As the late afternoon southerly streaked out of the Detroit River and blue skies returned, the Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta’s distance race finishers trickled past host Bayview Yacht Club to conclude three days of excellent racing and the return of the regatta series after a 14-year absence. By all accounts it was a perfect weekend of racing and socials hosted by Bayview Yacht Club.
The sailors of the local J/35 fleet put on quite a show with its growing fleet. Most of these now decades-old 35-footers have been returned to racing form, and the top three of this fleet were locked in boat-on-boat battles all weekend. 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 through the fleet 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 said. “When you’re over early, the wind literally goes out of your sails, but our crew kept it together and stayed positive. Our main trimer and tactician, Jim Allen, who is a very experienced sailor noticed better pressure left. He called that. There was pressure on the left side of the course and the class went right downwind. We got a little bit more pressure out on the left side of the course and then we got a nice 15- to 20-degree wind shift, which really helped.”
With this weekend’s J/35 class win to add to Falcon’s trophy cache, the team was also selected as the regatta’s overall winner, earning a berth to represent Detroit at the Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta Series Caribbean Championship, a battle of class champions in the British Virgin Islands on Sunsail-provided monohulls. The regatta is scheduled for late October where overall winning teams will race against the 2023 defender.
“I’m going to bring the A team,” Welch said. “We have nine people on our boat, a very talented crew, and a lot of us have been together for 20-plus years, so we’ve got a talented group. But we also have a very fast boat. So that helps, too. We’ll bring the team and it will be fun. We’re really going to be looking forward to it.”
A third day of light to moderate winds allowed nine one-design fleets to complete as many as eight races for the series while two ORC divisions and one PHRF fleet completed their second distance race.
Today’s distance challenge was a 20-miler won by James Cresswell’s 1D35 Katana. The crew of Tim LaRaviere’s Sydney 41 Eagle One tried their best to beat Katana, but Creswell’s squad was fast and Eagle One didn’t do themselves any favors.
“We worked hard,” said Eagle One’s Greg Hummel. “But today’s highlight was also a lowlight in that, at the second turning mark we missed a shift and didn’t do a good jibe. We coughed up a lot of spots right there, but we got around the second mark and got back in the groove. Hats off to the Katana—they’re an excellent team and they get more out of that boat than I think then we get out of ours.”
James and Paul Kraft’s Corby 33 Powertrip won the day’s race and the ORC B division with a second in Saturday’s distance race. Mike Wedwins Dehler 44SQ, Notso EZ Money won the day’s distance race in the PHRF division, but was sitting on a sixth from yesterday. In an unpredictable twist of fate, Cameron Paine’s team on the C&C MK2 Underdog, yesterday’s race winner, finished sixth today and as the last-race winner, Notso EZ got the best of the tie-breaker.
Tod Sackett’s team on USA 313 won the J/70 fleet and the inaugural J/70 Mixed-Plus National Championship. Perrin Fortune’s Airforce was the top Melges 15, and in the seven-boat J/111 fleet Jeffrey Davis’ team on Shamrock put up a convincing win ahead of this summer’s active class championship schedule with seven wins in eight races.
The big battle of the regatta, as expected, was in the nine-boat J/120 fleet where four teams were sitting on race wins, and after eight races, only 2 points ultimately separated the top-three. Mike and Bob Kirkman’s Hot Ticket got it done with a hard-earned second in the final race.
“We love sailing together,” said Trish Kirkman, whose husband Mike is the helmsman. “We had a fantastic day today. We kept our heads in the game and you just can’t count us out.”
Chuck Stormes’ Italia 9.8 DeTour was the only undefeated team of the regatta, winning all six of its races in the ORC Division, and on Division C, Keith Ziegler’s Thor had won all of its races until the final, where a bad start put them on the back foot. The best they could do was fourth, but that was good enough. “It was a good day for us,” Ziegler said. “It was good close racing and we had a great weekend. We were fast and had the right rig tension.”
Bruce Ayeres’ Monsoon found themselves recovering from a bad start in the final race as well, but 4 points was enough to seal the class win given the seven races they’d won already. In the end, it was a 7-point difference between Monsoon and Dan Berezin’s Surprise, the class’s top Corinthian team.
Trey Sheehan’s Hooligan Flat Stanley Racing closed out the regatta with an 11-point win in the ever-competitive Tartan 10 fleet. “It’s tough competition,” Sheehan said. “These T10 guys don’t give an inch. They mix it up and it is game-on every race. We had a ball, good weather and it worked out great for us.”
The Santana 35’s proved their competitiveness as well, and this five-boat victory came down to the final race for Andrew Morlan’s Avatar. A third in the final race was enough to seal the win over Chris Benedict’s team on Shape—only 2 points was the difference.
