter Callie, and then myself.”

Antrim has owned the boat since 1980, and his black beauty may be 90 years old, but for this edition of the Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta Series at Marblehead Race Week, he’s been the quickest of the fleet over three days of light winds and strong currents. After five races, he’s locked into a three-boat battle for this year’s Townie title, which is a big deal round these parts.

A one-shot windward/leeward race will decide the series, and Antrim is all alone near the pin end of the line at precisely 2 seconds before the start. He and Heidi trim their sails in unison and skirt past a big yellow Harbor Master buoy, duck a powerboat, and then speed off the left. 

Some of the fleet sail up the middle, tacking on shifts and obstructions. A few disappear to the right flank of the harbor. Somehow they’re soon on top of each other at the weather mark, calling room and then blanketing each other’s winds with their long footed mainsails.

Individual scrimmages weave through the moorings, and within a hundred yards of  the finish line, the top three converge in a bottle neck between powerboats. 

Antrim and skipper Nick Cann on Tonic are closing in on Bill Heffernen’s Sweep, ghosting up to him with a puff of their own. Twenty feet from the finish line, Heffernan hooks his mainsheet on a motorboat’s bow pulpit and his white boat comes to a brief halt. He breaks free quick enough to accelerate and win the race by a boat length.

Antrim and Cann are overlapped and then abeam of each other. Antrim is in the black boat to leeward. Cann is in the bright yellow boat to windward. Their jibs are poled out, their mainsails out to their stopper knots as the two of them see-saw places.But as they strike the line, Antrim gets the call and earns this year’s Town class championship by 3 points. A victory earned in the harbor, and another sidebar in the Town class annals: that time Rex Antrim won the lightest Race Week in a long, long time and proved once again that the really good ones are always faster in the light stuff.

With no results to change for the remaining fleet, the standings remained unchanged as the final regatta of the Regatta Series came to a close in Marblehead, but as is tradition at Race Week, there are perpetual trophies that come hard earned. First and foremost is the Cressy Trophy, presented annually to the “top performing skipper in the most competitive fleet at Marblehead Race Week.” That honor, presented by co-race chair Jud Smith, who with his wife Cindy, together held the reins of this edition, went to top ILCA finisher Jamie Carter, of Yarmouth, Maine. The young sailor emerged from a close series of five races with 8 points.

The Leonard Fowle Trophy, presented to “an individual who has made noteworthy contributions to sailing and racing in Marblehead, was presented to Smith, for his leadership of the regatta and working with his wife to modify and create new racecourses to add to the regatta’s traditional courses.
A new perpetual trophy added to the haul, the Widnall Trophy, which is presented to International One Design winner, was won by the man himself, putting up his 29th Race Week win in the class.

The final award of the night, the overall title, presented to an individual class winner drawn at random, went the way of the squad on the J/105 No Quarter, from nearby Beverly, Massachusetts. As a group of friends that have been racing with or against each other in different classes, together they’ve been quick to get up to speed, winning the regatta in what is now their second season with the boat.

They battled with perennial champ Merlin throughout the regatta and No Quarter co-owner Matt Herbster, says the win was bittersweet. “Merlin beat us on the water, but one bad spinnaker set did them in on Saturday. We wanted to go out and win today, but we were robbed of that [opportunity] because of the weather. “But we are happy to go back out with them and settle the score.”

On the boat with Herbster for Race Week and headed to the British Virgin Islands with Sunsail in October was Jonathan Dragonas, Julie Femino, Noah Flaherty, Ted Johnson and Chris Small. Small says their success over the weekend was “about keeping the boat rumbling, and working together with the trimmers to make sure we’re maintaining boatspeed and our lane.”

They’re confident they take their collective skills to the Caribbean and do just fine against the regatta series’ five other challengers and the defenders. “We’ll go down there and do what we do,” they say. “We’ll figure out how to sail the boat, get it fast and have fun.”

The post Townie Showdown in the Harbor appeared first on Sailing World.

• PRELIMINARY RESULTS
• PHOTO GALLERY

Aidan Naughton and Marina Barzaghi, who trekked north to the Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta Series in Marblehead from nearby Rhode Island, won the one that counted today.

Truth be told, it was the only race completed for 27 Lightning teams sailing for their Atlantic Coast Championship. On their nearest-to-the-shoreline racecourse, along with the Viper 640s, Lightning sailors were lucky enough to get off a challenging race in the early tendrils of a sea breeze, before it went kaput and the waiting game started, to no avail.

The Viper 640s got one in as well and that one was won by Justin Scott’s Mambo Kings. But yesterday’s leaders on Marek Zaleski’s Team Z were fourth across the line, a finish good enough to keep them at the top of the standings by 4 points over Peter and Rachel Beardsley’s Glory Days.

While Lightning and Viper racers drifted on the tide and patiently waited, they were taunted by the scenery of full spinnakers further offshore where the other circles enjoyed just enough breeze to continue apace with their respective races. The Etchells fleet got in three, with three different teams winning races. Ron Zarella’s team on Bob, however, knocked off a pair of seconds and a fifth and kept their lead padded to 5 points over Don Dowd’s USA 1397.

Bill Widnall’s veteran crew on the International One-Design Javelin, started the day with back-to-back race wins before closing it with a third, shuffling the top-three teams and putting Widnall and Co., at the top of the standings by 1 point over Carolyn Corbet’s Elektra, winner of the third race.

There’s a change in leadership atop the J/105 class as well, with Mathew Herbster’s squad on No Quarter putting up a trio of second-place finishes. Charlie Garrard’s Merlin, started the day with a race win and followed that with a shocker (7th) before making up for it with another race win.

Al Minella’s crew on the J/70 Level 5 did a bit of a horizon job on the fleet in the day’s first race by “winning the pin and banging the left,” says tactician Nevin Snow. A second in the next race and win in the third of the day has them 4 points clear of Jim Raisides and Charlie Pendalton’s Bad Hombres.

Adam Roberts and Alden Reid on Ripcord are all but running away with the Rhodes 19 series, sitting on 16-point lead with one final day of racing remaining. Ripcord was fourth In the Rhodes fleet’s only race of the day, but Dave Reynolds and Jeff Shoreman on McLovin’ were loving their race win, which moved them into the top-10 of the 28-boat fleet after putting up a pair of mid-fleet results on Friday. Above them in the standings, however, five boats have only 2 points between them. That’s Rhodes 19 racing: always highly competitive at Marblehead Race Week.

Seventeen ILCA sailors got their two-day series underway with four short mid-day races before the breeze shutoff. Jamie Carter, from Portland, Maine, made the winning move in the first race with an immediate jibe at the weather mark, quick thinking that allowed him to jump from mid-fleet and into the lead. With three third-place over the remaining races, Carter leads Nicolas Regnault by 5 points.

The post Haves and Have Nots On Marblehead Regatta’s Second Day appeared first on Sailing World.

• PRELIMINARY RESULTS
• FRIDAY PHOTO GALLERY

Brian Keane and his team on the J/70 team Savasana have always been quick in Marblehead. As a local, Keane knows the waters well and his has been a perennial top team at the Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta Series at Marblehead Race Week, but this weekend, a last-minute addition of local wizard and National Sailing Hall of Famer Jud Smith certainly got the team off to a good start on a day that left most competitors wondering where wind would come from—or if it would come at all.

Thus was the opening day of the final stop of the national regatta series, which ushered sailors out to Marblehead Channel in a fresh northerly that would eventually fight with an afternoon sea breeze that did eventually come. 

It was especially challenging for the J/70 fleet, contesting its New England Championship. The location of their race circle on the “Brimbles Line” had them sailing with and through the Town Class and 28-boat Rhodes 19 fleet. Short courses, lots of traffic, dramatically shifty winds and a day-long tide switch threw all sorts of challenges at the fleet. Savasana put up a 6-2-1 to lead the fleet after three races, but they lead by only a single point over second and third-placed teams, Dave Franzel’s Spring and Jim Raisides and Charlie Pendelton’s Bad Hombres (top Corinthian), respectively.

Adam Roberts and Alden Reid, on Ripcord, made seemingly easy work of the conditions in the 28-boat Rhodes 19 fleet, the largest fleet of the regatta. The duo put up a 1-2 to start the series with an 8-point lead over Stephen Uhl and Kathleen Lane on Woodstock. The top-five are tight, however, with past regatta winner Matt Hooks winning the second race to claw back points from his 14th in the first race of the day.

Rex Antrim’s Albatross leads the 13-boat Town Class fleet with a 3-1 and has 3 points to spare over past winners Berit and Karen Solstad’s Lille Venn. The sisters won the first race, but found themselves batting in mid-fleet in the next.

The regatta’s “Outside Line,” which features the IODs, Etchells and J/105 classes found itself smack in the middle of the two winds fighting each other, and the second race of the day turned inside out when the wind switched 180-degrees. The race committee let it play out. Ron Zarella’s team on the Etchells Bob managed a 3-3-1 to end the day with a 5-point margin over Robert Hitchock’s team on Chemical Monkey (9-1-2).

The IODs, which are sailing for a new perpetual trophy named after fleet stalwart Bill Widnall, are making the local legend work hard to get his name on the trophy’s first plaque. Greg Mancusi-Ungaro’s Viking went 3-1-2 to Widnall’s 1-4-3 scoreline, but last year’s overall winner—Carolyn Corbet’s Elektra—is tied with Widnall at 8 points apiece.

Charlie Garrard’s Merlin leads the J/105 fleet with two race wins and a third, while Chris and Marek Zaleski, and Jacob Bradt atop the Viper 640 fleet with a 1-2-5 and a 5-point lead over Peter and Rachel Beardsley. The Viper 640 fleet, with 19 entries, is contesting its New England Championship.

Saturday’s racing will welcome a 27-boat Lightning fleet that has assembled for its Atlantic Coast Championship, as well as the 19 sailors of the ILCA fleet.

The post Regatta Series In Marblehead Starts With a Twist appeared first on Sailing World.

Marblehead, Massachusetts, with its iconic deep harbor and jam-packed mooring field, is as picturesque as a New England coastal town can possibly be—a Shangri La or Pleasantville in the shadow of madcap Boston. And here on the harbor are three equally iconic yacht clubs that have been hosting the region’s biggestsailing fete of the summer for 135 years: Marblehead Race Week.

The rotation of hosting duties between the Boston, Corinthian and Eastern yacht clubs is a longstanding tradition that ensures the burden is shared among them, and this year, competitors of the Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta Series at Marblehead Race Week will be hosted by Eastern, the grandiose clubhouse on “the Neck.” With a large turnout of sailors, friends and family expected, Eastern will certainly be bustling each evening, while out on the vast Gulf of Maine from Thursday to Sunday, nearly 160 entries will be making their best efforts to earn Race Week’s historic trophies and class championships.

Vipers In the Pit

Sailors of the Viper 640 class will be vying for their coveted New England Championship title and among them are East Coast diehards of the class, including Henry Amthor, the Viper 640 New England Champion skipper from Norfolk, Virginia, whose team “Bob, Parker & Henry” won in 2023. As expected, there’s also a strong Canadian contingent returning, as well as Marblehead first-timer Doug Jensen and his 20-year-old son Jay, driving in from Topeka, Kansas.

Jensen, who grew up racing extensively in the Pacific Northwest, is relatively new to the class having bought his first Viper 640 in 2020. He’s trying the grow the class in his region and when the opportunity to race in Marblehead came up, he happily accepted the last-minute offer to come and race.

“The class is just so awesome,” Jensen says when we reached him and his son by phone as they were beginning their 24-hour trek. “They have a boat there for us to use I’ve never been there or raced on the East Coast, so I’m looking forward to having fun and racing on an ocean with currents and tides.”

Lightnings Strike Twice

The Lightning Class, which returned to the Race Week last year after nearly four decades, will bolster their return with an Atlantic Coast Championship title on the line and 27 teams registered. The class is enjoying a US resurgence thanks to long-term outreach efforts and programs to recruit younger sailors that are now bearing fruit. With their North American Championship on the calendar at Ontario’s Buffalo Canoe Club in August, Marblehead is the final stop before the big regatta. As a tight-knit grassroots one-design class that embraces the travel, it’s worth noting that only one of the 27 registered teams actually hails from Marblehead.

“There’s no fleet in Marblehead,” says CH Ritt, who won the regatta last year with Charles Quigley’s Chancy. “Last year was a lot of fun, but this time the fleet has a few more all-stars in it, including Bill Healy, from Niantic [Conn.], who would have to be considered one the favorites. While we did win last year, we will have our hands full this time.”

The third of the big championships to be contested over the weekend is for the J/70 class. As its New England Championship, the regatta will also serve as a world championship berth qualifier. Fourteen teams are on the roster, among them several top-level teams, including Brian Keane’s Savasana, which won Race Week 2023 and then placed fourth overall at the J/70 World Championships in St. Petersburg, Florida, last November, a regatta that was remarkable for the depth of the fleet.

The Regatta Classics

While the three big championship classes will share the “Tinkers Line,” the Outside Line further offshore will feature Race Week regulars of the J/105, International One Design and Etchells. The IOD’s defending champions and the 2023 regatta’s Overall Winner—Carolyn Corbet’s Elektra—are returning with the same crew but this time vying for a new trophy created to mark the accomplishments of fleet legend Bill Widnall. Widnall joined the Marblehead IOD fleet in 1966, and has since won 27 Marblehead season championships, 28 Marblehead Race Weeks, and 10 International Class World Championships.

The Halfway Rock Line, closer to the entrance to Marblehead Harbor, will host the other longstanding classes of Marblehead Race Week: the Rhodes 19 and Town classes, the latter of which will be sailing for its New England Championship. The enduring popularity and simplicity of the Rhode 19 continues to attract new sailors, and for this year’s edition 27 teams have registered, earning them bragging rights as the largest traditional class gathering of Race Week today. Twenty ILCA sailors will race on the Brimbles Line on Saturday and Sunday as the regatta’s only singlehanded dinghy class.

All parties and awards, including Sailing World’s Speaker Series on Thursday night featuring Race to Alaska class winner Adam Cove, will be hosted at Eastern YC with nightly food and entertainment. The regatta’s overall winner, which will earn a berth at the Helly Hansen Sailing World Caribbean Championship in the British Virgin Islands in October will be selected at the conclusion of the final Awards Ceremony. All regatta details and event information can be found here.

The post Regatta Series Rolls Into Marblehead appeared first on Sailing World.

On June 8, 2024, ahead of the Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta Series at Marblehead Race Week, the Widnall Prize was offered by the International Class (IOD) Fleet of Marblehead. The magnificent silver tray will be the perpetual trophy for the winner of the International Class at the annual regatta.  

The prize is dedicated to Bill Widnall, a legendary sailor in Marblehead, nationally, and internationally.  Widnall joined the Marblehead IOD fleet in 1966, and since that time has set a standard of excellence that is unlikely to be challenged by any future sailor.  To date, he has won twenty-seven Marblehead season championships, twenty-eight Marblehead Race Weeks, and ten International Class World Championships.

In addition, Widnall deserves much of the credit for bringing a new generation of sailors to Marblehead, top-flight competitors, including many who also won IOD World Championships – John Wales, Steve Wales, Charlie Hamlin, Ted Cook, Jud Smith, Bobby McCann, Peter Warren, and Bruce Dyson. Bill is a fierce competitor on the water, but always a generous, supportive, and gentle mentor ashore. He is a true sportsman who has been a quiet leader of the World Class for over fifty years (and counting.)

The prize is a beautiful sterling silver tray with a roped edge. It is hand-engraved in classic style. Across the upper part of the trophy are highlights of Bill’s achievements in the Class, the places where the number Bill’s accomplishments would be engraved in the trophy are intentionally blank – they will be engraved later—for Widnall is still sailing, and hopes to increment his accomplishments in each of those categories in the future.

The Marblehead Race Association and IOD Class will award this prize for the first time on July 28, 2024 at the conclusion of this year’s Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta at Marblehead Race Week. 

The post Widnall Prize Announced for Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta at Marblehead Race Week appeared first on Sailing World.

Final Results

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Provisional Results

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

[instagram-feed feed=16]

The post Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta Series Marblehead 2023 Gallery appeared first on Sailing World.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Any summer sailing in New England is hard to beat, so Quantum expert Carter White breaks down how you can make the most of your time in Marblehead.

I have raced in and around Marblehead since the late 1980s and witnessed almost every condition, from a drifter to a hurricane. I’ve probably sailed in every location the clubs use for their various racing circles, and I’ve also helped organize the ONE Regatta (previous PHRF-NE and current Ted Hood Regattas) and the 2014 J/105 North Americans. Through it all, I’ve seen that each circle brings its challenges, trends, and conditions, which I will try to break down here.

Outside Course (aka Outside Line)

The outside course is the area furthest offshore and most to the right of the harbor when looking away from land. The course is normally centered 3.25 NM at 175° (magnetic) from Marblehead Bell RG “FR” but can often be closer to shore. Typical conditions for this course would be no wind in the morning and a sea breeze filling in during the afternoon, around 1pm or so. If this is the case and there haven’t been any significant storms immediately ahead of the sailing day, you should have relatively flat water with possible one-foot easy rollers. 

The key to success is to figure out the current/tide. The current/tide does not go out from land and into land during the ebb and flood, but the current goes left to right or right to left (looking out from shore toward the southeast), moving slightly northeast/southwest.

The wind will fill from the southeast, probably around 130 to 150 degrees, and it will be stronger away from land as it fills. The current is usually uniform across the course, and, with a predicted direction of 170 to 180 degrees, the race committee will often skew the course to the right. The RC knows people want to go left, so the skew keeps things even. But even with the skew to the right, the pressure is more to the left, so starting at the pin and going left is key upwind. Downwind you almost always stay straight at the windward mark and work the edge of the course down to the corner and gybing on layline or close to it. This keeps you in the bigger pressure downwind on the course’s left side (looking upwind). All of this is happening early in the day of racing, around 1pm to 3pm.

After 3pm, you need to start looking at the right side of the course. Typically, the lower left will still be favored, but watch out for the top right as the wind moves from 130 to 170 degrees or more as the day progresses. Often the shift doesn’t outweigh the pressure, but if you see large, puffy clouds over Boston (to your right looking upwind), you can predict the right shift will happen. Finally, remember the current as it will be critical for starting and laylines, not necessarily for course-side advantages. History has rewarded the folks who won the corners on this course and timed the shift and pressure perfectly.

As you are waiting for the typical conditions I’ve described or are in a different northerly breeze with predictions to shift, watch the clouds onshore over Salem. If the big, puffy clouds start forming, the sea breeze is coming. The land breeze will continue if wispy high clouds remain and there are no puffy clouds.

Finally, like anywhere, the typical conditions occur 50 percent of the time, while anything else happens the other 50 percent. In this case, be prepared for chop and rollers. The current is strong, and when going against the breeze, it will create a decent 1- to 2-foot chop on top of one- to three-foot rollers that may or may not line up with the chop. If this is the case, make sure to have plenty of twist and power; you will need the twist to drive around the waves and keep the helm light while still having enough power to go through the occasional wave you can’t miss. In most boats, this means playing the backstay almost constantly.

The Halfway Rock Line

Much of the outside line details and tips and tricks can also apply to the halfway rock line. However, the current can be trickier on this course. This circle is typically centered 2 NM at 135°   (magnetic) from Marblehead Bell RG “FR” and is more exposed to Salem Bay and the Danvers River. Here you will have potentially two different currents: one coming from and going to land (in and out of Salem west/east) and another northeast/southwest like the outside course. This creates more disturbed water and chop than the outside course.

With the typical conditions I’ve described, the starting line will be set closer to shore and in one current, while the weather mark will be in a completely different current. This is key for starting and approaching the marks, and can make or break the downwind leg, possibly because you may want to use the current to your advantage when picking a side. 

The Tinkers Line

In my experience, this course can be the trickiest. This circle is just outside Marblehead Harbor and closest to Marblehead Neck, the largest land mass. On this circle, you can see up to three different current directions on one leg, and the land can become a factor creating a constant geographical advantage. On this line, it is imperative to have a training partner to sail upwind on opposite tacks for five minutes or more and then come back together to see who is ahead or behind. There will often be a significant difference, and it will only be clear sometimes which side will win. In my experience, heading towards land has paid off in most conditions on this course; however, there are times you must go offshore to get more breeze.  

The Brimbles Line

This is typically where the lasers or smaller boats sail as it is protected by islands on almost all sides of the course. It is closest to Salem Harbor and is the most inner course. Its challenge is boat traffic on the weekends. Many sailboats and powerboats are leaving and returning to Salem and Marblehead Harbors, and this course is at the crossroad of those trips. This often causes square chop even when the wind and current are lined up for a smooth day. On this line, you are closest to Salem Harbor and Danvers River, which will be the predominant currents (generally west/east). Due to the proximity of the islands, the winds are much less stable, so this circle typically has much shiftier winds. Here, the shifts become more important than the pressure, so staying on the lifted tack is critical.

If you have any questions, get in touch with a Quantum representative to discuss your racing further. Good luck, and welcome to Marblehead!

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