Blink, and the season is over. Blink again and the new season is underway and full speed ahead. We are, of course, talking about the Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta Series, which kicks off its 37th year this week in St. Petersburg, Florida, with nearly 200 boats across 11 one-design classes, a strong ORC division, and two days of distance races for Tampa Bay’s avid PHRF sailors.
Six of the regatta’s one-design classes will be racing for coveted championship trophies, including the L30s for their North American Championship. Sailors of the Hobie 33, S2 7.9, Sonar, Windmill and Melges 24 classes will vie for their midwinter titles. The regatta will also serve as a North American Sailing Series qualifier for the Melges 24 class, which continues to enjoy a resurgence as one-design sailing’s most exciting keelboat.
As Tampa Bay continues to be an emergent American hotspot for handicap racing, the budding ORC fleet has been growing its ranks with new owners embracing the international measurement rule. Nine entries ranging in size from Bob Harkrider’s Aerodyne 38 to John Cooper’s Cape 31 showcase the diversity of the boats in this exciting fleet. Harkrider’s Shark Rider was the top PHRF team in St. Pete in 2024 and they’ve made the switch to this more competitive environment where they’ll be facing, among many others, Ian Hill’s team on the Melges 32 Sitella, which has recently returned from racing in Europe and is on top form.
While the regatta’s ORC entries will enjoy three days of buoy racing, PHRF teams—divided into Spinnaker and Cruiser/Racer fleets—will be challenged on Saturday and Sunday with a long course that takes them to various turning marks on Tampa Bay. These fleets will start near the St. Pete Pier each morning before finishing much later the day, in time for the evening parties at St. Petersburg YC, the regatta’s longtime host, which has opened its doors and docks for hundreds of visiting sailors.
While larger keelboat boats have long been the core of this St. Petersburg winter classic, organizers have progressively included a handful of popular dinghy classes that now deliver the excitement and vibe of small-boat sailing in larger numbers. The Melges 15, only a few years old, but the hottest two-person dinghy in the US, has been enjoying 100-boat regattas on Florida’s east coast at the new Melges Watersports Center. A number of those competitors hail from Tampa Bay, including Rob Britts, runner up at the St. Pete SWRS in 2024, who will be looking to make good on last year’s loss to Fred Schroth’s Electric Pickle.
The Regatta Series’ first event is also a prelude for the Lightning class’s winter Southern Circuit, which steps off in St. Pete in mid-March before the sailors hitch up their boats and move to Savannah the following week. Progressive growth initiatives over the past several years to attract young sailors to the class will be evident at the regatta this weekend in St. Pete, with many teams made up of post-collegiate sailors that are driving the class’ “U32” movement. Jenna Probst, recognized last week by US Sailing for her and teammate Maya Weber’s organization of the U32 Lightning Class Invitational Regatta in Ontario, Canada, last summer, will be one of them, racing in St. Pete against many of the class’s longtime legends and mentors, including past world champion David Starck and Hall of Fame inductee Augie Diaz.
With 25 entries at press time, the Lightning contingent is now the largest fleet at the SWRS St. Petersburg regatta, and the class will rejoin the series in Annapolis in May and Marblehead in July.
Sailing off the beach in Downtown St. Pete will be the A Class catamarans and Windmills. The A Class catamaran, considered to be the most high-performance singlehanded multihull in the world, will have two separate fleets on one course: the foilers and the classics. Among entries in the foilers is past Rolex Yachtsman of the Year and A Class World Champion Ravi Parent, who has been campaigning equally high-performance doublehanded catamarans at international events over the past year. He will no doubt be the one to watch, as will local ace O.H. Rodgers, who won the classic division in 2024 with three race wins in four races—most of those race wins by large margins.
The J/70 fleet, with 18 teams currently on the scratch sheet has the greatest geographical spread among its entries, with teams hailing from as far away as Michigan and Minnesota, Missouri and Washington State. The promise of warm water and winds that make Tampa Bay a winter sailing mecca is undoubtedly a strong draw for these teams, but the level of competition is also an easy sell. Among the fleet are many top amateur and professional sailors, including Rolex Yachtsman of the Year nominee and two-time world champion (J/24 and J/22) skipper Travis Odenbach, who will be racing with Canadian Kelly Hansen.
Odenbach will also be the feature guest at Sailing World’s Speaker Series, immediately following the opening competitors briefing on Thursday evening at St. Petersburg Yacht Club. The club will host the Regatta Series’ legendary parties each evening after racing, with a full agenda of activities for sailors, friends and families.
On Sunday evening, following the conclusion of races and awards, event organizers will select one overall team among class winners to represent St. Petersburg at the Helly Hansen Sailing World Caribbean Championship in the British Virgin Islands in October, where they will face the 2024 champion, and challengers from the four other Series regattas.
Blink and we’ll be in the BVI.
