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.
