His tan has long since faded, but Paul Nuechterlein still can’t get the smile off his face from that time when he, his son Ross, a crew of his best mates and a mothership catamaran full of rowdy racer-chasers won the regatta of their lives.

The regatta was, of course, the Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta Series Championship in the British Virgin Islands. Months earlier, Nuechterlein and his friends on Never Alone had won their Cal 25 division at the series’ Detroit stop, which scored them a championship berth, a 42-foot bareboat monohull from Sunsail and six days of Caribbean vacation racing.

The unknowns they had to top for the title included Jeff Padnos’ S2 7.9 aces (K2) from Holland, Michigan; Craig Roehl’s Tartan 10 Meat entourage from Chicago; Carolyn Corbett and her Elektra squad of IOD and Viper 640 sailors from Marblehead; and Brad Tindall and Greg Turman’s J/105-racing Texans on TNT. Rounding out the fleet was veteran pro George Szabo from Quantum Sails San Diego. He had nine souls crammed onboard his vessel, three of them pre-teen girls.

K2, Meat, TNT and Never Alone were each sporting motherships laden with friends, so the flotilla was indeed a grand one when it set off from Sunsail’s base in Road Town, Tortola. The itinerary for the racers was simple: Day 1, race around a bunch of islands. Day 2, race to a resort. Day 3, enjoy a lay day at said resort. Day 4, race to a pool, a deserted island and then a dance floor. Day 5, sprint to another anchorage and then buoy race through its mooring field. It would all end with awards on the beach and cannonballs from the upper deck of the legendary Willy T.

That was the plan, and the crew of Never Alone was ready for it. Upon winning their berth back in June, they did what all good race teams do: recon. They got tips on how to locally source materials for a whisker pole, how to get maximum speed from their untunable bareboat and how to get around and through the BVI’s towering islands.

“There was a lot of information available to us to find out which islands we would be sailing to and how to trick out the boat a little bit,” says Ron Sherry the greatest American iceboat racer of our time and Never Alone’s all-purpose crewmember, “what we would need to bring to make our whisker pole and trimming aids and all that kind of stuff.”

They arrived in Tortola with a veritable chandlery of hardware, tools and ropes. And lo and behold, the planning immediately paid off. They had a decent start in the first race, a circumnavigation of the islands Cooper, Ginger and Salt, which at one point had them calling for water at reefs awash.

“We had to really hug the shore with the crashing waves and there were three boats all trying to get as close to those rocks as possible,” says Ross Nuechterlein, Never Alone’s captain for the week. “That was nerve wracking.”

Overlapped as they rounded the top of Ginger Island and turned downwind toward the finish, Never Alone’s preparation was on display. The 14-foot 2×4 they’d crafted into a whisker pole was working its magic, as was its handler, Ken Swetka. They had a sophisticated contraption with multiple handy-billies that gave them multidimensional control of the floppy jib’s profile.

They almost pipped Szabo and his team at the shortened finish.

“Another couple of hundred feet,” says trimmer Tom Dawson, “and we would have had them.”

The next morning, following a morning scramble through the boulders of The Baths—the BVI’s iconic natural wonder—the race committee dispatched the sailors and motherships to their second destination: The Bitter End Yacht Club.

In preparing for this leg, Sherry had called a friend who knew the area well, and his advice was well taken. “He said, ‘just look for the puffs and stay where the pressure is,’” Sherry says.

With another decent start, Never Alone’s navigator Tom Dawson nailed the layline to the first reef, then did the same to the next set of islands—skirting their 10-foot fathom—and then called a perfect layline into Virgin Gorda Sound from a million miles out.

Buoyed by their race win, they were intent on dominating the Hobie Wave racing at Bitter End YC (the race committee didn’t bother recording finishes), the Mount Gay Rum drink recipe contest (close, but no) and the SUP-tow surf challenge (maybe, but again “scoring issues” prevailed). Still they and the flotilla devoured all that Bitter End and Virgin Gorda offered for the lay day: snorkeling reefs, winging off the beach, windsurfing and nighttime tomfoolery.

The idle hours of the lay day, however, were torture for Szabo, who couldn’t put a finger on what was off with his boat. Naturally, he sought advice from the guy winning the regatta. It didn’t help.

“I was standing on the back of our boat at the dock and George was beside himself,” Nuechterlein recalls. “He came over and said, ‘You gotta help me out. There’s something wrong with our boat—the rudders don’t line up. They’re not parallel.’

“So, he then asks, ‘do you mind just going on your wheel and moving it back and forth?’

“I did while he was walking back and forth looking at my rudders. And then he finally says, “Hmm, yours don’t line up either.”

Never Alone carried their mojo straight into the next day’s race to the pit-stop pool at Scrub Island Resort and Marina. To get there, they had to short-tack their way out of Virgin Gorda Sound before weaving through more islands where they once again found themselves nip-and-tuck with Szabo and his family. The San Diegans got the win at Scrub, but Never Alone returned the favor with a runaway victory in afternoon’s second race to Sandy Cay.

With the overall results confirming the top three boats mere points apart, the championship’s final leg was a win-or-lose deal for the Detroiters. To win, they had to first navigate the current-and wind shift-riddled Great Thatch Cut. The Cut is divided by a tall island, so there were only two strategic choices: leave it to starboard and run the gauntlet or leave it to port and work the St. John’s shore.

The latter option rarely works, but Szabo went for it. As did Never Alone, the two of them split from the leaders as they entered the cut. Szabo, however, centered on the rhumb line too early while Never Alone kissed St. John’s and slam-dunked the fleet with truly astonishing upwind boatspeed.

They had their Sunsail 42 smoking. Having applied their own telltales to both the mainsail and the jib was crucial, as was their trimming technique and the use of their handy-billies.

“The jib tracks on these boats are too far forward and too far inboard,” Swetka says. “It’s perfect for ergonomically walking around the boat with a bathing suit on, but it’s ridiculous for racing. So, when we were going upwind I always pulled the jib outboard and back a little bit.”

Ross Nuechterlein, alone at the helm, had his work cut out keeping the boat up to speed, but his Cal 25 skills were well applied.

“Anytime you start pinching with these boats, you just completely stop,” he says. “When you load them up to get moving out of a tack you can really feel the whole boat going sideways.”

As a first-time helmsman of a 42-foot charter boat, he adds, it was especially good having his wife Karly in the middle. “On the Cal, you have two people behind you and one person right in front of you so you can hear what everyone’s saying,” he says. “But not on this boat, so it was great to have her there funneling information to me about what’s going on at the front of the boat.”

The buoy racing portion in The Bight at Norman Island was ultimately a one-race dud, but Never Alone won that one too, and so, before shot-skis, jumps and another late night with their new friends on the Meat mothership, they were crowned Caribbean Champions. And there, on the sands of Norman Island, emerged the mile-long smile that is stuck on Nuechterlein’s face.

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Blink, and the season is over. Blink again and the new season is underway and full speed ahead. We are, of course, talking about the Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta Series, which kicks off its 37th year this week in St. Petersburg, Florida, with nearly 200 boats across 11 one-design classes, a strong ORC division, and two days of distance races for Tampa Bay’s avid PHRF sailors.

Six of the regatta’s one-design classes will be racing for coveted championship trophies, including the L30s for their North American Championship. Sailors of the Hobie 33, S2 7.9, Sonar, Windmill and Melges 24 classes will vie for their midwinter titles. The regatta will also serve as a North American Sailing Series qualifier for the Melges 24 class, which continues to enjoy a resurgence as one-design sailing’s most exciting keelboat.

As Tampa Bay continues to be an emergent American hotspot for handicap racing, the budding ORC fleet has been growing its ranks with new owners embracing the international measurement rule. Nine entries ranging in size from Bob Harkrider’s Aerodyne 38 to John Cooper’s Cape 31 showcase the diversity of the boats in this exciting fleet. Harkrider’s Shark Rider was the top PHRF team in St. Pete in 2024 and they’ve made the switch to this more competitive environment where they’ll be facing, among many others, Ian Hill’s team on the Melges 32 Sitella, which has recently returned from racing in Europe and is on top form.

While the regatta’s ORC entries will enjoy three days of buoy racing, PHRF teams—divided into Spinnaker and Cruiser/Racer fleets—will be challenged on Saturday and Sunday with a long course that takes them to various turning marks on Tampa Bay. These fleets will start near the St. Pete Pier each morning before finishing much later the day, in time for the evening parties at St. Petersburg YC, the regatta’s longtime host, which has opened its doors and docks for hundreds of visiting sailors.

While larger keelboat boats have long been the core of this St. Petersburg winter classic, organizers have progressively included a handful of popular dinghy classes that now deliver the excitement and vibe of small-boat sailing in larger numbers. The Melges 15, only a few years old, but the hottest two-person dinghy in the US, has been enjoying 100-boat regattas on Florida’s east coast at the new Melges Watersports Center.

The Regatta Series’ first event is also a prelude for the Lightning class’s winter Southern Circuit, which steps off in St. Pete in mid-March before the sailors hitch up their boats and move to Savannah the following week. Progressive growth initiatives over the past several years to attract young sailors to the class will be evident at the regatta this weekend in St. Pete, with many teams made up of post-collegiate sailors that are driving the class’ “U32” movement. Jenna Probst, recognized last week by US Sailing for her and teammate Maya Weber’s organization of the U32 Lightning Class Invitational Regatta in Ontario, Canada, last summer, will be one of them, racing in St. Pete against many of the class’s longtime legends and mentors, including past world champion David Starck and Hall of Fame inductee Augie Diaz.

With 25 entries at press time, the Lightning contingent is now the largest fleet at the SWRS St. Petersburg regatta, and the class will rejoin the series in Annapolis in May and Marblehead in July. 

Sailing off the beach in Downtown St. Pete will be the A Class catamarans and Windmills. The A Class catamaran, considered to be the most high-performance singlehanded multihull in the world, will have two separate fleets on one course: the foilers and the classics. Among entries in the foilers is past Rolex Yachtsman of the Year and A Class World Champion Ravi Parent, who has been campaigning equally high-performance doublehanded catamarans at international events over the past year. He will no doubt be the one to watch, as will local ace O.H. Rodgers, who won the classic division in 2024 with three race wins in four races—most of those race wins by large margins.

The J/70 fleet, with 18 teams currently on the scratch sheet has the greatest geographical spread among its entries, with teams hailing from as far away as Michigan and Minnesota, Missouri and Washington State. The promise of warm water and winds that make Tampa Bay a winter sailing mecca is undoubtedly a strong draw for these teams, but the level of competition is also an easy sell. Among the fleet are many top amateur and professional sailors, including Rolex Yachtsman of the Year nominee and two-time world champion (J/24 and J/22) skipper Travis Odenbach, who will be racing with Canadian Kelly Hansen.

Odenbach will also be the feature guest at Sailing World’s Speaker Series, immediately following the opening competitors briefing on Thursday evening at St. Petersburg Yacht Club. The club will host the Regatta Series’ legendary parties each evening after racing, with a full agenda of activities for sailors, friends and families.

On Sunday evening, following the conclusion of races and awards, event organizers will select one overall team among class winners to represent St. Petersburg at the Helly Hansen Sailing World Caribbean Championship in the British Virgin Islands in October, where they will face the 2024 champion, and challengers from the four other Series regattas.

Blink and we’ll be in the BVI.

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No matter how you serve it, the essence of Barbados always radiates.

Sir John Gay Alleyne, credited for perfecting this versatile Bajan spirit back in the 18th Century, would likely lean neat, but were he alive today to judge the Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta’s Mount Gay Rum Recipe Contest, he would no doubt cast his vote for sailing mixologist Mark Macke’s Low Tide Old Fashioned, our undisputed 2024 winner in St. Petersburg (and, frankly, the best of the entire series).

The ingredients of Macke’s winning concoction were curious yet simple, but the delivery to the judging panel’s palate was complex. The submitted recipe card read: 2 ounces of Mount Gay Black Barrell, 1/3 ounces banana liquor, 5 drops Angostura Bitters and 4 drops Peychaud’s Aromatic Cocktail Bitters.

How to make Macke’s Low Tide Old Fashioned is even simpler: mix ingredients in a stirring glass, then dress your cocktail glass with a dark simple syrup and generous ice ball, layer the rum and add the banana liquor. Dust with a grate of cinnamon and garnish with a cinnamon stick, dried banana chip and Luxardo Maraschino cherry (worth the price).

Sit back, sip, savor and let your worries go out with the tide.

Macke, now retired and embracing his new mixology hobby with gusto, is the official bartender and trimmer on board Michael Cichon’s Beneteau Oceanis 41 Va Bene. When he envisions new recipes, he says, his approach is to reimagine the classics from a sailor’s point of view.

Rum, however, is a rare ingredient among the classics of weathered bartender’s bible, but therein lies Macke’s opportunity to get creative. He doesn’t just substitute a spirit and slap on a new name; he explores and tests every element of it. “That’s what is exciting to me,” he says. “It has to have fresh ingredients and it also has to be pretty. You want to pick it up, look at it and say, ‘I really want to drink this,’ and the ratios have to be right.”

When he crafted his award-winning Low Tide Old Fashioned, he knew nothing of Mount Gay’s Black Barrel.

“I bought a bottle and wrote up my own tasting notes. I love Old Fashions but I wanted to take it in a different direction that brought it to the Caribbean.”

Macke’s creation for this year’s contest, he says, may just be better than the Low Tide. “It’s more complex and more nostalgic,” is all he will reveal, and it’s been properly vetted by his in-house tasting team (his wife and daughter). His daughter has advised him to stop perfecting perfect, but Macke can’t help himself.

“It’s now down to just a few minor tweaks,” he says, “but everyone’s happy with this one.”

And for those with aspirations of dethroning Va Bene’s Cocktail King, all he can say is, “I’m ready. Bring it.”

Macke and registered mixologists will be posted up at the St. Petersburg YC’s Ball Room during the post-racing party. Entrants (a sign-up link is at the QR code above) will be provided Mount Gay Rum and basic mixers, but mixologists are encouraged to bring their own special ingredients. With limited mixing stations available, selected teams will be announced at the Skippers Meeting on Thursday evening, and on the regatta’s social media channels.

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We all know what happens when six champion one-design keelboat teams meet in the British Virgin Islands to race for glory in 43-foot bareboats of dubious equality. It’s a whole lotta fun, frustration and challenges by the day, but it’s one heck of a sailing adventure that comes with an equal-size rum buzz. For my teammates from the J/35 Falcon, winners of the 2024 Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta Series in Detroit, and present in our signature straw hats, that’s how this Caribbean Championship plays out.  

Our BVI adventure begins at the Sunsail base in Road Town, Tortola, where the first order of business is to source a whisker pole for the boat’s furling jib. Fellow team member Jim Allen and I set out to recon nearby boatyards, where a friendly charter captain merely wishes us luck in securing one. So, it’s Plan B: With a trip to a local lumber yard, we score 14 feet of two-by-four. Our crewmate Freddie Blackmer drills for four hours, and rigs the lines and blocks he’s packed with him.

With our whisker pole approved by the regatta’s “technical committee,” the bareboat’s bottom cleaned by local divers, and the vessel properly provisioned, we’re as ready as we can be. Over on the mothership catamaran, which is packed with friends and ­family, the Straw Hat Crew is eager for whatever comes our way.

The first race of the weeklong island-hopping regatta is our first chance to see how we measure up against the competition. The long first leg is an upwind beat, which is a learning curve, to say the least. Our baggy Dacron sails certainly aren’t what we’re used to trimming, but we work them hard, playing the vang and halyard ­tension in the puffs, and easing everything in the lulls. 

The charter captain we’d met during our pole search had tipped us off to which way to go on this leg, and he was spot-on, but Annapolis’ Team Mirage—two-time defending champs led by Cedric Lewis and his partner Fred Salvesen—is right on our tail when we score our first race win at the finish inside Tortola’s Trellis Bay. We celebrate with a few adult beverages and dancing by the fire on the beach, comfortable with the knowledge that we had a competitive boat.

After spelunking the boulders of The Baths the next morning, it’s a bareboat battle to Leverick Bay, in Virgin Gorda Sound. We’re late for the broad-reach start, tangled with Team Casting Couch, from Annapolis, but we battle like heck searching for puffs over the next few hours and score a third. It’s a keeper, but Team Mirage finishes ahead of us.

Our plan for this night is to win the Mount Gay Rum ­drink-recipe contest with a BVI version of the Hummer (a nod to Bayview YC’s legendary bartender Jerome Adams). But ice cream is nowhere to be found, and our provisioning expedition returns with half-and-half, vanilla extract and ice cubes. The results are terrible. Expedition No. 2 returns with a bizarre ­rum-raisin, ­lactose-free, fat-free healthy alternative, and in the end, the judges agree that rum and ice cream is a winning combination.

Having overserved Hummer test batches, we have a crack-of-0800 race start to the island of Anegada the next morning. And what do you know? We’re cozy with the Casting Couchies again, but after a long and fast race, we break free and score another win. Mirage is fourth. Time to bar-hop and chow down some fresh lobster.

Scrub Island is our next ­destination—a long upwind slog across the Caribbean Sea and a second-place finish. Team Mirage is back in fourth place again, and we start thinking that maybe, just maybe, we can pull off an upset. It’s not looking good for the champs.

Popping into the Scrub Island Resort for the night is a welcome change from life on the mooring ball. Real showers, shore power, and tank refills get the Straw Hat race boat and mothership crews back to civility. And here I finally have a chance to chat with our PRO Dick Neville, who maybe senses that we’re taking this whole thing too seriously.

“It’s supposed to be fun,” he says. To treat it otherwise is the wrong idea. “It’s not the North Americans.”

I smile politely. But I’m not buying all of what he’s selling. We race to win, right? And why is he telling me this? Do I look stressed? We’re having a ball, but honestly, we are here for the double: We want the title and the party. But I know what he’s getting at, and his words linger in my head as I wander back to the poolside bar to hang out with the crew.

Scrub Island to Sandy Cay is the next challenge, and the angle is a beam-ish reach. We haven’t yet used our two-by-four pole contraption, and while we nail the start and jump into a big lead, deploying the cumbersome piece of lumber takes a good 10 minutes.

Team Omaha, led by BVI regular Stephen Hosch, is roaring up from behind while we fumble with our pole. We deny them several attempts to sail over the top of us, but in fighting the battle, we lose the war, leaving Team Mirage to run free to ­capture its first win.

Our lead is now down to 3 points, with one leg to go. A third for the final race is all we need, but at Foxy’s bar on Jost Van Dyke, Neville lets us in on a secret: He intends to run windward/leeward races on the final day. That changes the math, but we’re up for the challenge.

And lo and behold, we’re cozied up with the Casting Couchies on the starting line again, and this time we get ourselves into trouble. We’re last across the line, with our bow pointed to a faraway finish at Norman Island. Third is the best we can do, but Team Mirage pockets another win. We’re now down to a single-point lead before one final two-lap ­windward/leeward exercise. The windward leg is only 0.7 miles. This one has to be won in the start.

We set up for the favored pin, which is the giant race-committee power catamaran, dive low to kill time, but as we wind up to start, I’ve got too many wraps on the winch and cannot wind it in quick enough. Team Omaha rolls us, and all we can do is bail out and hope for a shift or ­better pressure.

We Hail Mary to the right, and when we tack, Omaha and Mirage cross our bow, in that order. The Mirage crew demonstrates its champion crew work, superb driving, and award-­winning adjustable whisker pole to overtake Team Omaha and complete the most amazing comeback ever in the history of this Caribbean Championship.

Upon reflection of the outcome, I realize that Neville, like the Oracle in The Matrix, had given me the winning advice, but perhaps I did not heed it well enough. The Straw Hat Crew had plenty of fun, but maybe, just maybe, we should’ve dialed down our focus on winning the darn thing. It’s the BVI. Relax and enjoy. That is the point.

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With the last drops of Mount Gay Rum poured on another gangbusters regatta in Annapolis, Maryland, in May, with more than 200 boats, the organizing squad of the Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta Series packed their belongings and headed straight to Detroit’s Bayview YC for a long overdue re-addition to the regatta series.

It had been a good 14 years since the series called on Detroit sailors, and for this edition, the sailors answered with the same high enthusiasm of 2010. With nearly 100 boats scattered across Lake St. Clair, there was no “Lake St. Stupid” this time around. The regatta opened with a spectacular day of sun and breeze and continued from there, delivering tight racing, especially among the regatta’s big three fleets: the J/120s, J/111s and J/35s.

The sailors of the regional J/35 class put on a great show with its growing fleet. Most of these now-decades-old 35-footers have been returned to racing form, and the top three were locked in ­boat-on-boat battles over three days. At the start of the final race, Mike Welch’s team on Falcon was sitting on a 1-point lead, but an OCS had them clawing their way back to win the race and the series by 2 points over their arch rivals on Bill Wildner’s Mr. Bill’s Wild Ride.

“That was quite a ­comeback, and there’s definitely luck involved,” Welch says. “When you’re over early, the wind literally goes out of your sails, but our crew kept it together and stayed positive.”

Falcon’s stellar perseverance earned them the regatta’s overall title and a berth at the Helly Hansen Sailing World Caribbean Championship in October, a battle of regatta champions in the British Virgin Islands on Sunsail-provided 41-footers.

The Regatta Series continued its Great Lakes tour with a stop in Chicago once again, where the Windy City made good on its reputation. With 150 boats across 16 classes, including several fleets of distance racers, competitors enjoyed three days of racing, and here it was Brian Kaczor’s team on the Tartan 10 Erica that was plenty ready for the big breeze of the final day. After six challenging races in total, Erica’s winning margin was a single point, and it was this point that they had fought for in the final race. The class win also earned Kaczor’s team the regatta’s overall title and the BVI berth.

“We hung on to first place, barely,” Kaczor says. “We had a tough day with tactics and my driving, but we were able to make up a lot of it on the ­downwind stuff.”

Their downwind speed in top-end conditions, Kaczor says, was all down to the crew: Corey Fast, Christa Georgeson, Scott Melanson, Seth Morrell, Brian Nelson and Chuck O’Donnell. “They were the key in the last race. We had to catch one more boat, and there was no question that the chute had to go up to catch that one boat in front of us,” he says. “The crew was amazing, and was able to ­handle that and pull it off.”

Marblehead has long served as the final regatta of the US series, and this year’s edition was hosted by the Eastern YC with support from Boston and Corinthian. In the days prior, the groms of Junior Race Week had been skunked with only one race scored, but the wind gods favored the adults with a challenging day of breeze on the opening day for the bulk of the fleets. With 161 boats spread across three race circles, three classes competed for their New England Championship titles: Sailors on Viper 640s, J/70s and Town Class, and Lightnings vied for their Atlantic Coast Championship.

The regional J/105 fleet has always been strong, and it was a relatively new team in Matthew Herbster’s No Quarter who played the spoiler and left with the ultimate spoils: the BVI Berth. As a group of friends who have been racing with or against one another in different classes, together they’ve been quick to get up to speed, winning the regatta in what is now their ­second season with the boat.

They battled with perennial champ Merlin throughout the regatta, and Herbster says that the win was bittersweet when racing was abandoned on the final day. “Merlin beat us on the water, but one bad spinnaker set [on Saturday] set them in,” he says. “We wanted to go out and win today, but we were robbed of that [opportunity] because of the weather. But we are happy to go back out with them and settle the score.”

On No Quarter and headed to the BVI with Sunsail in October were Jonathan Dragonas, Julie Femino, Noah Flaherty, Ted Johnson and Chris Small. They’re confident that they’ll take their collective skills to the Caribbean and do just fine against the regatta series’ five other challengers and the defenders. According to the team, they’ll go down there and do what they do. They’ll figure out how to sail the boat, get it fast, and have fun.

With No Quarter finalizing the BVI lineup, they’ll also be facing Steve and Catherine Boho’s Melges 24 team on The 300 (St. Petersburg winners), Cate Terhune’s team on the J/70 Casting Couch (Annapolis), and the defending champions of Cedric Lewis and Fredrik Salvesen’s Team Mirage.

The post Regatta Series Delivers The Goods appeared first on Sailing World.

On June 8, 2024, ahead of the Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta Series at Marblehead Race Week, the Widnall Prize was offered by the International Class (IOD) Fleet of Marblehead. The magnificent silver tray will be the perpetual trophy for the winner of the International Class at the annual regatta.  

The prize is dedicated to Bill Widnall, a legendary sailor in Marblehead, nationally, and internationally.  Widnall joined the Marblehead IOD fleet in 1966, and since that time has set a standard of excellence that is unlikely to be challenged by any future sailor.  To date, he has won twenty-seven Marblehead season championships, twenty-eight Marblehead Race Weeks, and ten International Class World Championships.

In addition, Widnall deserves much of the credit for bringing a new generation of sailors to Marblehead, top-flight competitors, including many who also won IOD World Championships – John Wales, Steve Wales, Charlie Hamlin, Ted Cook, Jud Smith, Bobby McCann, Peter Warren, and Bruce Dyson. Bill is a fierce competitor on the water, but always a generous, supportive, and gentle mentor ashore. He is a true sportsman who has been a quiet leader of the World Class for over fifty years (and counting.)

The prize is a beautiful sterling silver tray with a roped edge. It is hand-engraved in classic style. Across the upper part of the trophy are highlights of Bill’s achievements in the Class, the places where the number Bill’s accomplishments would be engraved in the trophy are intentionally blank – they will be engraved later—for Widnall is still sailing, and hopes to increment his accomplishments in each of those categories in the future.

The Marblehead Race Association and IOD Class will award this prize for the first time on July 28, 2024 at the conclusion of this year’s Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta at Marblehead Race Week. 

The post Widnall Prize Announced for Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta at Marblehead Race Week appeared first on Sailing World.

FINAL RESULTS

REGATTA PHOTO GALLERY

Brian Kaczor’s Team on Erica was ready for the big breeze coming their way on the third and final day of the Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta Series in Chicago, but they were unprepared for how difficult it would be to defend their lead and pull off a win in the ever-competitive Tartan 10 fleet. After six challenging races in all ranges of wind, Team Erika’s winning margin was a single point, and it was this point they had fight for in the final race.

“We hung on to first place, barely,” Kaczor said. “We had a tough day with tactics and my driving, but we were able to make up a lot of it on the downwind stuff.”

Their downwind speed in top-end conditions, Kaczor says, was all down to the crew (Corey Fast, Christa Georgeson, Scott Melanson, Seth Morrell, Brian Nelson, and Chuck O’Donnell). “They were the key in the last race. We had to catch one more boat and there was no question that the chute had to go up to catch that one boat in front of us,” he said. “The crew was amazing, and was able to handle that and pull it off.”

The class win also earned Kaczor’s team the regatta’s overall title and a berth at the Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta Series Caribbean Championship in October, hosted by Sunsail in the British Virgin Islands. The team will face winners from the regatta series’ other stops, as well as the 2023 defending champion.

For many sailors in the fleet, Sunday’s strong winds were reminiscent of Friday’s. A fast-building northwest wind pushed boats, gear, and crew to their limits, with more than one team reporting breakages and blown sails. Still, the Chicago and Corinthian YCs gave the sailors a full slate of races and enough stories to share all summer. This edition of the Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta will certainly be remembered for its testing but tasty champagne conditions. Beneteau 36.7 skipper Robert Nelson’s lasting memory was challenges his team on Free Radical faced in the final race while persevering to win the class.

“It was incredibly close racing,” Nelson said. “The biggest key for us on Friday was keeping the boat under control and under the chute. We made out that day and were 1-2-1. Keeping your air clean and the boat under control. When it’s as windy as it was, with the Beneteau 36.7, the winning technique is the helm and main trimmer being in sync. This was some of the most competitive racing I’ve experienced in this fleet and I’ve been in the fleet since 1996.”

On the One-Design White Circle, Andy Graff’s Team Exile experienced its share of broaches, as they had on Friday, and had a tough day today but pulled off a 4-point win. “We entered the day with a 1-point lead and in the first race we just covered the boats near us in the standings. In the last race I didn’t know the scores of the boats behind us, but we didn’t want to put a kite up—knew we just had to finish. The last race was a hard race…we were just trying to get around without hurting anything or breaking anything.”

In the J/105 class, John Kalanik’s Pura Vida pulled off an impressive win in the big breeze, earning the team’s first win in the boat. “We went in leading and had two good races and were still leading,” says Jim Elvart, Kalanik’s helmsman for the weekend—they trade off between helm and mainsail trim. “But in the last race we hit the weather mark. We were last for a bit and had to come back to save enough points. Over the weekend we had a few great experiences, but this is a great first regatta win for this new team.”

The regatta’s distance racers were again treated to 20 miles of fast sailing that had the first boats across the line after less than four hours. Thomas Papoutsis J/133 Renegade won its second race of two to win its ORC 1 division; Ben Wilson’s Rambler won its ORC 2 division and Tomasz Kokocinski’s Koko Loco 2 survived the day to enjoy a 1-point win in PHRF 1. Ben White’s Farr 38 Radiance was the top boat in PHRF 2 with a second in the day’s race, which was won by Branwell Lepp’s J/105, It Wasn’t Me.

Action on the Green Circle continued into the final race with Scot and Yvonne Ruhlander’s team on Mojo strolling away with the class win with a 10-point margin over Tom Weber’s La Tempete.

Michael Hendries’s J/109 Bull was a standout performer this weekend with four wins in six races. Hendrie has been racing the boat for 14 seasons as its helmsman under the ownership of local sailor Jim Murray [Calisto], but this was his first win as the new owner and driver of the boat, renamed Bull.

“It was a relief to win,” Hendrie said. “I didn’t sail much last year and to come to this regatta and pull it all together was a relief because we started with a few mishaps on Friday—our jib halyard shackle broke twice and that set us back initially.”

Bull was down by 3 points going into the day, but they made their move to the top of the scoreboard with a win in the first race. “We had a great start, tacked, crossed the fleet and knocked it out from there. It was shifty, though, and we played the shifts really well in that race.

“But the next two races we did not have great starts—were over early on the third one, came back and were able to claw our way back in that big breeze. We are good and set up well for the heavy breeze, we’re comfortable in it. When the big breeze comes on, we were able to minimize the errors and sail fast.”

Shawn and Jerry O’Neill’s Sydney 38 Eagle won its ORC division; Tod and Heidi Patton’s J/122e Blondie was the top PHRF Spinnaker winner and Jim Murray’s Calisto Racing [Hestia] was the top J/70, winning four of six races to beat out Laura Sigmond’s Norboy by 5 points. Norboy was the top Mixed-Plus J/70 team and Bob Willis’ Rip Rullah was top Corinthian.

Roman Plutenko and Csilla Gal were the regatta’s top ILCA sailors (6 and 4, respectively) with three races counted.

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With the 2023 Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta Series bidding farewell, and thanks to the sun-soaked action in St. Petersburg, Florida, in February, the series swapped coasts in March for the second stop in San Diego, birthplace of West Coast civilization and the California burrito, and a mecca of year-round sailing that churns out champions. Ninety-six boats across 13 fleets set out from the San Diego and Coronado yacht clubs each morning to the dual racecourses of San Diego Bay and the vast Pacific. On the ocean course, local Beneteau 36.7 sailors witnessed one of the greatest upsets in modern class history when Peter Cochran’s Rode Rage crew halted the 11-year regatta winning streak of Chick Pyle and his team on Kea. It was indeed a battle of the Bennies that came down to the final races. In the first, Rode Rage escaped from a crowded start and put up its first win of the day while Kea had to battle back from a botched start to finish third. It was enough for Cochran and company to simply cover Kea in the final race, and it was all said and done—until next time, Pyle says.

The San Diego regatta also featured Para Sailing for the first time, with Martin 16s and Hansa 303s trading tacks in the protection of Coronado’s Glorietta Bay. It was a sight to behold, with Hansa skipper Jim Thweatt using his Hansa series win to boost awareness of Para Sailing locally and abroad.

Next up came Annapolis, a hive of one-design racing that makes this Chesapeake Bay capital the sailing-crazed town it is. With 154 entries across 13 fleets, the regatta encompassed the most popular one-designs of the area: J/105s, J/22s and Viper 640s. It also featured the inclusion of two new-to-the-regatta doublehanded dinghy fleets: the modern Melges 15 and the classic Wayfarer Dinghy class, which has been active for decades in the US but assembled in Annapolis to join the fun and a challenging weekend of races.  

Chicago is never one to be outsized. True to form, the only freshwater regatta of the series welcomed 162 teams and 15 fleets, as well as the DragonForce 65 remote-­control racers, who traditionally provide the Saturday-night party entertainment. The addition of ILCAs and a special appearance by six-time Formula Kite world champion Daniela Moroz at the regatta’s Speaker Series were highlights for the area’s junior sailors. In the Windy City, the breeze cooperated for the most part and allowed the J/70s—the regatta’s biggest fleet—to put six quality races on the scoreboard over three days. Richard Wizel’s Rowdy won by an astonishing 15 points in a fleet stacked deep with talent; many teams were using multiple stops of the series as stepping stones to the J/70 World Championship in St. Petersburg in late October.

Straight from the bustle of Chicago’s vibrant lakefront, the series transitioned to the sleepy seaside town of Marblehead, Massachusetts, on the outskirts of Boston. With a harbor jam-packed with boats and locals soaking in the finest and waning days of their New England summer, the place was abuzz with 142 entries across 10 classes. On the waters of Massachusetts Bay, the Viper 640, J/70 and Town class fleets gathered to contest their New England Championship titles, with the big-fleet Vipers pulling in a top-shelf Canadian contingent. The return of the Lightning class to this edition of Marblehead Race Week—after a nearly 40-year absence—was celebrated by all, including National Sailing Hall of Fame inductee and local legend Dave Curtis, who made a rare appearance for the awards to present his trophy to Etchells fleet winner Thomas Hornos and his crew on Bob, which pulled a double by also winning the fleet’s Mixed-Plus Trophy.

The Mixed-Plus initiative is aimed at getting more women onto keelboats and into key roles. The effort began in St. Petersburg in 2022 and has been embraced across the sport and at each of the Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta Series stops. Inclusion and diversity among the regatta’s sailors and fleets is the goal of sailing events director Sarah Renz. As the colors cannon boomed from Corinthian YC’s yardarm on a beautiful Sunday summer evening, the series drew to a fitting end, sun-kissed from start to finish and celebrated coast to coast, a national regatta series more diverse and exciting than ever.

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The Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta Series Caribbean Championship kicked off with the traditional opening Islands Race, a challenging loop around Cooper and Salt islands in the stunning BVI.

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Final Results

The 2023 edition of the Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta Series at Marblehead Race Week will be remembered for its challenging light wind but more so for the time local skipper Carolyn Corbet and her teammates outsmarted and outsailed the venerable champions of Bill Widnall’s International One Design Javelin. On the fourth and final day of Marblehead Race Week, Corbet’s team on Elektra won two come-from-behind races to win the regatta and then its Overall Championship title.

“We started the day only 1 point out of first and we’d been going back and forth with Bill—who’s won this regatta for who knows how long,” Corbet says.

In Sunday’s first of two races, Elektra rounded the first mark third, and with the quick sail-handling skills and sharp execution of this team of twenty-somethings, Corbet quickly  jibed, “jumped the fleet,” and at the next mark Elektra took control of the race.

“Ten boat lengths out from the leeward mark we were able to jibe on to starboard, and then we were able to get them [Widnall’s Javelin] on starboard,” Corbet says. “So, we were able to send them off the layline. I have an amazing crew that can pull off that kind of jibing, get the spinnaker down, and then jibe around the mark. We barely missed a beat and that right there probably won us the regatta.”

Corbet, of Marblehead, has been sailing the loaner International One Design for three summers and her team has proven to be a quick study of a boat that can take a lifetime to master, but Corbet says she’s had plenty of help from Widnall and others, and their success this weekend truly comedowns to the collective talent of her teammates.

As winners of their class, but Corbet, Rob Brower, Becker Ewing, Elizabeth Lonergan and Sandra Nygren were selected to represent Marblehead at the Helly Hansen Sailing World Caribbean Championship in the British Virgin Islands in October, where they will race against other overall winners from previous stops of the Regatta Series, as well as the 2022 regatta’s champion.

On the same circle as the IODs, a similar battle was playing out in the J/105 class where Charlie Garrard’s Merlin and Rick Dexter’s Brouhaha set off from their respective moorings in Marblehead Harbor with only 1 point between them. The goal of the day was a simple one for Garrard and his experienced crew: keep Brouhaha close and use their boatspeed to finish the job.

When the seabreeze finally filled after a long morning postponement, the two teams got right to work, tailing each other in the prestart and striking the starting line overlapped. Merlin had the advantage and Brouhaha tacked away. The race from there was all Merlin’s to lose.

“We just had to keep them close and we had to finish ahead of them,” Garrard says. “Even though they tacked away, we felt comfortable going left where there was more wind.”

The pair finished 2-4 and Merlin’s lead grew to 3 points, but in the final race, after leading off the start again, Garrard says they were on the downwind leg and crash jibed to avoid another boat, which lost them one place in the race, but fortunately nothing more—the final winning margin was 2 point and Merlin’s winning streak remains intact.

“I think we got off the line clean every day and the boat is going great upwind,” Garrard says. “As always, it helps to have a great crew.”

The return of the Lightning fleet was marked as another notable moment in Race Week history. According to class leader Bob Shapiro, it has been nearly 40 years since the International Lightning Class has competed at Race Week, and fittingly it was the two “old-timers” of the fleet that took second and first places after five races. At the top of the standings with two race wins was local legend Charles “CH” Ritt with Shapiro as runner up and winner of the weekend’s final race.

The Rhodes 19 Class sailed another competitive regatta with 22 boats providing plenty of action-packed mark roundings, and always ahead of the melee were Matt Hooks and teammate Rob Pascal, who won four of eight races to close with an impressive 25-point winning margin, earning Hooks the coveted Norm Cressy Trophy, which has been awarded to the regatta’s best-performing skipper since 1998.

On the same race circle, the Town Class sailed its New England Championship and after five races, Nick Cann and Andrea Dodgeon on Tonic emerged as the winners, scoring two race wins to finish 10 points ahead of Bill Heffernan and Larry Brown on Sweep.

ILCA sailors were particularly challenged with their first races canceled on Saturday due to weather. The race committee started them early on Sunday and completed one shortened race before the wind died. Once they got going again, it was strong current that caused numerous general recall starts, but at the end of the day, three races were sailed with Bill Rothwell winning the ILCA 7 division and Jeremiah McCarthy winning the ILCA 6 fleet.

Marblehead’s re-emerging Etchells class featured the area’s top sailors as well as experienced teams from outside the region, but none were as fast as Tomas Hornos and his teammates on Bob, which won two of six races and ended the series with a comfortable 10-point win. As the top fleet champion, Hornos also earned the Dave Curtis Perpetual Trophy, awarded by the Sailing Hall of Famer himself.

Henry and Barb Amthor, along with teammate Parker Moore, were the top Viper 640 team after winning the regatta’s final race for a 2-point New England Championship win over Marek Zaleski’s Team Z. Brian Keane and his teammates on the J/70 Savasana eked out a hard-fought win to secure the class’s New England Championship, another title for the team as they head toward the World Championship later this year.

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