With the last drops of Mount Gay Rum poured on another gangbusters regatta in Annapolis, Maryland, in May, with more than 200 boats, the organizing squad of the Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta Series packed their belongings and headed straight to Detroit’s Bayview YC for a long overdue re-addition to the regatta series.
It had been a good 14 years since the series called on Detroit sailors, and for this edition, the sailors answered with the same high enthusiasm of 2010. With nearly 100 boats scattered across Lake St. Clair, there was no “Lake St. Stupid” this time around. The regatta opened with a spectacular day of sun and breeze and continued from there, delivering tight racing, especially among the regatta’s big three fleets: the J/120s, J/111s and J/35s.
The sailors of the regional J/35 class put on a great show with its growing fleet. Most of these now-decades-old 35-footers have been returned to racing form, and the top three were locked in boat-on-boat battles over three days. At the start of the final race, Mike Welch’s team on Falcon was sitting on a 1-point lead, but an OCS had them clawing their way back to win the race and the series by 2 points over their arch rivals on Bill Wildner’s Mr. Bill’s Wild Ride.
“That was quite a comeback, and there’s definitely luck involved,” Welch says. “When you’re over early, the wind literally goes out of your sails, but our crew kept it together and stayed positive.”
Falcon’s stellar perseverance earned them the regatta’s overall title and a berth at the Helly Hansen Sailing World Caribbean Championship in October, a battle of regatta champions in the British Virgin Islands on Sunsail-provided 41-footers.
The Regatta Series continued its Great Lakes tour with a stop in Chicago once again, where the Windy City made good on its reputation. With 150 boats across 16 classes, including several fleets of distance racers, competitors enjoyed three days of racing, and here it was Brian Kaczor’s team on the Tartan 10 Erica that was plenty ready for the big breeze of the final day. After six challenging races in total, Erica’s winning margin was a single point, and it was this point that they had fought for in the final race. The class win also earned Kaczor’s team the regatta’s overall title and the BVI berth.
“We hung on to first place, barely,” Kaczor says. “We had a tough day with tactics and my driving, but we were able to make up a lot of it on the downwind stuff.”
Their downwind speed in top-end conditions, Kaczor says, was all down to the crew: Corey Fast, Christa Georgeson, Scott Melanson, Seth Morrell, Brian Nelson and Chuck O’Donnell. “They were the key in the last race. We had to catch one more boat, and there was no question that the chute had to go up to catch that one boat in front of us,” he says. “The crew was amazing, and was able to handle that and pull it off.”
Marblehead has long served as the final regatta of the US series, and this year’s edition was hosted by the Eastern YC with support from Boston and Corinthian. In the days prior, the groms of Junior Race Week had been skunked with only one race scored, but the wind gods favored the adults with a challenging day of breeze on the opening day for the bulk of the fleets. With 161 boats spread across three race circles, three classes competed for their New England Championship titles: Sailors on Viper 640s, J/70s and Town Class, and Lightnings vied for their Atlantic Coast Championship.
The regional J/105 fleet has always been strong, and it was a relatively new team in Matthew Herbster’s No Quarter who played the spoiler and left with the ultimate spoils: the BVI Berth. As a group of friends who have been racing with or against one another 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 Herbster says that the win was bittersweet when racing was abandoned on the final day. “Merlin beat us on the water, but one bad spinnaker set [on Saturday] set them in,” he says. “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 No Quarter and headed to the BVI with Sunsail in October were Jonathan Dragonas, Julie Femino, Noah Flaherty, Ted Johnson and Chris Small. They’re confident that they’ll take their collective skills to the Caribbean and do just fine against the regatta series’ five other challengers and the defenders. According to the team, they’ll go down there and do what they do. They’ll figure out how to sail the boat, get it fast, and have fun.
With No Quarter finalizing the BVI lineup, they’ll also be facing Steve and Catherine Boho’s Melges 24 team on The 300 (St. Petersburg winners), Cate Terhune’s team on the J/70 Casting Couch (Annapolis), and the defending champions of Cedric Lewis and Fredrik Salvesen’s Team Mirage.
