on a recent archaeological dig through a stack of external hard drives for an elusive photo, I stumble upon an untitled folder dated 10 years ago. Opening an image in the preview window, I know exactly where I’m at: NOOD Regatta; Annapolis, Maryland; 2015.

That and the rest of the photos look and feel like ages ago. Scrolling them, I expect to see boats that I haven’t seen in a long time, but with each tap of the down arrow key, I’m stuck in a time warp. One by one, they’re all the same boats I’d seen a week earlier at the Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta in Annapolis.

There’s that same dark blue J/30 Avita and Bebop, and dozens of the same J/70s, Alberg 30s (minus the tie-dyes), J/22s…and the list goes on. These are the regulars, the local teams who race with us in Annapolis year after year, boats and faces aging in unison.

I’ve been working the SWRS-née-NOOD beat for 30 years, so whenever I arrive at the host club, I expect to see many of the same characters committed to their respective classes. The lifers. Considering how long I’ve been at it, I’m pretty good at recognizing and seeking out newcomers. Which is why I intentionally strike up a conversation with Sarah Olivieri and her father, Marshall Borris, wandering through J/80s on trailers at the Annapolis YC Sailing Center’s circle entrance, bustling with arrivals.

My hunch is correct. They’ve just pulled in from New Jersey and have that look of: What do we do next? What’s the launch procedure? Where do we register? Where do we put the trailer?

I lob a softball Olivieri’s way: “Where are you coming in from?”

She and her 78-year-old father have made the short drive from New Jersey without incident. Their J/80 is the one with stained white gelcoat hull and a large numerical Greek pi decal near the bow (she later explains to me that pi has a value of 80). They’ve owned this particular J/80 for seven years and have been racing it exclusively in the Hudson River Yacht Racing Association’s PHRF fleet. This regatta will be their first time ever racing Pi in a one-design fleet.

Olivieri is “superexcited.” Racing against 22 boats in a new venue, with a lot of experienced teams, is a big deal.

I agree, leave them to it, wander off, and then later contemplate how exciting it will be for them to no longer be the loners of their hometown PHRF fleet; to check in with the class, play the game differently, and see where they stand on the ol’ level playing field, not to mention a playing field new to them. Trailering and traveling takes a higher commitment, and that’s what makes fast teams fast. Regatta voyaging takes us out of our comfort zone.

Olivieri started sailing with her father on a J/24 at 8 years old. The family J/35 came in high school, and the J lineage includes a cruising J/30, a J/22 and now the J/80. They are the quintessential J-boat family.

When the J/80 Worlds were contested in Newport, Rhode Island, in 2022, Olivieri convinced her father to charter their boat for the regatta and watch and learn from the sidelines. She used the opportunity to ask questions and check out how other teams rigged their boats. The experience was revealing, she says. “I learned that people in the class are so nice, like nobody’s keeping secrets. They’ll tell you all their tricks, especially if you’re interested,” she says. “It made me feel really welcomed and that I could do it.

“I was like, ‘You know, Dad? We could do that. We could do level racing.’”
She raced the Helly Hansen regatta in Annapolis this past year as a crew, and “this year I was like, I gotta bring my boat. I’m gonna do it—my first regatta, level racing with my own boat.”

Saying is one thing, but doing requires commitment. For Olivieri, who’d never towed a big keelboat beyond her own ZIP code, that meant a lot of trailer prep and a new tow vehicle. Then came the discovery of a bottom-paint issue this spring. “I started to work on it, and at a certain point, I had to call it,” Olivieri says. “I’m like, ‘It’s as good as it’s going to be.’ The big thing, the big win, is getting there, doing it, having a good time. And, you know, we’ll fix whatever we can later.”

Olivieri taking full responsibility for Pi is a generational passing of the family sailing torch. She grew up “very much like the sailor’s daughter,” she says. “I was pit early on because he wanted me to be safe, but the most interesting transformation was a couple of years ago, when we started sharing being captain.”

Health issues had forced her father to step back from sailing, and with Olivieri on the helm with a new team, they won every single race and their first season. “That was a big year for me,” she says. “I was excited and scared, and I really had to do well for him. I put a lot of ­pressure on myself.”

As newcomers to J/80 fleet sailing, there is a new kind of pressure in Annapolis, however, and the first day’s results are what she expected. They didn’t finish last, which is a good thing, but isn’t because of the Chesapeake’s swift and unpredictable currents winds—child’s play compared with Olivieri’s Hudson River training grounds.

“Growing up, I used to think everywhere else must be harder, but for me, shifty is more like 180 degrees. There’s 3 knots of current and a lot of obstacles.”

All that trained her well for the Annapolis J/80 scrum. “What I’ve learned this weekend driving is that I’m not used to being close-quarters with other boats, except at the starts,” she tells me on the morning of the final day of racing. “I’m used to maneuvering really tight because of other obstacles. I felt very comfortable out there. I was very pleased. I’m like, ‘Give me 3 inches on each side, and I’m good.’”

With her father having to return home on the second day, Olivieri picked up a local connection, and they worked through the kinks.

“Everyone on the team is experienced,” she says, “but if we’re not experienced together, it’s gonna hurt a little—it’s all the little things. It’s the dance; it has to be in sync. I knew that coming down here.”

She also discovered that she’s surprisingly comfortable driving in the high-density fleet. She didn’t find it all the least bit intimidating. “People at home say, ‘Oh, it looks so scary to be with so many boats,’ but it’s not at all because everybody knows what they’re doing,” Olivieri says.

Her tactician for the weekend, David Doyle, is an experienced J/80 owner and racer, and he initially kept their starts on the conservative side. “He was nervous how I’d feel pushing up in the line, but he quickly learned that I’m very comfortable at very close quarters. So, eventually, we had some decent starts and some races.”

On the final day, a cold, windy and raining affair, Olivieri and her crew posted a sixth—a top-10 keeper and their best finish of the regatta. The whole experience was an epiphany of sorts for the one-design first-timer.

“I’ve realized here that I maybe know how to sail this boat faster than some of the class racers,” she tells me. “And that’s because at home we rarely have ideal J/80 conditions, and we race against boats that sail to their rating.”

She admits that she’s not as good—at the moment—with the tactics of being with other like boats, but adds, “I know how to sail it faster because of PHRF racing, where every second counts and you have to pay attention until you cross the line.”

Given her enthusiasm and commitment, I’m confident that I will see her again next year.

The post PHRF for One-Design Perfection appeared first on Sailing World.

“Race for every point,” is a phrase heard often at regattas and that was certainly the takeaway for many teams at the 2025 Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta Series in Annapolis. Three days packed with races for 240 teams in 18 classes gave every sailor an opportunity to make good on that cliché, especially the team on Andy Graff’s J/88 Exile, which won in its fleet after a stressful two-race final day. Their class win, on a tiebreaker, earned them the regatta’s overall title and a berth at the Regatta Series championship in the BVI in October.

With a strong southerly on the final day, Exile was sitting on a marginally comfortable lead over John Bell’s Hiwassee and Graff’s intent was to sail a clean race and stick to what had been working for them over the previous two days.

That plan quickly unraveled in the first race.

“It wasn’t how I planned on things going when I woke up this morning,” Graff says, “but we got out to the course and the breeze was like 17 knots. We expected more wind and made the poor decision to go to the small jib, and also got caught with the rig too tight and with chop the way it was today. That was really a tough spot to be in when it dropped down to 8 knots. We just couldn’t get wheels going through the chop.”

Exile finished sixth in the 8-boat fleet and Hiwassee won the race, putting them on top.

Then came Hiwassee’s own drama. In the final start, Bell says, there was a miscommunication on the timing and they found themselves OCS, clearing out to restart, and chasing down the rest of the fleet.

Battling back to earn point by point, at the beginning of the second beat Bell realized their headstay had come off. They quickly attached a spare halyard to secure the rig and continued to sail the race. “We didn’t do so hot on that last race, but we needed to beat one boat in order to keep first place. When we got the one point we needed we we’re pretty pumped.”

Pumped until they later learned that another boat had been OCS as well but wasn’t scored as such. When that boat was later given an OCS, the scores shuffled once more, this time in favor of Exile—which finished fourth in the final race and was ultimately declared the winner on the tiebreaker.

“It was hard,” says Exile’s tactician Kris Werner. “I was admittedly pretty dark after the first race, because it felt like we just made a really poor decision with the jib. We finished that race and regrouped. The last one was a tough one, too. It really was. We had a pretty good start, we were kind of right in that top three for most of the race. We fought till the very end, we had almost a photo finish with [Iris Vogel’s] Deviation. That point was critical.”

A similar fate awaited Mike Beasley’s team on the J/80 Black Sheep, which went into the day with a comfortable lead in the 21-boat fleet. In the first race they posted a 13th and then a ninth in the second race.

“In the first race we got trapped off the start line and made it hard for ourselves,” Beasley says. “The right came in…we were protecting the left.”

And that was that.

Into the final race they were 1 point out of first behind Warren Flannery’s Canadian team on Feisty. Feisty won the final race and Black Sheep stumbled again with an OCS that had them last and fought their way back through the fleet to salvage every point they could.

Jimmy Praley’s Robot Flamingo looked to have the Viper 640 title all but locked up this morning too, but on the way to the racecourse, the boat’s gooseneck fitting broke. Using a Dyneema lashing, the fitting was secured enough for them to start the first race and hope for the best. Praley’s teammates, Austin Powers and Max Vinocur, had some simple advice. “They said, ‘we have to win this one or we are toast,” Praley says.

Robot Flamingo got the clean start it needed and won the race easily, which was enough to allow them to sit out the final race and get the win by a single point over Cole Constantineau’s team on Meow.

With storms and the potential for high winds approaching Annapolis in the morning, the Lightning Class opted to not sail, which left Saturday’s standings final and David Starck’s Team Pat Strong atop the standings.

“This was my first time doing the Helly Hansen Regatta in Annapolis and it was first class,” Starck says. Starck, the Lightning Class president, noted the energy of the Annapolis Lightning fleet as the main reason for the great first-time turnout for the fleet at the regatta. “The camaraderie amongst all the clubs—Annapolis, Eastport and Severn Sailing—was incredible,” he says. “The race committee on our course was excellent.”

The Albacore Class contested its US National Championship with an impressive fleet of 20 boats, with teams traveling in from several states. But here once again, perennial champ and Albacore class builder Barney Harris and his teammate almost went undefeated over 10 races. Runner-up Paul Clifford was a good 25 point back, even with a scoreline of all top-10 finishes.

In the regatta’s other dinghy classes, Annie Sitzmann and crew Molly Bonhams continued their winning streak in the 29er class to win series with only 12 points in 10 races and Sarah Morgan Watters and Katherine Shermock held off a final day surge by Britton Steele to win the Melges 15 title by only 3 points.

For the Alberg 30s, racing for their 60-year old Maple Leaf Trophy, the final day almost had the makings of an upset when Barbara Vosbury’s Carnival Lady won the first race. But Lenny Helms’ Windswept, the class leader over the first two days, was right behind her. Windswept won the final race to win the fleet by only 2 points after 8 races.

Jeff Hayden and his teammates on the J/22 Polar Express battled with their regular rivals on Brad Julien’s Yard Sail with Hayden posting a 2-3 to Julien’s 4-1 in the final two races. The delta was only 4 points.

Dan Watson’s Avita was the top J/30 by 11 points with Watson’s team winning both races on Sunday. Michael Baugh’s J/29 Persephone, which sailed to Annapolis from New Jersey to compete with the rejuvenated Chesapeake J/29 fleet, won seven of 10 races to easily win the class.

Cate Muller-Terhune’s Casting Couch topped the J/70s and Ray Wulf’s Patriot came on strong on the final day to defend its title in the J/105 division.

The ORC and Cal 25s sailed their second distance race of the weekend, and while Bruce Irvin’s team on the Corby 40 Time Machine won the first race, the breezier conditions today favored James Sagerholm’s J/35 Aunt Jean, which ultimately won the race and the ORC title. Pat Siedel’s Chicken Little won both races for the Cal25 fleet.

On the Division 4 race circle featuring J/24s and Harbor 20s, Pat Fitzgerald’s Rush Hour went 1-2 to upset the overnight leaders on Pete Kassel’s Spaceman Spiff in the J/24 fleet and Garth Hitchens and Kate Dawson on Sugar did the same to best the Harbor 20 fleet and claim the Spring Championship title.

Gavin Ball, the “Flying Hawaiian” and now US National Championship was untouchable in the flying foilers. After 12 races, Ball had netted only 18 points while his fellow islander Pearl Lattanzi finished the regatta with 29. Third-placed Zachary Severson completed the Hawaiian sweep of the championship.

The post Annapolis Regatta Champion Wins On A Dramatic Final Day appeared first on Sailing World.

After a successful run in the J/30 class with his rocksteady team on Shamrock, Annapolitan skipper Bruce Irvin made the leap two years ago to a bigger, more ambitious and much more complex Corby 40 called Time Machine. A run at the Bermuda Race next year has always been the goal, so the past two years have been all about learning and refining the boat to its full potential. Progress is now obvious for Irvin and his crew, which won today’s ORC distance race at the Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta in Annapolis.

Winds were moderate from the south, the current was ebbing most of the day, and the sun was shining again—all in all a perfect day for the nearly 240 regatta competitors that have been racking up races over the past two days.

“It felt really good today to see all the hard work that’s been done to the boat over the winter paying off,” Irvin says. “We have a completely new rig tune and new sails and the crew has been working hard so we’re thrilled to have a good race today.”

With a clean start in the 10-boat ORC fleet, Time Machine’s plan was to favor the west side of the bay on the long first upwind leg, a strategy that proved to be the right one.

“The current was coming at us, so we decided that we wanted to kind of favor the right-hand side of the beat going up,” Irvin says. “But we ended up going kind of in the middle of the racecourse and carried one big 30-degree lift on starboard all the way toward Thomas Point Light.”

Then, things got tricky. 

“The wind got really shifty at the mouth of the West River,” Irvin says, “so we just did our best to play those shifts. Once we got to the mark and put the A2 up it was all downhill sailing from there.”

James Sagerholm’s legendary J/35 Aunt Jean executed a similar strategy from the start, promptly tacking after crossing the line and beelining to the right, which ultimately set them up for a second on the day and put them only a point behind Time Machine going into Sunday’s second distance race.

While the distance racers and Cal 25s (won by Pat Siedel’s Chicken Little) were covering roughly 20 miles of the Chesapeake Bay, the remaining fleets got right to business on five race circles, with the addition of the Harbor 20 fleet kicking off its Spring Championship. As the local fleet continues to grow and attract top sailors, the racing is more competitive than ever, says current class leader Margaret Podlich, whose team leads the series after five races. Podlich says her teammates on Skimmer—Gina Henderson and Sandy Westphal—were the ones keeping the boat fast and out of the fray.

“The fleet is getting way more competitive every year,” Podlich says, “and the last race today was a perfect example of it—there was a pile of boats all overlapped at the finish.”

“Off the start, the fleet split to both sides,” Henderson says, “and the top 10 came together at the weather mark all at once. It was really close racing all day.”

While Podlich normally sails with two onboard the Harbor 20, with the wind forecast for the weekend they decided to go three-up, and with this go-fast combination they had the boat going plenty fast. “The key was changing modes constantly,” Henderson says. “We were always adjusting modes, with the goal of using the power in the gusts rather than dumping it.”

Sharing the racecourse with the Harbor 20s were the J/24s, which got their series underway today as well. Pete Kassal’s Spaceman Spiff won two of five races to finish the day with a 3-point lead over Pat Fitzgerald’s Rush Hour.

Out on the jam-packed Division 3 circle, with the J/88s, J/80s, J/70s and J/105s—the intensity of the respective fleets certainly went up a notch in the moderate winds and busy racecourse. No one got away easy; every point being a battle, says Andy Graff on the J/88 Exile. His team’s 1-2-1 scoreline came with its challenges.

“We had a good day—we were going pretty good, felt fast and made some good calls—but it’s all pretty close and the next two boats are just barely behind us.”

Indeed, John Bell’s Hiwassee is only 3 points back and Lindsay Duda’s Sin Duda won a race to keep themselves well within striking distance of the lead.

Exile and the J/88s have the fortune of being the first start on the circle, which gives them an open course on the first beat, but a different strategy was required for the second. “The second beat is a bit harder to cross back through the middle,” Graff says, “so when we picked a side on the second beat we really had to stick with it. Choices are definitely more limited on the second.”

Cate Terhune Miller’s Casting Couch kept its consistency alive with three top-five finishes and now sits on a 4-point lead over Paul Green’s Progress, which won two races to keep the series plenty tight. The two teams have built a comfortable margin over the rest of the fleet with the potential for two more races on Sunday ahead of an approaching cold front.

In the J/80s, Mike Beasley’s Black Sheep found itself at the back of the fleet in the morning’s first race, posting an 18th before winning the next and finishing the day with a second in the last race. Only 5 points now separate Black Sheep and Warren Flannery’s team on Feisty, which won the final race. Sarah Alexander’s More Cowbell, however, is third overall, only 1 point in arrears, which should make for an exciting final day for the J/80 sailors.

Ben duPont’s Warbride maintains its lead in the 22-boat J/105 fleet, but only by 4 points over Ray Wulff’s Patriot. Wulff’s squad won the day’s first race and followed that with a second in the next, but a 14th in the final kept them from snatching Warbride’s lead. Like the J/80s, this series will no doubt come to the final race on Sunday.

On the regatta’s Division 1 racecourse, skipper David Starck padded his lead in the Lightning fleet to 8 points with two race wins and a second. Barney Harris’ winning streak was finally snapped by Paul Clifford, but Harris’ remains at 20 points, putting Albacore US National Championship title firmly in hand before the final day of racing. 

Annie Sitzman and Molly Bonham won all four of their races as well in the 29er fleet and look to be unbeatable from here. Sara Morgan Watters and Katherine Shermock won two races and with a pair of seconds in the Melges 15 fleet and put their lead to 8 points over Tim and Kate Faranetta, now solidly in second.

Lanny Helms’ Alberg 30 Windswept and Barbara Vosbury’s Carnival Lady continued to trade race wins to bring that series to 2 points. Dan Watson’s Avita, meanwhile, had a challenging day defending its lead in the small but competitive J/30 fleet. Three different boats won races today, shaving Watson’s lead to a single point.

“We’re looking forward to tomorrow for sure,” Watson says, knowing his rivals on the Valhalla Sailing Project are only a point behind in the standings. “But we’ll have to go one race at a time. It’s like any sport—it’s a mental game and you have to just focus on doing well.”

Jimmy Praley’s Robot Flamingo added two more wins to its scoreline to build an impressive 19-point lead. Michael Baugh’s Persephone put three wins on the board and now leads the J/29 fleet by 9 points, and Jeff Hayden’s team on the J/22 Polar Express have 4 points on Brad Julian’s Yard Sail.

Hawaiian foiling ace Gavin Ball solidified his lead in the Waszp fleet’s US National Championship series with a string of top-two finishes and now sits 8-points ahead of fellow islander Pearl Lattanzi.

The post Intensity On the Rise In Annapolis After Another Race-Packed Day appeared first on Sailing World.

PRELIMINARY RESULTS

Ask the top two teams of the Lightning, J/29, and 29er classes of the Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta Series their take on the first of the regatta and the answer is the same: no wins come easy when competition is good, the wind is shifting and the current is running hard.

And that summed up conditions for the bulk of nearly 240 teams that kicked off the regatta on Friday with a building southerly breeze and a strong running ebbing tide. With four race circles hosting multiple classes, clear air didn’t come easy either, especially on the southernmost circle with the J/105s, J/80s, J/70s and J/88s—more than 80 boats racing up and down the course.

Cate Muller-Terhune’s Casting Couch, last year’s overall winner of the J/70 class and the regatta, has proven in the past they know how to manage the traffic and came away with two race wins and a second to set up a 4-point lead on Alec Culter’s team on Hedgehog. 

John Bell’s team on Hiwassee is sitting pretty with two race wins, but Andy Graff’s team Exile, a perennial rival to the Hiwasse crew, is only 5 points back, winning with a 2-1-1 but Andy Graff’s exile only 5 points back. Equally close in points are the J/105 leaders, with Ben DuPont’s Warbride winning the last race to end day 2 points atop Bill Zartlere’s Deja Voodoo. At press time, the J/80 scores were incomplete.

On the Division 1 race circle. The Lightning class, a new addition this year in Annapolis with 16 boats, perennial champ Dave Stark is in familiar territory at the top of the standings, but tied with skipper Abbie Probst with each team having won a race. 

For the Albacores, sailing their US National Championship with nineteen teams, it’s all about Barney Harris, the Albacore’s guru builder and boat whisperer. He’s unbeaten again after four races with skipper Paul Clifford a good 13 points in arrears. 

In the 29ers, rival skippers Annie Sitzman and Sophie Niemann, traded race wins to end the tied on account of Sitzman winning the fourth race of the day.

Sara Morgan Waters and Katherine Shermock posted back-to-back race wins in the last two to build a 5-point lead.

Division 2 of the regatta, set mid-Bay had plenty of current to contend with, but Lanny Helms’ Windswept was the lead team on the Alberg 30s after three races. Two wins and second gives Helms and his crew a 1-point lead over Barbara Vosbury’s Carnival Lady. The two were never far apart, and no will doubt continue to spar over the next two days. 

Jeff Hayden’s team on the Polar Express leads the J/22s and Dan Watson’s Avita is top J/30. 

Jimmy Praley’s Robot Flamingo is undefeated in the 17-boat Viper 640 fleet and Michael Baugh’s J/29 Persephone is tied with Glenn Smyth’s Shadowfax.

The Waszp class, contending its US Nationals, enjoyed excellent conditions closer to shore once the sea breeze filled in. The fast charging Hawaiian foilers Gavin Ball and Pearl Lattanzi are firmly in the top two after four races. Ball took the first three and Lattanzi the fourth. 

Tomorrow, the regatta’s ORC teams will sail their distance race, alongside the Cal 25s, and the Harbor 20 fleet return for its Spring Championship with a talent packed fleet of locals.

The post Easy Sailing and Hard Races for Annapolis Regatta Fleet appeared first on Sailing World.

Air. Fuel. Spark. Whoosh.

And just like that, J/29 class racing has been reignited on the Chesapeake Bay. It’s been ages since these late-1980s vintage one-designs have met en masse, but at this year’s Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta Series in Annapolis, seven J/29 owners were cajoled and herded from their slips by Liz Principe, the class’s new motivator-in-chief.

“There is a new energy among the owners,” Principe says. “And that’s really motivating me. It’s been at least 12 years, so we’re pretty stoked about what’s going on here.”

Principe, who hails from Cambridge, Maryland, and races on the shallow reaches of the Eastern Shore’s Choptank River, sailed as a teenager with her father, but it was passive. Only when she accepted an offer from her boss and was exposed to racing on a Tartan 10 did she realize what she’d been missing all along.

“They taught me the foredeck because I was light and athletic,” she says, “and everything about it was wonderful.”

Over eight immersive years in a sport that befits her energetic and results-driven personality, Principe relocated herself from the foredeck to the tiller when she was gifted a Catalina Capri 30. “We had some amazing wins with that boat,” she says, but last July, she purchased a masthead/outboard-model J/29, called it The Doghouse, and launched her “first real racing boat.”

This particular J/29 was discovered on the hard across the bay in Solomons, Maryland. The longer Principe longed for it, the lower the price kept dropping, until it finally hit her price point. It was in good shape, needing only the TLC common to balsa-cored boats of the late 1980s. 

“Coming out of the Capri, the boat was seriously fast and fun,” she says.

Principe and her teammates promptly became a force in the Eastern Shore PHRF scene and, “When we started winning,” she says, “more people wanted to come and crew.”

Having too many crewmembers on call was a good problem to have, she says, but soon came her epiphany: “I said, ‘We have this great boat, so let’s go do something bigger with it.’”

Bigger being one-design racing, of course.

As commodore of the Eastern Shore Sailing Association, Principe tapped connections at sailing organizations up and down the Chesapeake, and social media outreach and emails allowed her to quickly connect with other J/29 owners to propose a simple goal of restarting one-design class racing in the US.

Responses from owners were universal: “They were all like, ‘Yeah! Let’s do it,’” she says.

Hands went up not only in the Chesapeake, but from surprising locations afar as well—from owners in Texas, Ohio, New Jersey, New England and elsewhere. “They all wanted to restart this J/29 class, so it’s gone from being a Chesapeake thing to a national one,” she says. “It’s baby steps, but we’re getting there.”

According to J/Boats, Rod Johnstone introduced the J/29 in 1982 as a versatile, lightweight and upwind-­capable race boat that possessed the best traits of the J/24 and the J/30. Before production ended in 1987, the final hull popped from the molds was No. 298. Principe admits she has no idea how many are still sailing and where.

With three boats traveling in from New Jersey’s Riverton YC for the Annapolis Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta, Principe has been hustling to make the experience a positive one for the fleet, sourcing free housing and organizing informal low-cost gatherings, including an evening with Annapolis’ beloved sailmaker and storyteller Wilbur “Papa” Keyworth, a J/29 champion from the class’s formative years, whose primary advice to Principe is to “make it fun.” 

“Back in the day, we had a lot of parties,” Keyworth says. The adventures he had with his J/29 Moonbeam is stuff of legends. “In the early days of the class everyone saw how much fun we were having racing in MORC. Eventually, we got a couple of one-design starts just like Liz is doing, and the class started growing from there. At one point, we had about 20 of them around here—and hosted the first North Americans in Annapolis in 1985.”

With fleets in Hampton, Virginia, and Cape May, New Jersey, Keyworth says, there was quite a bit of travel between the two locations as owners committed to sailing the big regattas of the mid-Atlantic, including Atlantic City Race Week. “At the peak of the class, we had about 15 boats in Cape May for the NAs,” Keyworth says. “One of the things that really kept the class going was the get-togethers—the cookouts and the socials—and Liz is grasping that and injecting it into the teams that will show up for this event.”

Fifteen or even 20 boats would be a pipe dream for Principe, so, for now, she’s plenty content with simply getting one-design J/29 racing off the ground again. “We will have seven on the line, and for the J/29 fleet and the first time, that’s pretty good,” she says.

While the Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta Series may be the first one-design start in a long time, Principe says, there’s still much work to be done in reestablishing the semblance of an organized class. It’s a monumental task, but she’s not alone; her new friends from the Texas, Ohio and New England fleets are stepping up as well to advance Principe’s efforts. 

“I think what happened to the class was that the skippers got older, and the boats did too. It requires a lot of dedicated crew, which I can relate to,” Principe says. “Finding six or seven crew can be a real challenge for some owners.”

The immediate goal is getting the formal class structure back up and running again, reaching out to owners and contacts to uncover idle boats and owners and re-engaging them. “I know there are some J/29s in Essex (Connecticut) on the hard,” she says, “so eventually, I’m going to go and find those and see if we can get them back out on the water and racing. Sometimes it’s just a matter of talking to the owners and showing them that there’s something happening. That’s the sales lady in me—it just takes getting feet on the ground, finding these people, and generating excitement.”

The J/29 is considered to be an excellent PHRF boat, and that’s where many of them have landed over the past few decades, which may complicate a pure one-design resurgence, but that’s a low-priority concern for Principe. They’re willing to overlook strict class-rules compliance for now. “In this first go-around, we won’t be picky. We’re just happy to have everyone out sailing together. It’s going to be a really cool event. The other owners are so happy to have this re-engagement happening.”

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Given the dense and diverse concentration of performance-leaning sailboats in the Chesapeake, there is a deep heritage of racing that spans nearly a century. Over the years, practically every handicap rating rule has been applied in the interest of fair, competitive and fun racing, with some enduring more than others. In Annapolis today, PHRF and ORC coexist and serve their respective owners, but ORC is being embraced by a fast-growing number of owners who are keen to race under an objective rating system that accommodates an astonishingly diverse fleet of designs. As Exhibit A, look no further than the ORC scratch sheet of this year’s Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta Series, which spans from a sporty Melges 24 to a 12-ton C&C 44.

“ORC is growing nicely and we’re solid,” says John White, who has been successfully racing his vintage Abbott 33 alongside the area’s more modern and grand-prix designs. “If you’re going to seriously race handicap in the Chesapeake, ORC is really the only good choice. Everyone sees it.”

ORC was new to the US seven years ago when Annapolis YC race officials founded ORC of the Chesapeake, but it is gaining greater traction every year White says.

“This initial interest was driven by a problem identified throughout the US, that the prevailing handicap systems could not fairly handicap an increasingly diverse selection of boats populating local fleets,” says ORC measurer Dobbs Davis, the Annapolis-based advocate of the rule who has spearheaded its US rollout. “Small, light, fast sportboats, for example, may on average perform the same as larger heavier boats, but much differently as the wind conditions vary away from the average, and so the ratings were rarely ideal on most days in a sailing season.”

ORC’s multiple rating options, Davis says, offer a solution, as does the system’s ability to rate boats objectively based on real measurement data rather than owner-declared data for sails, rigs and other parameters.

Once Annapolis’ more serious sailing teams embraced ORC, many of the area’s rank-and-file racing programs soon followed suit. “Within a year of ORC use in our area we saw racing participation increase by about 20 percent,” says Jonathan Bartlett, past commodore of Annapolis YC. “We started with just the fastest boat classes, but this has grown in acceptance to nearly all our classes now.”

ORC of the Chesapeake’s Open division provides the highest level of handicap racing on the bay and includes windward/leeward, government mark and point-to-point races. In contrast, the Performance Cruiser division consists of crossover designs only, which are eligible for races that sail courses using government marks or so-called “destination races.”

“ORC Chesapeake’s largest event to date has supported three classes in ORC Open and a Performance Cruiser division with as many as two classes,” White says. “Given that, it’s clear the Performance Cruising is working, as is the Open. It’s proven that boats of all ages can win and that’s what’s great about it. You don’t have to have a new boat, you just need to have a well-prepared boat.”

“A steady increase in entries and the number of participating clubs and events over the past three years is a strong indication ORC of the Chesapeake’s measured efforts are paying off. The organization has been steadfast in controlling the number of ORC events to prevent owner burnout while providing for a variety of racecourses to ensure enjoyable races for all classes.”

—John White, ORC of the Chesapeake

A steady increase in entries and the number of participating clubs and events over the past three years is a strong indication ORC of the Chesapeake’s measured efforts are paying off White says. The organization has been steadfast in controlling the number of ORC events to prevent owner burnout while providing for a variety of racecourses to ensure enjoyable races for all classes. In 2024, there were 17 events on the ORC of the Chesapeake calendar, with a wide variety of formats: three regattas had windward/leeward racing, three were overnight distance races, and the remainder were daytime destination and distance races.

“These trends are very encouraging, and we think we’ve managed to get a lot of boats that were sitting at the dock to come out to race,” White says.

The group initially embraced ORC Club certificates, which provide an easy on-ramp for boat owners because a full measurement is not required. As ORC has become more widely embraced, however, more owners have taken the step toward securing a proper measurement. Currently, more than half of the group’s participants have ORC Club certificates, with the rest having measured ORCi certificates.

While the prospect of getting fair ratings has gained ground in other fleets across the US, another significant challenge for growing ORC’s popularity in local fleets has been getting local race committees trained on how to use more sophisticated scoring tools to unlock the potential for more fair racing. This has meant a significant effort to educate race managers on how to best score races based on course geometry and wind conditions during the race.

“This is an ongoing effort,” White says, “and we’re fortunate to have a deep bench of talent at Annapolis YC who have been managing ORC races throughout the US, so we benefit from their experience and guidance. The challenge is sharing this knowledge among the clubs and races with less experience.”

White’s Abbott 33 was a personal “COVID project,” and racing it under ORC was an afterthought, he says, but, “We sailed it, got measured and realized it would work, and it does work.” 

But it works because the boat is meticulously prepared, which is the same fundamental for success in one-design racing or any other rating system. “You can buy an old boat that’s not worth much money, not spend a ton on it and do fine,” White says. “Every boat will have its day. Our fleet has a huge mix, and the results are always mixed, which is what it’s supposed to be. Well-sailed boats with ORC Club certificates being able to co-mingle with the fully measured boats is pretty slick.”

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Teenage brothers Gaetan and Antoine Ismael, junior sailors in Annapolis, were looking to take their dinghy sailing higher. After begging their parents long enough, they found themselves sharing a Waszp and together have been helping each other climb the learning curve. The skills they’re learning on foil are transitioning back to their Club 420 racing, but more importantly, their parents say, the brothers are spending more time on the water having fun with flight. We caught up with them at the Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta Series to learn more about their new obsession.

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• FINAL RESULTS
• Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta Series Annapolis YouTube Playlist
• Full Photo Gallery

The skipper and owner and lead character on the J/70 Casting Couch, Cate Muller-Terhune, of Annapolis, is plenty familiar with sailing fast under pressure. As a top-level helmswoman in the class, she was confident that her team’s boatspeed would be the tool they’d use to break a tie going into the final race at the Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta Series in Annapolis.

Terhune felt they’d been fast upwind all weekend and today was no exception.

“It was hard to go fast upwind,” says Muller-Terhune, whose crew included her husband Alan, Olympian Dave Hughes, and Colin Kirby. “Maybe we were too tight on the rig compared to other boats, but when the boat felt the fastest and highest it was the most difficult to drive. We were constantly adjusting the sails, communicating and making little adjustments, which was definitely key. It was just a really fun group. We had a great practice day on Thursday and let it roll from there.”

The J/70s were racing on the regatta’s busiest racecourse, which included the J/88s, and the regatta’s two biggest classes—the J/80s and J/105. That, combined with an atypical breeze direction and the usual strong current, made Casting Couch’s win all the more impressive. “That sort of takes the middle of the course out of play, but sailing to leeward of the pack because of the current and the wind direction ended up being pretty advantageous for the most part. It was an interesting and complicated weekend for sure,” Muller-Terhune says.

The win is also a nod to the strength of the Annapolis area racing scene, and several fleets that have robust local participation. Among them is the Annapolis, Fleet 5 Harbor 20 fleet, 18 of which made their debut at the regatta. A majority of the 30-boat fleet that sails the local Wednesday night series turned out to race the weekend series. Ed Holt, owner of Trinity, and his grandson, Tyler Russell, won the class with a perfect scoreline on the final day.

Fleet 5’s Bell Carty finished third with Puffin but also earned the regatta’s sportsmanship award for her work as fleet captain and her team’s efforts to grow and join the regatta series weekend. “We don’t do a lot of multiple-day events,” Carty says. But with some lobbying, appealing to the all-ages crews and the promise of fun convinced the fleet to give it a try. Carty says she was “overwhelmed” to be recognized for her efforts. “I think sportsmanship is the key to promoting our sport: it’s about having fun with your family and friends,” she said. “So, this is really an honor.”

If regatta wins are on the registry for two Maryland-based sailors, the Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta Series Annapolis delivered early wedding gifts this weekend. Bride-to-be Alisa Finney, owner of Fahrvergnuggen, won the Cal 25 class, and her fiancé Patrick Seidel took top honors with his boat, Laughing Gull, in the Alberg 30 class.

A second in Sunday’s distance race kept Finney at the top of the class after her win on Saturday. On the Alberg, Seidel sails with multiple generations from one family with an age range of 28 to 68. “It’s a good mixture of long-time experience with youth energy, drive and passion so it works out really well,” Seidel says. “Plus, our boats are prepped really well.”

The 19-boat Albacore class sailed 10 races over the weekend with Barney Harris, of Arlington, Virginia, winning the event. No one could accuse him of not knowing the boat well: he has raced Albacores since the 1980s, builds them, owns five and even lent one to a fellow competitor for the event.

“I’m the guy that builds the boats, fixes everybody’s boats and teaches people how to sail,” Harris says. He chose Gale Warning for the weekend racing, calling it the “best boat I have” and leaving at home the wooden version he sails in wooden-boat regattas.

The Albacore class made its debut at the Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta Series in Annapolis this weekend as the Virginia-based fleet looks forward to its World Championship in Hampton, Virginia, in October. “We’re a class that has been around for a while, has dedicated sailors, and we thought the Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta Series Annapolis was a great venue for us to show off the boat,” says Tyler Phillips, of Washington DC, who is the vice president of the class. “It’s a boat from the 1950s that can sail in all the conditions: from the heavier wind we had on Friday to the light air we had on Sunday.”

The 15-boat J/22 fleet finished 10 races over the three days, and thanks to a strong start, the team on Jeff Todd’s Hot Toddy, of Annapolis, Maryland, could overcome some bottom half finishes in the final few races.

“We didn’t have a very good Sunday but we hung on by a thread and won in a tie breaker,” Todd says. “There was lighter wind today, and it was hard to read. It was very light, and we didn’t know whether to go left or right. People made out on the left, mostly. But it’s a very good fleet, very good competition where anybody could win any race. It’s a very tough fleet.”

Todd’s team will race one weekend per month through the summer and in the Thursday night series before the J/22 World Championships that will be held in Annapolis in October.

In the J/24 class, Hillman Capital Management, skippered by Mark Hillman, of Bethesda, Maryland, hit a patch of no wind that slowed them for about 100 yards and allowed another boat to pass them earlier in the weekend. A second in that race spoiled what would have been a perfect series of first-place finishes. Still, Hillman was pleased. “Today was about staying in pressure, which we did most of the time,” he says.

Hillman credited years of sailing together with some of his crew and two days of practice before their Saturday-Sunday racing. “We built enough teamwork over those two days to get around the racecourse,” he says. “We thought this regatta would be the perfect tune up for the Corinthian Nationals in a few weeks.”

The J/80 class was the biggest in the event with 26 boats. Sarah Alexander’s More Cowbell, of Annapolis, pulled out the regatta win with a second-place finish in the one race held on Sunday. The two-day class leader Kopp-Out (aka The Lasso Way) owned by Thomas Kopp, of Grosse Pointe Farms, Mich., couldn’t match the local knowledge in the light air, and Alexander credits her team with consistency. “We started middle to pin, going for the breeze on the left, and then nothing too crazy on the first upwind. We tried to jibe early on the downwind and just keep going fast,” she says.

In the J/105 class, Ray Wullf’s Patriot, of Annapolis, reclaimed the top of the standings where they were on Friday. After racing that day, the team won the Mount Gay Cocktail Competition with a Patriot Punch recipe, but Wulff refused to blame those festivities for the team’s slide into second on the racecourse on Saturday.

“It’s just as important to win off the water as one the water,” says Wullf, whose team won the regatta in 2023. Sunday’s light air, he said, meant they didn’t change any of the routines. “We just did the same thing we did all three days: consistent sailing,” he says.

On the Etchells 22 course, Greg Hryniewicz, of Annapolis, Maryland, owner of Caramba, admits to “trying everything we could not to win the event.” In the first race on Friday, they were over early. In the second race, they missed the offset mark after a course change, had to reach up to make it, rounded up and a crew member fell overboard. (They retrieved him safely.) In the third race, a crew member lost his balance and cracked a rib, which turned into a full break during the fourth race that day. Hryniewicz found a substitute crew, someone he had never sailed with, and finished the weekend 1 point ahead of the next boat.

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Preliminary Results

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On the second day of the Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta Series in Annapolis, the full breadth of the 222-boat regatta bonanza was on display with the addition of the regatta’s distance racers, 16 hardy teams that were dispatched on a long multi-leg course on Chesapeake Bay on a raw and rainy day.

Among the distance teams were three one-design Beneteau First SE 24s, and the first one across the finish line was Sebastian Vallee’s team on Jef, from Quincy, Mass., which finished the course in less than 2 hours.

The second one-design distance fleet featured the classic Cal 25s, and here Alisa Finney, of Laurel, Maryland, skippered her Cal 25 Fahrvergnuggen to victory. After a “pretty good start,” Laurel held a short lead on the first of several legs, and to preserve their position on the downwind leg, the team chose a more conservative approach and flew one of their smaller spinnakers. “They had predicted stronger winds than what showed up,” Laurel says. “We took our time, so we didn’t have any struggles with the spinnaker.”

The seven-boat ORC distance-race division showcased some of the Annapolis’ best big-boat race teams, some of whom are using the regatta’s distance races as warmups for major races this summer, and today’s relatively quick Bay tour went the way of Benedict Capuco’s Aerodyne 38, Zuul. The blue 38-footer made its winning move right off the start by immediately separating from the rest of the fleet, a tactic that set them up well for the rest of the day.

James Sagerholm’s J/35 Aunt Jean followed them across the finish line, with Bruce Irvin’s Colby 40 Time Machine notching a third in its first official distance race with a boat that’s new to them. A second distance race is scheduled for Sunday with a forecast for stronger winds and seas, which surely will be an early season test of crew work, hardware and sails.

While the distance racers were enjoying their one long race, the regatta’s other one-design fleets continued to rack up races in the day’s 10-knot easterly, which came with plenty of shifts and surprises. Local skipper Jimmy Praley and his teammates on the Viper 640 Robot Flamingo now lead the fleet as they inch closer to locking in the class’s Atlantic Coast Championship title. With seven races counting so far after two days they’re sitting on an 8-point cushion over Peter Beardsly’s Glory Days, from Shelter Island, New York. 

Praley’s assessment of his team’s results so far is on account of good starts, safe tactics, and being hyperactive with sail adjustments in the day’s variable winds.

“We’re constantly adjusting,” Praley says. “One thing that we do really well is, if the boat doesn’t feel well, we don’t sit and wait for something to change. We’re immediately on it. So, if for example, we feel sluggish, I’ll put the bow down a little bit, Max [Vinocur] will ease the jib, Austin [Powers] will pop the vang off and ease the outhaul if we need to. As soon as we get back up on the rail and hiking fully, all the controls come back on. We never wait for something to change. We change as soon as something else.”

It wasn’t all easy sailing for Praley and his teammates, however. Far from it. The 24-boat fleet is deep with talent and they’re sharing the same racecourse with several other classes, which puts a priority on managing traffic and finding open space for better wind. They won the first race and finished fourth in the next, which required a bit of a comeback after a bad start.

“We got flushed on that one but were able to tack out pretty early on to port,” Praley says. “We found a lane and we just worked our boat speed as best we could. We were able to get back into it quickly enough to save that one.”

That also required them to be vigilant being around so many boats. “It’s really hard when you have boats that are so different,” Praley says. “We’ve got Melges 15s that are planning all the time, and then we have the J/30s that go straight downwind, so they kind of close down the middle of the course. We are fortunate that we have the first start, but we’re always talking about where the traffic is and trying to separate as much as possible.”

In the J/80 class, the largest of the event with 26 boats, Kopp-Out (aka The Lasso Way), skippered by Thomas Kopp, of Grosse Pointe Farms, Michigan, maintained his lead for a second day after posting all thirds on Saturday. He credited his tactician for keeping the team out of trouble and praised the rest of the crew for its sail handling and getting around the marks cleanly.

Kopp and the second-place boat, More Cowbell, skippered by Sarah Alexander, of Annapolis, have a comfortable lead on the fleet, but Kopp says the racing has been tighter than the results would indicate.

“We finished overlapped in one race, and there were three different winners today. It just goes to show you the strength of the class,” Kopp says.

On board More Cowbell, Alexander says, the strategy was simple. “We tried to sail conservatively and not do anything crazy. We got lucky on a couple of the starts and steered clear of some messy situations. From there, we just tried to keep it pretty simple with how shifty it was and not tack too much.”

On the very same racecourse, local Cate Muller-Terhune’s team on Casting Couch, cut into the lead of Brian Keane’s team on Savasana, from Weston, Mass., by putting up two top finishes and a win in the day’s final race. The two teams now sit tied with 13 points apiece, but Alec Cutler’s Hedgehog, from Bermuda, is only 6 points in arrears. With J/70 World Championship qualifying berths on the line tomorrow, these three common rivals will no doubt apply more offensive tactics in what is one of the most challenging fleets in sailing today.

Another overall lead change on this action-packed one-design circle is in the J/105 fleet, with 24 boats, where Bill Zartler’s Deja Voodoo went 4-1-13 to move to the top of the scoreboard. Friday’s leaders on Ray Wulff’s Patriot went 1-13-6 to slide to second overall, but the difference between them is only 2 points.

The regatta’s newest fleet, 18 Harbor 20s, joined the action today for the first time, on their own racecourse set closer to the entrance of the Severn River. This race area is notorious for swift currents and geographic wind effects, which makes it extra challenging, and this much is borne out in the results with three individual race winners, only 2 points between the top-two boats, and tight scores further down the results.

Yellow Jacket, co-owned by Jeffrey Sholz, Cornelius Sullivan and Rudolph Joseph Trejo, of Annapolis, were plenty quick and had a handle on the conditions, posting finishes of 1-1-3. Ed Holt’s Trinity with crewmate Tyler Russell were consistent as well with a 2-2-5. Local sailing celebrity Gary Jobson, joining fleet captain John Heintz were in the mix at times, but Jobson admitted they had their challenges, including being over early in the first race and finding themselves on the wrong side of the race course in the last. A fifth in the second race, however, gave him some solace going into tomorrow’s races.

“In our worst race, we went the wrong way and we were slow and that’s a bad thing in sailboat racing,” Jobson says. “Jeff and his team had an astoundingly good day and they’re really fast. But tomorrow, we’ll be better and faster.”

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There’s a bizarre, but now seemingly sacred tradition in Annapolis these days where, come the spring equinox, boaters of all ilk gather round at the Maritime Museum and toss their token stinkers into the flames at the annual Sock Burning Festival. And not long after the embers die, boatyards are chucking boats into the Chesapeake at a harried pace. Annapolis YC’s Wednesday-night racing series kickoff comes next and then there’s the big season-opener: the Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta Series. With more than 200 boats—224 to be exact on the eve of the regatta—and all area yacht club hands are on deck and this year’s edition is expected to be a spicy one. And we’re not talking Old Bay.

In taking a look at this year’s gathering, let’s first take a dive into the scratch sheet and the three new classes bringing some new blood to the regatta’s traditional lineup. The Albacore Dinghy fleet, which will be racing its North American Championship, has pulled in an impressive 19 boats, with nearly half of the doublehanded teams hailing from Canada, a hotbed of Albacore racing.

“There are 80 or so of them up there,” says Albacore stalwart Barney Harris, of Alexandria, Virginia, who has been racing the doublehanded dinghies since 1983 and has built most of the modern boats. “[In Toronto] they get somewhere between 30 and 40 boats on a regular night, and most of them very good.”

Harris has been building Albacores at his home since 2007 and is responsible for 17 new hulls, with No. 18 on the way, and he has raced every Albacore US National Championship since 1983. A diehard indeed, he’s also the reigning US National and North American champion and has an appreciation for the boat’s simplicity. “It’s not overpowered, but not heavy either [at 240 pounds],” he says, “simple but sophisticated enough to maintain my interest for a long time.”

While there are not that many Albacores local to Annapolis proper itself, the opposite is true for the regatta’s other hot class,which will be launching from Annapolis YC’s dry sail lot this weekend—the cruisy but competitive Harbor 20s. As a steadily growing fleet at AYC, this group has sat out the Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta Series in years past as they prefer a more low-profile weekend experience for owners, but after a bit of cajoling from organizers, 19 of them are joining the fun for Saturday and Sunday only, on a racecourse set closer to shore where they prefer to play.

The Harbor 20, built by WD Schock in California, is best-suited for either two or three crew, and the class has strong pockets in the US, especially venues with protected harbors. With a deep and protected cockpit, a self-tacking jib and no spinnakers to fuss with, the Harbor 20 is as user-friendly as a one-design keelboat can be, and that’s the appeal for Annapolis’ Fleet 5 wrangler Bell Carty, who says, “We make sure that everything we are running is fun.”

Speaking of fun, there will be heaps of it for the sailors of the foiling Waszp one-design fleet, which is bringing out a big youth contingent with a couple of adults mixed in, including Annapolis YC’s own junior sailing coach who will be racing a few of his own charges for the first time. The regatta will also be his first time racing the Waszp that he bought a few months ago. The demands of high-school sailing coaching have kept him off the foil, so he has no lofty aspirations, but is happy to see juniors having fun.

“A lot of my kids are doing high-performance events around the Bay, so I figured I’d get into it too so I can see for myself what it’s about,” says Mitchell Powell. “As this will be my first one, we’ll see how it goes.”

What’s unique to the Annapolis stop of the Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta Series is the strength of its established one-design classes, especially the J/105, J/80s and Viper 640s, that each have drawn in 25 teams per class. The J/70 fleet only beats that number by two. Each fleet has something on the line: for the Viper 640s, it’s the Atlantic Coast Championship title, for the J/70s it’s the coveted world championship qualification berths, and for the J/80s and J/105s, it’s simply local bragging rights, which locals know is a big deal in these ultra-competitive amateur fleets. Six of the J/80 teams are sailing for their own interclass bragging rights as participants in the American Sailing Association’s Performance Race Week + Regatta Experience, which includes two days of onboard coaching clinics before the racing starts.

There will be plenty of other Regatta Series regulars as well, including the classic Alberg 30s and Cal 25s, the J/22s and J/24s, and Etchells classes, each of which have their returning champions back to defend. The J/30s, however, have lost their defending champion, Bruce Irvin, who was selected as the regatta’s overall winner in 2023 and earned a berth at the Caribbean Championship in the BVIs in October. Irvin, has traded in his J/30 for a custom 40-footer that he intends to race in Newport Bermuda Race someday.

As he and his crew are only now coming to grips with the boat, the Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta’s two days of ORC racing will give Irvin and his young crew a chance to better learn the ropes and the choreography of their new-to-them yacht. Annapolis YC’s opening Wednesday night race in late April was their first official outing after a winter’s worth of boatwork.

“Mechanically it all went well,” Irvin says. “We’re just getting aware of all the lines, but to be honest, the boat is easier to sail than the J/30. Our goal this weekend is to hoist the ORC trophy, but first we’ll focus on getting it around the racecourse OK and getting some hours under our belts.”

The ORC fleet will race only Saturday and Sunday alongside the regatta’s other distance racers in the Beneteau First 24 division, and while all area clubs will be hosting fleets on the water, evening socials will be hosted by the Annapolis Yacht Club, with packed schedule of food, parties, games and a special, live Speaker Series evening with Ocean Race winning skipper and Rolex Yachtsman of the Year, Charlie Enright, on Thursday evening at the club.

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