“Love the little trade which thou hast learned, and be content there with.” — Marcus Aurelius

It was hardly a little trade Tony Parker was practicing at the helm of an America’s Cup 12 Metre in the summer of 1978 off Newport, R.I.

He’d been asked by Baron Marcel Bich to skipper the French trial horse in training for the next Cup, and was doing so well against the A team, by his own account, that its helmsman Bruno Troublé took him aside at one point and beseeched him to lighten up.

The Cup was on the verge of taking the sports world by storm with Dennis Conner, Australia II, the winged keel, ESPN and Fremantle in the wings. Parker, having finished second in three straight Congressional Cups and with a gold-plated resume from Harvard sailing, was a match-racing star in position to play a big role on yachting’s biggest stage.

But something little caught his eye across the dappled waters of Rhode Island Sound that day and changed the arc of his life.

“I saw fifty J/24s out there racing in their first national championships,” Parker says. “The class was brand new and it was exploding. All the best sailors were there. It was so competitive they couldn’t get a start off. There were no black flags or U flags back then. Everyone was over early.”

Parker couldn’t wait to get a piece of that mayhem. “I’m really, really good at infighting,” he says. So off he went to buy his first J/24 and set the stage for the next 47 years, when he’d get his jollies banging away at the top of the fleet in the quirky turtle boats.

All of it came to fruition this fall in a gutsy performance in another fleet of 50, this time at the J/24 World Championships in Plymouth, U.K., where the wind blew the oysters off the rocks. When they sorted out the wreckage after five days at 20-plus knots, Parker’s Bangor Packet stood a stunning second. It marked the fourth time he’d made the podium at the Worlds over the decades, with two thirds and two seconds, but not yet the gold.

The dean of the class, however, was able to mount the stage and accept his trophy just three days shy of his 80th birthday. Parker and his teammates on Bangor Packet finished 7 points behind Headcase, whose Irish skipper Cillian Dickson is Parker’s junior by 47 years.

“It’s absolutely remarkable that he’s stuck with it and does that well at his age,” says one of Parker’s contemporaries, Scott Allen, an ex-Olympian who raced with and against him for years and now lives across the creek from his old rival in Annapolis.

“I think he just really likes the boat, he knows it and he’s comfortable with it,” says Will Welles, of North Sails, who sailed with Parker in all the major events leading up to the Plymouth worlds. “He’s been at it so long, and at the top the fleet, that he does a bit of a legend status. He keeps a young crew to keep him excited, he just loves the sport—he loves to talk about it and thinks about it all the time.

“But what’s really amazing is that he has this drive to keep getting better, and he has no ego whatsoever.”

Of course, the J/24 Worlds no longer attracts the hottest sailors on the planet. Still, Parker’s achievement had the racing crowd back home on edge, monitoring the internet as the regatta wound to a windy conclusion. He was in range of winning till the very end, 4 points back on the last day, when he finished 3-2 to Dickson’s 2-1, with a Japanese team 20 points back in third overall.

By all accounts the regatta was a daily grind, with winds of 20 to 30 and foaming grey seas breaking all around. In one race, Dickson’s boat, well ahead, broached so badly on the last downwind run that the spreaders hit the water, yet the crew managed to get the mess cleared up before the fleet caught up, and they still won the race. “How often do you see that in a world championship?” Parker marvels.

He, by contrast, is a light-to-moderate air specialist, as befits a denizen of the Chesapeake. He attributes his success at Plymouth to a young, athletic crew of sailing pros and a week of practice onsite before the festivities began. “We were lucky that it blew just as hard for practice as it did for the racing,” he says.

He had a veteran team—Emmett Todd, James Niblock and Will Bomar working the front half of the boat and Welles calling tactics.

Still, it was unfamiliar territory. “Sometimes I was steering with both hands on the tiller,” he says. “Six of the (nine) races we had to use the little jib, which we hadn’t had out in five years.”

At least the boat is familiar. He’s had the same Bangor Packet, J/24, Hull No. 58, since 2003 when he bought a steady winner from Andy Horton. Even in one-design racing, he says, some boats come off the factory line inherently faster. He’d been through two that didn’t make the cut before he got his current steed.

Welles, a two-time J/24 world champion himself, acknowledges that Parker has always been committed to having the boat immaculately race-ready. “He puts money into the boat, and that’s why he ships it to the worlds instead of chartering. He values his boat. It’s top notch, the sails are top-notch sails and he treats his crew well so they want to be there and work hard.”

To keep the boat current, Parker sends it “to the spa” at great expense every couple of years for a full treatment at the best boatyard he can find, and lets the experts do their thing. “I’m not the guy you’ll find under the boat sanding the keel,” he says.

Not that he couldn’t. His father owned and ran the marina at the mouth of the Harraseeket River in Maine that’s still in business as Brewers South Freeport Marine. He and his two brothers and sister grew up there, and all were Maine junior champions in one class or another. But by the time his shot at the America’s Cup and sailing’s big tent came along, he says, “life had intervened.” Marriage, a child, law school, a successful business career and eight years in politics as treasurer of the Republican National Committee were to follow, and it all kept him busy.

As for the elusive gold medal he has yet to claim, Parker seems none too bothered. The next J/24 Worlds are in Australia, but “I’m not going to Melbourne,” he said. “That would take a month.”

So, his next shot is October 2027, in Rochester, New York, just down the road. He’ll be 82. Don’t bet against it.

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The ol’ J/24 Crack of Noon doesn’t leave home often. Its longtime caretaker, Ian Scott, is a busy guy in the summertime, bottling and delivering crisp, clean natural spring water to thirsty and demanding customers. Come June, the rest of his aging crew are busy too, yours truly included, with all the usual excuses. But we show up to race on Thursday nights, as we have for decades, because by 5 o’clock our skipper has the rig tuned, the beer on ice, and the sails on deck. You could say we’re Pavlovian to the sound of ice cubes tumbling onto cans in a cooler.

While the competition and fleet size here in Newport, Rhode Island, is a shadow of its former glory, 10 boats regularly show up, so it’s still plenty fun and challenging for us weekend-warrior types. It’s all good right here at home, so why leave town when good is good enough?

I suppose that is why we don’t leave often, but when we do, we don’t go far. This summer, it’s the J/24 North Americans—our first road trip in nine years. Our destination is Blue Point, New York, home to the unpretentious Sayville YC, a hidden gem on Long Island’s south coast. The clubhouse is stilted on a strip of beach on Great South Bay, a 151-square protected skinny water that averages only 4 feet (and 20 at its deepest).

For hotshot pros and traveling teams, hooking up a trailer and wandering about the country to regattas is no big deal, but for the Crack of Noon boys, leaving town is a complex affair. Planning is not our specialty, and while we always start the conversation enthusiastically and early while standing over a pile of empty beer cans in the cockpit (“Let’s do the North Americans!”), we tend to leave things to the last minute, kicking our proverbial Heineken down the road (“The regatta is next week, right?”).

Procrastination is how we end up needing only two hotel rooms and four beds in a rundown Clarion Conference Center hotel in Ronkonkoma, New York, which looks like it hasn’t been occupied since the pandemic hit. Procrastination, in other words, is how we fail to line up a fifth crew to get us to maximum weight. We’ve raced four-up plenty of times on Thursday nights, however, so we figure we will manage. Plus, weigh‑in will be a piece of cake. In fact, we can eat all the cake we want before ­stepping on the scale.

When we do finally step into the registration room at Sayville, there are at least eight friendly club volunteers to greet us. They efficiently escort us through our registration and onto the scale behind the privacy divider. There we are, a bunch of old dudes, still stripping down to our skivvies and sucking in our guts, even though we don’t have to. There’s no need to pretend—we have a good 140 pounds to spare, and come to find out, we sure could use it.

For four glorious days, Sayville delivers spectacular summer sailing conditions, with gusty sea breezes whipping the bay into a steep-lump racetrack that requires full-crew hiking and hyperactive trimming on the sails. Our starts are good, but without those extra pounds, we don’t stand a chance of hanging in skinny lanes, especially when we’re alongside the top boats.

Race after race, we’re having fun mixing it up in the middle of the fleet, which is a blessing because it helps us forget about one nagging bummer that we will eventually have to deal with when the regatta’s over: Our tow vehicle died upon arrival in Sayville.

True story: We were a few hundred feet from the yacht club’s driveway entrance when our trimmer Herb McCormick’s 2005 Ford F-150 croaked. We nursed it and the boat through the gate, parked alongside the gin pole, and that’s where the old beast would remain until a AAA tow hauled it away to the local Ford dealer.

To our good fortune, however, our regatta hosts, the good Samaritans of Sayville, are standing under the gin pole ready to lend a hand in our time of need. “Don’t worry about it,” rear commodore Steven Thomas assures us. He’s got a skid steer to get the trailer to its parking spot after we finish measurement, and then he offers his personal truck to get our boat off the island and back to Newport.

I mean, we’ve only just met the guy, and yet he’s giving us his wheels?

Throughout the regatta, Thomas, who commands the bow on the navy-blue J/24 named Shake and Bake, checks in with us twice daily to see how we’re managing and if we need his truck. And every time I see him at the club, he’s either hustling to or from his boat while putting out tinder fires, or making sure all of us racers are having the best time possible. He’s manning the skid steer, he’s directing trailer traffic, he’s pushing boats around with a Jeep, he’s slinging drinks at the bar when the tenders are backed up, and he’s hustling buffet trays of meatloaf from the kitchen to the food tent so the sailors don’t have to wait in line.

He’s always busy, but never too busy to ask, “You guys having a good time? You need anything?”

Word eventually gets around that the poor lads from Newport are stranded in Sayville. The dealer’s diagnosis is that we’ve blown a crankshaft bolt and the engine is kaput. But that’s when another Sayville Samaritan, Jim “Seamus” Keeley, who’s on race-committee duty, steps out of the blue and hooks us up with a local mechanic, who eventually saves poor Herb from having to go into debt on a new truck. Keeley not only helps line up the mechanic, but also later drives to the opposite side of the island to pick up Herb at the ferry terminal so he can retrieve his ride.

None of us on Crack of Noon had ever been to—or knew anything about—Sayville, but when we gather again for our normal Thursday-night affair afterward, we all agreed, and Herb especially, that Sayville is one of coolest places we’ve raced, with some of the kindest and most helpful people we’ve ever met.

In hindsight, while we were underweight and potentially stranded, we are all the better for getting off our little island. From the moment we coasted into Sayville to the moment we rolled out with the boat hitched to a U-Haul box truck, we thoroughly enjoyed the regatta, our outstanding hosts, the welcoming club and its amazing sailing conditions. It’s a reminder that it’s good for the Crack of Noon crew to travel once in a while because good enough should never be good enough.

Next time, we’ll have our fifth, but I’m not sure about Herb’s truck.

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130219

One of the oldest boats, in one of the most storied classes, took home overall winner honors at the 2013 Sperry Top-Sider St. Petersburg NOOD Regatta.

St. Petersburg, Fla., local Robby Brown dominated the 15-boat J/24 class winning seven of 11 races. By virtue of the impressive win over some top competition, Brown, whose boat USA 799 first touched water 35 years ago, was selected as the overall winner for the regatta. That honor includes a trip to the British Virgin Islands in November, where Brown and his crew will get a chance to battle for national bragging rights in identical Sunsail 44i’s against the overall winners from the other five Sperry Top-Sider NOOD Regattas.

Robby grew up racing junior boats on Biscayne Bay in Miami. FL, including Opti’s and International 420’s. He attended the Naval Academy and was an All American on the Dinghy Team sailing singlehanded, double handed and sloop events.

Robby has been involved with the marine industry since about 1990. Having spent a great deal of his marine career with working with medium sized keel boats, now semi-retired he is solely focused on One Design boats in everything from Flying Scots to J24s to (more recently) J70s.

Unseasonably cool conditions dominated the 16th edition of the Sperry Top-Sider St. Pete NOOD. But with the cool weather came breeze, and sailors generally prefer wind and cool weather to balmy temps and glassy seas. Those who braved the wind chill on Tampa Bay Friday through Sunday were rewarded with near perfect racing conditions, which enabled the race officials to run up to 11 races for each of the nine classes.

The biggest class at the St. Petersburg NOOD Regatta was the fledgling J/70 class, with 20 entries. As the J/24 did when it debuted the late 1970s, the J/70 is attracting a lot of interest in its first full year of one-design racing. Joel Ronning, of Minneapolis, Minn., won that competition by 20 points.

Other winners included: Tom Vigrass, of Port Huron, Mich., in the S2 7.9; Andrew Fisher, Greenwich, Conn, in the Sonar; Taylor Reiss, Panama City, Fla., in the F18 catamaran; Martin Kullman, St. Petersburg, Fla, in the Melges 24; Richard Karran, Apollo Beach, Fla., in the Wavelength 24; Grant Dumas, St. Petersburg, Fla., in PHRF 1; and Raymond Mannix, Largo, Fla., in PHRF 2.

The overall winner from each of the six Sperry Top-Sider NOOD Regattas in 2013 (St. Petersburg, Fla., San Diego, Annapolis, Md., Seattle, Chicago, and Marblehead, Mass.) is invited to participate in the Sperry Top-Sider NOOD Championship Regatta in the British Virgin Islands at the end of the season, aboard Sunsail 44i’s.

For more information on the 2013 Sperry Top-Sider NOOD Regatta series visit: https://www.sailingworld.com/nood-regattas.

Created by Sailing World in 1988, the NOOD series attracts over 1,000 boats and more than 20,000 competitors and spectators annually. Each event in the series features multiple days of sailboat racing for one-design models from 20 to 70 feet in length. In addition to local sailors, sailing’s top stars — including America’s Cup and Olympic champions — are well represented at the NOODs. Competitive sailors rate the NOODs as the top national event in each region of the country.

Final Results from the 2013 Sperry Top-Sider NOOD Regatta St. Petersburg (top five in each class): Place, Yacht Name, Yacht Type, Owner/Skipper, City, State, Country, Individual Race Results, Total Points

Full results here.

Division A Circle

Place, Yacht Name, Type, Owner/Skipper, Hometown, Results, Total Points

J/24 (One Design – 15 Boats)

1. USA 799, J/24, Robby Brown, St Petersburg, FL, USA – 1, 5, 1, 3, 1, 1, 1, 3, 2, 1, 1, ; 20

2. Clear Air, J/24, David Ogden, Toronto, Ont, CAN – 3, 2, 4, 1, 2, 4, 6, 6, 1, 3, 4, ; 36

3. Honey Badger, J/24, Travis Odenbach, Webster, NY, USA – 6, 3, 5, 2, 4, 5, 2, 2, 3, 4, 2, ; 38

4. USA 3223, J/24, Darby Smith, Marblehead, MA, USA – 4, 7, 3, 5, 7, 2, 4, 1, 5, 8, 3, ; 49

5. Spoony Tactics, J/24, Todd/Genoa Fedyszyn, St. Petersburg, FL, USA – 2, 10, 7, 8, 3, 3, 3, 4, 6, 2, 9, ; 57

S2 7.9 (One Design – 7 Boats)

1. Radio Flyer, S2 7.9, Tom Vigrass, Port Huron, MI, USA – 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 2, 1, 1, 3, 1, 3, ; 19

2. Matros, S2 7.9, Tom Bryant & Roger Gamache, Holland, MI, USA – 5, 7, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 8/DNC, 8/OCS, 1, ; 37

3. Indigo, S2 7.9, Travis Yates, Sarasota, FL, USA – 2, 2, 3, 4, 3, 3, 3, 3, 1, 8/OCS, 6, ; 38

4. Bamma Slammer, S2 7.9, Al Wolczyk, Louisville, KY, USA – 3, 3, 6, 6, 4, 5, 5, 5, 5, 2, 2, ; 46

5. Straight-Up, S2 7.9, Jeffrey Danhauer, Owensboro, KY, USA – 4, 5, 4, 3, 6, 4, 6, 4, 4, 3, 5, ; 48

Sonar (One Design – 12 Boats)

1. Bandit, Sonar, Andrew Fisher, Greenwich, CT, USA – 4, 1, 6, 3, 1, 3, 3, 1, 1, ; 23

2. CAN 829, Sonar, Paul Tingley, Saskatoon, SK, CAN – 1, 5, 2, 4, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, ; 24

3. Valiant, Sonar, Rick Doerr, Clifton, NJ, USA – 3, 6, 1, 7, 6, 1, 1, 4, 2, ; 31

4. Sonar, Sonar, Brian Linde, St Petersburg, FL, USA – 2, 2, 5, 1, 8, 4, 4, 2, 6, ; 34

5. Jennifer French, Sonar, Jennifer French, St. Petersburg, FL, USA – 5, 8, 4, 5, 3, 6, 5, 6, 4, ; 46

**Division B Circle **

F18 (One Design – 12 Boats)

1. C2, F18, Taylor Reiss, Panama City, FL, USA – 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, ; 6

2. Nacra MKII, F18, Sandra Tartaglino, Tiverton, RI, USA – 1, 9, 2, 3, 2, ; 17

3. None, F18, Woody Cope / Laura Muma, Flowery Branch, GA, USA – 8, 2, 5, 2, 3, ; 20

4. Unclean, F18, David Ingram, Clermont, FL, USA – 7, 5, 4, 4, 4, ; 24

5. Dynamic Sailing, F18, Todd Riccardi, Quincy, MA, USA – 3, 4, 6, 5, 13/DNS, ; 31

J/70 (One Design – 20 Boats)

1. Catapult, J/70, Joel Ronning, Minneapolis, MN, USA – 1, 4, 4, 1, 1, 2, 1, 6, 2, 2, ; 24

2. Rascal, J/70, Will Welles, Portsmouth, RI, USA – 3, 6, 3, 5, 3, 1, 8, 10, 4, 1, ; 44

3. Menace, J/70, Kerry Klingler, Larchmont, NY, USA – 6, 19, 2, 7, 4, 8, 3, 4, 1, 4, ; 58

4. Surge, J/70, Jeff Perrini, USA – 2, 16, 5, 3, 2, 5, 4, 1, 3, 21/DNS, ; 62

5. Lifted, J/70, Jim Cunningham, Tiburon, CA, USA – 9, 1, 13, 4, 21/OCS, 7, 5, 5, 6, 3, ; 74

Melges 24 (One Design – 8 Boats)

1. New Wave, Melges 24, Martin Kullman, St. Petersburg, FL, USA – 1, 1, 3, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 9/DNS, ; 21

2. Straight Up, Melges 24, David King, Bradenton, FL, USA – 5, 3, 2, 3, 2, 4, 4, 3, 1, 1, ; 28

3. Hot Mess, Melges 24, Rob Britts, St. Petersburg, FL, USA – 3, 4, 5, 2, 3, 2, 2, 4, 4, 3, ; 32

4. Firewater, Melges 24, George Haynie, Tampa, FL, USA – 4, 5, 1, 4, 4, 6, 3, 2, 3, 2, ; 34

5. Mojito, Melges 24, Catharine Evans, Annapolis, MD, USA – 6, 7, 6, 5, 5, 3, 5, 5, 5, 9/DNS, ; 56

**Division C Circle **

Wavelength 24 (One Design – 6 Boats)

1. Mal de Mer, Wavelength 24, Richard Karran, Apollo Beach, FL, USA – 1, 2, 1, 1, 1, 2, ; 8

2. Whattaride, Wavelength 24, Chris Cyrul, Hixson, TN, USA – 2, 5, 2, 2, 3, 1, ; 15

3. Schock Therapy, Wavelength 24, Christopher Woodle, St Petersburg, FL, USA – 3, 1, 5, 4, 4, 4, ; 21

4. Speed Racer, Wavelength 24, Matt Dubois, Grosse Ile, MI, USA – 5, 3, 6, 3, 2, 3, ; 22

5. Whatta Schock, Wavelength 24, Bob Sheppard, London, OH, USA – 6, 4, 4, 5, 6, 5, ; 30

PHRF 1 (PHRF – 8 Boats)

1. Warrior, Tripp 38, Grant Dumas, St. Petersburg, FL, USA – 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 1, 3.5, ; 19.5

2. Panic Button, Farrier 26, Todd/Ryan Howe, Rochester, NY, USA – 6, 4, 6, 1, 1, 1, 1, 5, 3.5, ; 28.5

3. Madcow2, B Boats 32, Dave German / Ed Ruark, Tampa, FL, USA – 5, 5, 5, 2, 3, 3, 3, 2, 2, ; 30

4. No Limit, Farr 395, Neal Burns & Robert Hobbs, Tampa, FL, USA – 3, 3, 4, 4, 6, 5, 4, 3, 1, ; 33

5. Wired, Farr 395, Allen Thomas, Tampa, FL, USA – 4, 1, 3, 6, 4, 9/DNF, 5, 4, 5, ; 41

PHRF 2 (PHRF – 13 Boats)

1. Semper Fi, J/29, Raymond Mannix, Largo, FL, USA – 1, 3, 2, 1, 2, 1, 3, 1, 1, ; 15

2. Twisted Fate, Olson 30, Robert Bozeman, St. Petersburg, FL, USA – 5, 2, 3, 8, 5, 2, 1, 2, 8, ; 36

3. Bay Wolf, S2 9.1, John Brennan, Temple Terrace, FL, USA – 3, 8, 5, 6, 1, 3, 2, 6, 4, ; 38

4. Celebration, Olson 29, Mike Kayusa, Fort Myers, FL, USA – 4, 7, 9, 3, 3, 4, 4, 3, 6.5, ; 43.5

5. Breeze, Custom 28.4, Val Safiullin, Fort Lauderdale, FL, USA – 2, 1, 1, 2, 4, 7, 9, 14/DNS, 14/DNS, ; 54

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ALEX SALDANHA, of Brazil, is a towering presence on Mauricio Santa Cruz’s Bruschetta, and as the team’s longtime tactician, he’s guided the best J/24 team on the planet to countless wins and four world titles, including the team’s most recent at the 96-boat 2012 Quantum Loop Solutions J/24 World Championship in Rochester, N.Y. Sailing an unfamiliar (but heavily refurbished) 32-year-old charter boat was challenging enough, but the big fleet and unpredictable winds made it no walk in the park. We checked in with Saldanha after winning the worlds for some insight into the team’s big-fleet management.

Click here to see the race tracks.

Knowing the fleet size would be larger than normal, and that it would have a lot of amateur teams, what were your goals before the regatta in terms of staying clean and staying away from crowds?

We think it does not matter whether there are 50 or 100 boats. If you get sucked into the pack, then you’re dead, especially in the J/24 fleet. Our first goal was always speed, then clean air, but that didn’t mean that we would not fight for our place on the starting line. It is easy to get rid of the pack going upwind, but downwind was a nightmare. We decided that we would try to never get caught in a big pack at the start and that proved to be a very wise decision.

What venue and racecourse homework did you do?

To be honest with, we did not do much study about Rochester. We sailed there in 2006 at the North Americans and we “knew” what to expect. It turns out that it was completely different than it was at the North Americans.

Before each race, what’s the team’s routine leading up to the first warning signal?

It depends on the wind. We try to sail as much as we can before the first signal to see the high and low numbers on compass. If it’s blowing too much, it’s just a quick check on everything to save energy and equipment. Most important to us is a very good “look” at the course, trying to find the side with best pressure. Sometimes I stay around 5 to 10 minutes just looking at the course and trying to identify pressure as well as holes.

Knowing that the line would be very long (.5 mile), how did you weight the first expected shift with where you would set up on the line. Given the big shifts, was it dangerous to be too far to one end considering the leverage you’d lose if the shift didn’t come?

A very long line (oh boy … it was long) makes things a lot more difficult, but we never tried to be the first on either side: too dangerous. Because it was so shifty it made it possible to play safe and try to climb your way up the beat. Of course, after a pre-race course check, and after deciding which side of the course we thought would be better, we tried to start as close as possible to that side, but always choosing between middle/left or middle/right.

How was your confidence with the shifts and their predictability?

The shifts had a “pattern”, i.e., right 20 degrees, then back, then left another 15 or 20. We knew that the wind would “come back” if it was not looking good. For us, the most difficult thing was the wind holes. Oh boy, that was a nightmare. At one point we were just looking for wind, regardless of the direction. Pressure was good no matter where it came from.

How aggressively did you fight for an end? In some starts you have favored either end, some happily from the middle, but when you were committed to the end, according to the tracks, it was certainly the correct end every time.

As I said before, we never fought hard for one end. It was always “middle-right” or “middle-left.” Having said that, it was all about finding a good spot to start. Sometimes we knew that one end was the place to start, but it was too crowded so the decision was always as close as possible to that end. And again, those decisions where first based on the side we wanted and starting line angle with the wind.

You guys are obviously fast, but how did you manage the fleet versus the shifts?

We had good speed, but not super speed. Finding pressure was more important, especially when sucked up by a pack. Once we found pressure, we immediately got a 10-degrees lift (on either tack).

How did you make the middle work so often when others struggled?

It’s hard for us to bang a corner. It is not in our nature. This is the way we sail. We never want to win by a mile. I guess this is how we did it, and again finding pressure was key.

How do you know when to check back to the middle?

We have a saying from an old sailor friend: “If you can cross, cross.” This explains pretty much everything I guess …

With regard to downwind fleet management, how far out did you carry on starboard jibe before getting back to the middle of the course?

We struggled every single race going downwind. It was so hard because the pressure was always coming from behind. It was more about controlling and staying between the mark and the opponent than anything else.

Click here to see the race tracks.

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Make a plan.
Mike and Tim wanted to fine tune straight-line boatspeed upwind and test different settings. So we went upwind (for a couple of hours), did just a handful of tacks, and motored back to the harbor at the end of the session. Their plan was specific, so we maximized our time on the water by focusing solely on that plan.

**Get the boats even first.
**Before we raised the sails, we set our sidestay and forestay tensions at base (20/15 on the J/24 with a LOOS gauge) to get the settings of the two boats close. When we got out on the water, we fine-tuned those settings upwind so that our speed and pointing were nearly identical. In addition to rig tension, we compared jib trim and jib halyard tension, the relationship of the boom to centerline, mast butt location, and weight distribution.

Switch skippers.
Once the boats were going about the same, Tim and Mike switched boats. One thing Tim noticed quickly was that Mike’s boat felt heavier. Mike had extra sails, tools, and other gear down below, so I switched over to Tim’s boat to help even up what they deemed about a “Meredith” amount of weight (although Tim admitted that he didn’t get a different feel after I left—it could have just been a different steering feel particular to the boat). Tim and Mike sailed until they felt even once again, and returned to their original boats.

**Then make adjustments.
**Keeping one boat at the base setting, we tried out different rig tensions, jib lead settings, and mast butt locations on the other boat. Trying a more outboard lead setting didn’t have much of an impact on Tim’s boat, but we also weren’t in the ideal conditions for that, which involves much more chop. Mike tried moving his mast butt forward to straighten the mast out, but ultimately found that a farther aft mast butt worked better.

Bring radios.
Being able to communicate over the radio during the straight line testing allowed us to go sail more continuously and coordinate adjustments on the boats without having to stop and regroup every time.

**Keep talking. **
The trimmers on both boats were best placed to constantly relay speed and pointing comparisons to the skippers. They kept talking throughout the session, while the crew farther forward chimed in with pertinent observations not only on speed and pointing, but also on boat set-up and wind conditions.

**Get a take-away. **
Think about what worked or didn’t work on the motor (or sail) in—Mike noted that the farther aft mast butt seemed to work well, which was something he hadn’t been expecting. Tim and Mike’s teams didn’t debrief, but planned to digest their sail overnight and regroup in the morning with some thoughts ahead of the next day’s tuning session.

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20 Years of J/24s

“During the summer of 1975, we had an oft-repeated conversation around the dinner table at our house in Stonington, Conn.,” writes Jeff Johnstone in our April 1997 issue. “Our dad, Rod Johnstone, would try to convince the boys to help him sand the bottom of the 24-footer in the garage.” Read on:

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Team Bogus

I’ve been racing on the same J/24 in Newport, R.I., with the same fantastic skipper and core team for nearly 30 years. By nature of me being the whippersnapper teen when I joined the team way back when, I guess I’ve always been relegated to the bow. It’s my domain, a position I’ll relinquish only when they take the spinnaker pole from my cold, dead hands.

The funny thing about my career in the J/24 class, however, is that as long as I can remember, I’ve never actually sailed on anyone else’s J/24 for a full regatta.

It’s always been the same boat, same job. Forever.

You’d think, after all these years, I’d have a pretty good handle on what was going on behind me on our boat, one rail seat aft at the mastman’s position, but not really. I guess I’ve always been too busy looking forward, focusing on my own responsibilities on the foredeck. On our boat, this second-spot back is where we usually put newcomers and visitors. You know…where they can “contribute” by adjusting the twings while not really getting in the way.

After my experience last week at the Regata Copa Mexico, a must-do J/24 regatta in Riviera Nayarit, Mexico (just north of Puerto Vallarta), however, I’ve reconsidered the mastman cog in the J/24 crewing machine.

The thrown-together crew of which I was part of for this incredible regatta included Chris Snow, of North Sails San Diego, who, as a past national champion, was obviously most qualified to drive. Our talented trimmer was Rich Bowen, designer for North Sails. The tactical genius (and “funny stuff”) would come from the mind of Chuck Allen, who completed the North Sails back-of-the-bus brain trust. That left the front-half of the boat to me, and George Witter, pitman for the 2010 J/24 national champions 3 Big Dogs.

When I learned I’d been slotted into the mastman position, with George on the bow, I was sort of bummed and anxious.

“I’d be better off on the bow,” I thought to myself. “That’s what I know best . . . Maybe I should propose George and I switch.”

But the team roles had been professionally predetermined, so as we sailed out for our first day of practice, I started to mentally go through the mastman’s job list for every maneuver.

This is when I realized I wasn’t exactly sure what the mastman does on other J/24s other than pull the twings and move from side-to-side. On our boat back home, the jobs in the middle of the boat are, for the most part, divided as such: our genoa trimmer trims upwind, then moves to the middle of the boat downwind. The mastman, who helps call puffs upwind, slides to the cockpit to trim the spinnaker. Our tactician handles the twings during the jibes works the pit, and the bowman, of course, handles everything forward of the mast, including halyards. This is, generally, how we’ve always done things.

But after an educational week in the mastman’s seat—a position, I grew to love—I’m convinced we need to change the way we do things back home. And, strangely enough, it all boils down to empowering our mastman. Here’s how things were divided on Bogus:

The trimmer trimmed the jib and the spinnaker. He never stepped forward of the companionway, which eliminated any position shuffles.

The tactician focused on tactics, fleet management, boat balance (weight fore and aft, side to side), parked in the companionway downwind, rolled the boat from the inside, and stuffed the kite in the takedown.

As the mastman, I looked up the course in the pre-start, looking for wind and surprises, called out time aloud in the pre-start, counting every second after 30 seconds. Upwind and down, I called puffs, lulls, and waves and aggressively rolled the boat in tacks and jibes, hiking off the twing line on the jibe roll. I served as human guy and then gathered the foot of the spinnaker before hitting the rail. And when the manure was hitting the fan on the foredeck, I was on halyard backup. I reset sail controls (outhaul and vang) before and after the mark roundings, and moved my weight all over the place to help balance the boat. Now that’s a lot more than just pulling the twings and staying out of the way.

Look for a feature story from the Copa de Mexico Regatta in our June issue.

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