On the morning of the final day of the Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta Series in St. Petersburg, sailors were pacing the docks of St. Petersburg YC in anticipation of a high-wind outing on Tampa Bay. A few classes and individual sailors opted to stay ashore—A Class Catamarans, S2 7.9s, Windmills and Hobie 33s—but those who did set out for ultimate races of the long weekend were rewarded with spectacular fast races and stories to share.
“I’m glad we went out,” said perennial Lightning Class champion Dave Starck, who was keen to race but happy to oblige whatever his fleet mates decided. Starck and his team—brother Tom and forward crew Becca Jordon—were sitting on a 1-point lead, so the goal for the day was simple: minimize the maneuvers and the mistakes. Let others make them.
“I said before we left that dock that we’re going to sail conservatively, do as few maneuvers as we have to and do them perfectly,” he added, “and that’s exactly what we did.”
Starck and his crew won the race with a wire-to-wire lead and closed out the Lightning class’s eight-race series with 28 points, an impressive win given the high caliber of the sailors in the 25-boat fleet this weekend.
On the same racecourse, which had been repositioned closer to the St. Petersburg shoreline in anticipation of the building breeze, less than half of the Melges 15 fleet ventured out to play, leaving an open course for the class’s top teams to battle it out for the top three positions. Patrick Wilson and Lauren Koch won both races, but a 3-2 was just enough for Mike Funsch and Hal Gilreath to win the regatta by 4 points. Top juniors Cole Schweda and Grayson Tella were third overall with an impressive series of top-10 finishes over 10 races.
The Melges 24 class hosted its Midwinter Championship with a fleet of 14 with Peter McClennen’s Gamecock winning eight of 10 races. “Today was fast,” McClennen said. “The Melges 24s love big breeze. We hit 18 knots going downwind today and it was just super fun. We knew it was gonna be windy, and we had to really work the boat really hard. And that’s what we did today.
“The waves were pretty significant, maybe two to three feet, and especially down at the start line they were even higher. So, it was, it was a battle. Many times, we would slide the tactician in to help with the main sheet so that we could move the mainsail a lot, but the waves were great. They make it fun. And then downwind, when you come around and you can surf those waves, that’s where you get the gains.”
On the same circle, J/70 sailors were chasing the hard-charging team on Al Minella’s Level 5, which won seven of 10 races to close the series with a 25-point win. Onboard Level 5 as tactician was reigning J/70 world champion Jeremy Wilmot, and Minella’s team were indeed at another level.
“We’d won it before the last race so we went at it as a learning experience for the next regatta, working on upwind driving and downwind sailing,” Wilmot said. “They’re fast so I didn’t have to do much on the tactics.”
Minella, who’s been sailing J/70s for years and has won plenty of hardware in the class, picked up a few new pointers that had him faster in the weekend’s breezy conditions. “The thing was to heel the boat more than you think,” Minella said. “I’m trained to not let the boat layover, but you need the heel angle to get through the waves. The level of activity of these guys is constant. They’re making adjustments all the time.”
There were six classes sailing for their Midwinter Championship titles at the regatta, including the Hobie 33s, which went to Craig and Deborah’s team on Hoof Hearted, the defending champions. Pat Huntley and his teammate, from Pennsylvania, won all but one race to secure the Windmill class title; Kevin Holmberg’s Team Fawkes was the top Sonar; and Jeff Padnos’ team on K2 returned to Michigan with the S2.7.9 title in hand.
As a class winner, Padnos’ win also earned his team the regatta’s overall title and a berth at the Helly Hansen Caribbean Championship in October. “The weekend was a real thrill,” Padnos said. “I had my son as tactician and the crew are good friends that we’ve sailed with for a long time.”
Throughout the weekend, the racing was impressively tight in the S2s, with boats clustered at the marks and overlapped at finishes, which Padnos says is the draw that has kept him racing these vintage boats for four decades. “You gotta get the boat moving, and then it will point,” is his one tip to mastering the S2.
The same skill will apply on the Sunsail-provided bareboat that Padnos and his team will race against the Regatta Series’ other winners come October, and the opportunity to race in the BVI, he says, has been a long time coming. “My wife and I have been married over 50 years,” Padnos said. “We’re coming up on 55 and COVID came right during our 50th Anniversary year, so we have a pent-up demand for doing stuff like this. We’ll be there. We will definitely be there.”
Only three of six L30 class teams ventured out to the racecourse today, and Michael Norris’s team on Morning Breeze wasn’t among them. Having won every race of the L30 North American Championship on Friday and Saturday, Morning Breeze‘s win was assured.
The A Class Catamaran sailors, also not keen to take on the big waves and strong winds, packed up early, with past world champion foiler Ravi Parent sweeping the series. Parent, who’s been racing high-performance catamarans internationally over the past year, was in a world of his own, often finishing races legs ahead of his competitors.
For the big boats of the regatta in ORC and the PHRF distance-race fleets, today’s big breeze conditions had reefs tucked in mains and crews battling hard over the long miles and around the buoys. Ian Hill’s immaculately-prepared Melges 32 won the long battle with its rivals on Jeremy Alexis’ Fleetwood.
“The Melges 32 is a really good boat in either extreme,” Hill said. This was his second time bringing the boat to the St. Petersburg regatta and coming away with a win. “It’s a good boat in the light air, and it’s a great boat in the heavy air. And it seems like when we come here, that’s what we get. We either get really light or bigger breeze, and we’ve had a lot of fun with this boat in both conditions.”
The distance racers set off on another 20-miler or so and returned to the docks exhausted but exhilarated by the challenging conditions, especially William Marsh and his teammates on the Beneteau First 36 Ruse, which hails from Cape Cod, but has been relocated to Florida for a full winter season of regattas to prepare for a slate of planned events this summer in New England. After more than three hours of hard sailing, Ruse collected its overall hardware in the PHRF Spinnaker division, while Tangeaux was the top Racer/Cruiser team and Charisma was the standout Cruising division winner.
