That’s right, come wintertime, there’s plenty of round-the-buoys action down at Chicago YC’s Belmont Station where DragonForce fleet founder Daniel Burns is found holding court behind the glass panels of the floating clubhouse’s upper deck. Bobbing in the harbor are as many as 20 miniature sailboats crossing tacks and past anchored marks. There are no crews, nor shouting between boats, nor spinnakers going up down, rather elbows bumping in the clubhouse, joysticks clacking and the regular banter of model yacht racing enthusiasts. The rate at which the fleet is growing, Burns may have a leg to stand on when he says it’s the hottest wind-driven racing action in Chi-Town today.

“This time last year, there were five boats, with me and a few friends,” says Burns. “Now, there’s about 107 in our fleet.” The variety of remote wielding sailors runs the gambit he says: kids, older seasoned sailors, local hotshots, and even the club’s flag officers.

The instigators were Burns and his friend Mikey Whitford. Not long ago they were looking at getting into “small” boat remote control sailing. They considered the RC Laser, but the Chinese-made DragonForce offered an attractive low-cost entry. The base boat can be had for $200, and the upgraded remote another $35. “They’re not hard to store or tote around,” says Burns, “some members just keep them in their sail locker.”

Burns never saw Chicago’s DragonForce fleet getting as popular as it is today but the low-cost and one-design nature of the class are appealing. There are other DragonForce fleets elsewhere in the country, mostly small in numbers, but nothing compares to the Chicago set.

During the winter “Iceberg Series,” he says, on days 40 degrees or warmer, competitors will bring the action outside at Belmont station, and using Bluetooth speakers and a pre-recorded starting sequence, they’ll knock off 10 races — easily. There’s little demand for race committee: just someone to manage the start, call the line, and record finishers. Once the turning marks are set, they stay put.

The most recent Iceberg series had 54 registrants with 33 boats typically on the starting line. The transmitters are digital so there’s plenty of room in the airwaves to prevent signals crossing. The only challenge, says Burns, is when competitors lose track of which boat is theirs. “We use the 2.4GHZ range, which is pretty quick,” says Burns. “The weirdest thing is when you’re looking at the wrong [someone else’s] boat.”

The pilot’s ability to tweak the DragonForce’s performance is limited once on the course, but before shoving it off to race there are plenty of adjustments to be made: forestay tension, jib-halyard tension, mainsail Cunningham, vang and outhaul as well the backstay. “We’re always trying to set it right for the conditions,” says Burns. “The sails like a lot of twist.”

Once underway (no adjustments once the starting sequence is live), two motors (servos in RC-speak) allow adjustments of the rudder and the sails. The main and jib trim simultaneously to match leech profiles. “You’re either eased to 80 degrees true-wind angle, or fully trimmed in,” says Burns. There’s not much to be gained between the two macro trim settings.

The countdown alerts to one minute to warning, followed by a 1-minute countdown. “The starts can be chaotic as boats pace to leeward of the starting line. Burns prefers to hover above the line, swoop in and dip start with speed.

Once in irons, or slow, he says, it’s a challenge to get the boat to full speed again. A short beat and rounding of tether balls as race marks makes for one-lap races that run 6 to 10 minutes apiece. They use triangle courses as well and, occasionally, starboard roundings just to keep things interesting. “One time around minimizes the confusion of who’s going upwind and who’s downwind,” he says.

Burns, who regularly mans the pit on the local Farr 40 Hot Lips, is one of the top DragonForce dudes in the area, but there’s Lee Edwards, “an older gentleman cruiser and really smart.” He wins a lot of races.

While a passerby may see adults messing about with toys, the racing is in fact highly competitive says Burns. There’s plenty of bumping and grinding on the course, most of it incidental. “I was winning a race once when someone just T-boned me, and I think it was just because he didn’t know what to do. There wasn’t any damage, of course, but stopping a DragonForce is the worst thing possible because it can be hard to get it going again.

But all is good so long as everyone does their penalty turns, he says. “It’s like real sailing, just in a miniature form.”

Racing in anything more than 20 knots of wind is “harsh, but doable,” says Burns. The true challenge to the remote-control sailor is wave amplitude. The scale is like one foot to 10 feet in a real boat, so tacking is almost impossible when the waves get too big because they push the boat around. The Belmont Harbor’s protection, however, keeps the big-wave activity in check, so when conditions are deemed to sporty for racing big boats, you can be sure Chicago’s DragonForce sailors are plugging in fresh batteries and putting their antennas and egos on the line. No one’s getting wet, and the beer never spills.

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The Beneteau First 40.7 fleet has been a fixture of the Chicago NOOD since the formative days of the class, and aside from more modern sail-making techniques providing some visual clue of the passage of time and technology, one would be hard pressed to see much of a difference today. The same can be said of Turning Point. Most of Hardy’s crew have been racing together for nearly 15 years.

“It’s a great boat, a true a racer/cruiser,” says Hardy, who lives nearly 100 miles west of Chicago, in South Bend, Indiana. He commutes in for the big regional events and occasional races the local beercan series. “We live on the boat in the weekends, too,” he says. “Class rules state the cushions stay onboard, as well as the doors to the head, so it makes it quite comfortable.”

Perhaps the cushiness can make it harder to shake the crew awake after long postponements on the water, but Hardy’s team knows the drill. When it’s time to race, everyone’s on their game and the mechanics of getting the boat around the racecourse comes to them naturally. “We race with 10 or 11 people and, yes, the symmetric spinnaker is more complicated than an asymmetric,” says Hardy, “but we’ve been sailing together for a long time so we have the choreography down.”

The 40.7 is like any other “regular” sailboat, he adds, and while the symmetric spinnaker adds a small degree of complication at the front of the boat, things mostly get interesting when the wind gets beyond 20 knots. That’s when the boat can become a bit of a handful and mistakes compound instantly. “With this fleet, if you screw up, you won’t finish first very often,” says Hardy, but, still, good teams remain generous with tips and advice to others in need.

And what would be Hardy’s top-shelf advice? “There is a sweet spot and it takes an art to find that,” he says. “It’s about getting the sails balanced. Even just a minute movement, 1 to 2 inches of the traveler, is enough to change the balance of the boat and get another two-tenths of a knot. That’s usually the difference in the race.”

Turning Point ’s upwind targets hover right in around 7 knots and once he finds that sweet spot, he says, it’s easy to keep the boat in the groove: “It’s a relatively easy boat to sail given the complications of the sail plan, but it’s a great boat, it truly is.”

Getting around the corners is where the biggest gains and losses happen, and Hardy’s best advice for perfect sets is to establish a simple routine: round the mark, hoist the chute, drop the jib and be ready to jibe right away. “We’re always ready to jibe,” he says, “and when that comes to be, we usually do sheet-to-sheet jibes by one person. As long as you keep the clews forward of the headstay you won’t collapse it. It’s a team effort between the pit, the trimmer and the driver.”

Turning Point has had its share of success, especially on Lake Michigan, but the boat doesn’t leave town very often. “ We don’t do a lot of traveling because we have one of the best fleets around right here in Chicago,” says Hardy. “It’s very competitive and we’re usually within points of each other for regatta outcomes. Last year we had over nine boats on average so that’s a good level of participation.”

The team’s schedule includes the local season-starting Colors Regatta where the fleet allows coaches onboard in order to get the teams up to speed after a long winter on the hard, the Helly Hansen NOOD Regatta is the first major, followed by the Chicago to Mackinac Race and the Verve Cup.

The NOOD Regatta, says Hardy, has delivered some of the best racing for Turning Point. “There was one regatta where 2 points separated the first three boats, and it often boils down to who beats whom in the last race. That’s very exciting and to come out on top now and again against some of these competitors is awesome.”

As about as awesome as his own personal record behind the boat’s big wheel: a pulse-spiking 16.8-knot surf. “Surfing down a wave at 16 plus is a lot of fun,” Hardy. “The boat can get on top of a wave. It just takes a bit, but it can.”

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“We’d just set the kite when a 28-knot front came through and we were blasting along at 18 knots in the old girl. It was full planing, hanging on, and everyone else is wiping out around us. We were able to stay on our feet all the way down to the bottom mark where I turned around and saw that everyone else was gone. It’s fun when it gets really fast and you’re able to not wipe out. That got the heart rate going for sure.”

Before getting into the Farr 30 class, Jabin, who owns Annapolis’ premier marina, campaigned a Farr 40. And, like other Farr 40 owners at the time, the little sister from the local design office made for an excellent training platform. The switch to a smaller boat was natural transition for Jabin. “It’s similar to the Farr 40 in that it’s a fun boat that feels like a big-keel spade-rudder boat, versus a higher aspect rudder, thinner keel boat like the Melges 32.”

Every once in a while, “the magic happens” with raceboat design, says Jabin, and the Farr 30 is one example, a boat that has stood the test of time and remains one of the best one-designs of all time. The combination of sail area, beam, draft, and displacement make it a fun and challenging boat to sail upwind and downwind. It demands perfect crew work and meticulous preparation. “With the help of professionals like Chris Larson and Darren Jones we’ve worked hard to get the last little bit out of this thing.”

Farr 30s around the world have been turbo-charged and refined to the nth degree by professional teams, but the final percentage in boatspeed available to teams today, says Jabin, is found in technique, rig tune, and sails. “We’re continually looking at sail designs and improving those,” he says. “Where do we go from here? I don’t know.”

With the Farr 30 class having recently lost its international status, says Jabin, the class is struggling to reimagine itself, but he’s moving forward with a solution to put new life in the old girl, speeding her up with an asymmetric spinnaker quiver for local handicap racing.

“I’ve ordered a prod and some asymmetric sails, which takes it away from its one-design configuration,” he says, “but we think it will introduce a whole level of excitement to the boat and the class. Hopefully, the other guys will follow me. We’re excited about something new and fresh for us. I think it will definitely be faster, and whether it works out rating-wise, I’m not sure.”

The six-foot prod will be bolted to the bow, and as a result, will dramatically change how they sail the boat downwind. “We’ll add a bunch of turning blocks and ropes and try to figure out how to sheet things,” says Jabin. “A fractional code zero will be unbelievable.”

“The boat was not initially built to support a masthead code zero or asymmetric sails. These [new] sails are probably 100 square meters larger, so the first thing we did was go to Southern [Spars] and ask how much the rigs could take. Working with them, we’re making sure the sails are flat enough that we get forward speed instead of rolling the boat on its side.”

It’ll be a dramatic change to Ramrod, which Jabin bought in 2010, but it’s a due improvement that could entice new teams to Farr 30 racing. There are plenty of used boats available, many in excellent racing condition already. “I don’t know how many were built—just a lot—and there are a lot around the world and all over the place,” he says, pointing out the blue-decked boat in the adjacent slip. “Kevin McNeill’s boat is a museum quality Farr 30, right there. You can continue to work and improve them.”

Jabin’s recommendation for curious about used Farr 30s is to make sure the deck is sound and dry. “They used balsa core so some high-load areas can be soft,” he says. “Just make sure the keel-to-hull joint is good. It’s best if the boat’s been drysailed. I can take any Farr 30 and turn it into one of the best Farr 30s in the world without a whole lot of work. It’s old school technology.”

Ramrod, understandably, is in prime condition, and Jabin says the major projects of late have been to replace the rudder bearings and tube to make his helm “silky smooth.” They repainted deck with in-laid trim marks and re-cored areas around winches. “The biggest thing really has been the sail inventory,” he says. “Continuing to work with the guys at North to make sure we have the latest design and be as fast as we can be. To get it to fit the rig and the mast bend characteristics is key.”

The Farr 30 demands fluid crew mechanics, and there are key positions on every boat, says Jabin, who sails with seven crew. The crucial parts, he says, are certainly the bowman and the trimmers. “Because this boat is so physical when it gets windy and we don’t dip-pole jibe, it’s end-to-end, so it’s a big job to slam the pole up there. Trimmers are crucial because they can make or break you. This boat reacts to the load on the mainsheet, which is absolutely the throttle. The trimmers have to be on their game.”

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“From the old TPI built boats there are some good one,” he says. The same is true of those built by Waterline Systems, the last U.S. builder to pull boats from the mold. “There are no superfast boats, but good boats are spread around.” One major difference between the two builders’ runs, he says, are that the mast steps are different. As a result, headstay length is a key measurement and mast rake is something an owner can experiment with.

Introduced in 1983 and now numbering nearly 1,700 boats worldwide, the J/22 is the type of boat that Todd says one can buy and fix up inexpensively. “[A used boat] could be anywhere from 5 to 20 thousand dollars, depending upon on how well it’s been maintained,” he says. “All you have to do is check the bulkheads for water damage, and other than that it’s simple boat to get into.”

Technical differences on the water come down to having a good set of sails and the rig tune right. But sometimes, he adds, the differences are substantial: “We seem to want to have the keel forward these days,” says Todd. “It’s like the J/24 in that you are always trying to get the keel forward. The boats don’t have a lot of helm so you create it with rake.”

Todd bought his first J/22 in 2004, getting out of the more demanding Melges 24, in advance of the J/22 World Championship that same year. “We finished 22nd and they did two fleets. It was always Annapolis-type conditions with current, windshifts, and the wind up and down, but we were very new. It was a lot of fun, a good experience.”

The simplicity of the J/22 is its greatest appeal, says Todd, but that doesn’t prevent the top guys from extracting the one-percent speed advantage, which ultimately makes a difference around the race track.

“They’re simple, yes, but we’re some of the older guys in the fleet and try and share our knowledge. A lot of yacht clubs around the country are buying J/22s as club boats so we’re losing some of our used boats to the clubs.” It’s harder today, therefore, to find one.”

As to his own desire to join the J/22 ranks, Todd says it was an opportunity to get back to boat that was easier to sail and required fewer crew. “It’s faster than the Sonar and it handles a bit better,” he says. “It’s a great little boat to sail; fun and lively with no engine so we have to sail in and out.”

In terms of boatspeed and success in J/22 racing, Todd reinforces the importance of rig tune. “A lot of it is mast rake on your particular boat,” he says. There are good tuning guides to start with then it’s a matter of finding the best sailing characteristics of your boat. “Rake is the hardest thing to calibrate in, but once it’s set, you don’t have to mess with it that much.”

It’s a well-traveled class as well, with championships north, south, east, and west, and for Todd, regatta travel has given he and his longtime teammates many a memorable week on the road. His favorite sailing sojourn was a recent class championship in Kingston, Ontario in Canada. “The wind and waves were fun,” says Todd, “but so too was finishing third overall, his best finish at a world championship in Buffalo, New York.

The J/22 World Championships are in September, with 40 something boats entered months out from the first race. Todd is hopeful it gets up to 75 or so and that would be plenty of competition for the already hypercompetitive team. “It should be a good event. I’m the measurement coordinator for the event, so I get to make sure the boats are up to snuff and then sail the event myself.”

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Stable and less physically demanding to sail than other sportboats of its time, the J/80, and the class, continues to deliver to owners and Corinthian teams that appreciate good racing, straight-forward tuning, and easy ownership. With nearly 1,600 of them sailing worldwide, major championships still draw healthy fleets and top-level teams, and in harbors like Annapolis, J/80 class racing is alive and well since being officially established in 1995.

Rich Harrison, of Annapolis, Maryland, is one owner pulled straight out of the class-adoption textbook. Leaving behind the family J/30, which served as both raceboat and family weekender, he sought a boat that he could simply race with fewer crew. “I wanted something that didn’t require as much crew,” he says. With the J/80, you can sail with three, four, or five, but four is ideal.

The class itself has come on stronger over the last five or six years, adds Harrison. They’re one of the larger fleets at the Helly Hansen NOOD Regatta in Annapolis—behind the J/70 and J/22s – and they’ll routinely have 18 boats for regional weekend regattas. Most owners are plenty active in their respective twilight club series. While Harrison has owned Some Respect for six years, he admits the quest to unlock its secrets remains ongoing. “We’re still searching,” he says. “It does help to have a professional on board, but otherwise, it’s concentration, and for my part, driving and all the nuances that come with it.”

As owner and skipper, Harrison says he’s responsible for setting up the boat and getting the rig just right for the day: “A couple of turns can make a difference between being competitive or not,” he says. “I’m not skilled enough [to feel the subtle differences of rig tune], but I just know I have to have it set up right. Learning the rig is the most important thing to making the boat fast. The foils should be templated so they are where they should be and the hull surface has to be good.”

If he ever gets slow, his longtime crewmates aren’t afraid to let him know, and he especially relies on his son, who Harrison defines as the boat’s “tactician and boatspeed professional.” He’s the one who best keeps him honest. “He brings another dimension that I don’t have,” says Harrison.

It hasn’t been easy for the J/80 class of late, especially with new classes poaching owners and teams, but Harrison says the initial bleeding to the 70s has waned and the J/80 class has managed to backfill its owners list. “We’re as strong as we’ve been in six years,” he says. “Stronger today than when I joined the fleet.”

Newcomers to the class—at least in the Chesapeake, says Harrison — are coming from other less performance-orientated boats. The average age of new owners is somewhere around 50 but there are a few younger. “The boat has a great cockpit so it lends itself to somebody that would not be comfortable in something more high performance, as far as getting around the boat,” he says. “It’s civilized and easy to sail with two for a day sail.”

Atop the local pecking order, says Harrison, is local sailor John White, who consistently sails with good people, including North Sails’ Jonathan Bartlett. “He’s meticulous with boat preparation,” Harrison says of Bartlett, “and I’m sure he wouldn’t find my boat acceptable. He would have to do some serious work to the foils and the hull to make it perfect.”

While he’s happy with the boat he now has, he says, a search for a good used boat will take time and patience, but they’re out there to be found. The market is good for both boat owners and buyers, and while it’s not an excessively expensive boat, 30 to 40 thousand dollars is about right for a race ready boat in need of some improvements. “There are top-tier boats available,” says Harrison, “but you have to dig around for them.”

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Shepherd bought the boat five years ago, intent on sailing it with his young and growing family and racing it with his Oceanside, California, locals. While he does cruise it come from time to time, it’s the racing demand that the Kraken has taken too best. For Shephard, it’s been a humbling, but consuming path to the top of the fleet.

“Our first NOOD regatta was our first one-design regatta and it’s fair to say we got our asses kicked,” says Shepherd, a gaming software developer. Since then, Team Kraken has focused on improving the crewwork and collectively getting better around the buoys.

“We started with a lot of inexperience, which was fine in PHRF,” he says, “but racing one-design was a big problem. We’ve been working on building a comfortable but competitive atmosphere on the boat.”

The Beneteau 36.7 fleet in Southern California, says Shepherd, is extremely congenial, one with a robust Corinthian spirit. “When I was learning and making a lot of mistakes, I was given a lot of forgiveness by the other skippers,” he says. “I still do, but I think I’m giving some of that back now.”

Over the years, others in the fleet have taught him how to optimize the Kraken and make changes that ultimately made the trim-sensitive boat easier to sail. There’s one problem though: as the whole fleet continues to improve, it’s getting progressively harder to get to and stay at the top.

Starting in the Beneteau 36.7 is a challenge because the boat needs momentum and full speed across the line. “The starting line has gotten more crowded and everyone’s right on it now,” says Shepherd. To improve their starts, accordingly, team Kraken puts in practice days to work on its timing. Still, the Kraken prefers a tried-and-true late port-tack approach.

“We typically sneak in on port and find the gap,” he says. “There’s nothing unique about that, but we do know we need 30 to 40 seconds to accelerate once we’re pointing the right way.”

Shepherd crews on other raceboats, his lightweight frame perfect for the bow, so he does appreciate the occasional chaos he himself can create from the back of the boat every so often.

“I do appreciate the bow relying on the back not making mistakes to pull the maneuvers off smoothly,” he says. Still, that doesn’t stop him from throwing a few surprises on his bow team.

“I do occasionally project my voice…maybe they don’t hear it,” he says. “But we plan the moves as much as possible and know when things will happen.”

As far as tips on getting upwind, Shepherd’s best advice is to keep it rumbling. “Unless you do, it will side sideways at 5 knots. When it’s light and sloppy, a lot of twist in the headsail to get the power up to get through the slop. With one-design racing, it’s not always about getting to the mark fastest, but about the right position to the boats relative to you so you can take control of the positioning whenever possible.”

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Bergman first raced Zuni Bear in San Francisco where he lived and worked in the aerospace industry. He bought the boat on account of it being a good stable design that he could race with his friends. Before he knew it, Bergman was swept up in the class’s heydays of regatta travel. He would eventually and regularly haul it cross country to Toronto, Annapolis, Chicago, and to Key West Race Week and back seven time. Those are some serious road miles, the likes of which are rare today. Times change, though, and reality today is big boats are staying home. Which is good for rich, organic growth.

“When the class got to 40 to 50 and then 60-boat regattas it was really cool to have that competition,” says Bergman, “but what’s been great is all the other owners and their crews, that are just so much fun to sail against.”

Nowadays, says Bergman, J/105 class racing is mainly in state, up and down the coast. They’re on the road less, but, says Bergman, “We all appreciate the level of races and the number of races we have here on the West coast. We’ve reduced our footprint, but we still have great regattas with a great number of boats showing up.”

The class has endured because of the owner/driver rule, says Bergman, who now also races a J/70, and its simplicity.

“This boat is just the boat. You are not going to go down and do stuff to the keel because everyone sees it.” But for those looking to buy 105, Bergman says there are essentially two groups: the lower hull numbers are lighter in the stern, the tiller boats are lighter than the wheels boats. “But we all know our boats strengths by now, we know the boat’s real capability. It’s a tighter class of comparability in the boats than any other one-design I’ve raced.”

Bergman is a wheelman, and like the other top guys in the class, takes great care of the Bear: “showroom quality at 20 years old.” Although he’s not selling at the moment, he says there are good used boats out there to be found. Some pristine, some having had some sprucing up and, says Bergman, chuckling, “the boats that were totally tricked out and would be challenged to be class measured.”

After all the years at the helm of Zuni Bear, Bergman certainly knows the ol’ girl’s sweet spots, and every day at her helm is mental health day. “For me, it’s a great mental health break. You have to concentrate, but it’s so beautiful on whatever body of water we are on…it’s the ability for all of us to take our minds off things.”

There’s flexibility in the class rules to sail packages are tuned to the local conditions. “The class has accommodated well in allowing this,” says Bergman. “We’re the larger fleet down here in Southern California so we can go with our sails and it cuts down on the annual sail investment.”

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She was right.

As a testament to this enduring one-design, fleets prosper in pockets around the country. Used boats trade hands easily while new boats arrive regularly from Rondar, the Viper’s top-notch British builder. While the East Coast is where Viper 640 sailing got its start (and nearly died when the original builder walked away, to be rescued by Rondar) fleets are now anchored in the Southeast, the Mid-Atlantic, and the West Coast, with groups thriving in the Pacific Northwest and California.

Southern California, especially with its sun, surf and year round sailing, is a natural environment for the Vipers to play. It’s why Viper sailors like George Gluecksmann, Steve Orsini, and Garrett Johns have hauled their craft from the northern left-coast hinterlands of the United States of America. Gluecksmann recently bought the boat in Canada, from an owner who himself scored the boat in a customs-seized property auction. The boat is in excellent form, yet to be rigged properly, and the Helly Hansen NOOD Regatta in San Diego is Gluecksmann’s first regatta with it.

He recruited Viper buddies Orsini and Johns who once served as the class secretary. He knows as many as most about the boat’s place in the sport. The class is pushing upwards of 300 boats, with Rondar “really cranking them out,” says Johns. “The beauty is they are simple to sail and the class rules are strict, which keeps it affordable for guys like us to be competitive.”

It’s “super cool,” he adds, because the top guys are forthright with intel. “The top guys will come to you after a day on the water and give you tips to get you up to speed. It’s not a paid-to-sail kind of class.”

Used, competitive, boats can be had for $15,000. New will run you 35K, with sails, trailer, and everything you need from the box. Logical improvements to the boat since Bennett’s original setup greatly improved the performance and handling of the early-generation boats. The two biggies, says Johns, were a change to a carbon rig, adding more weight to the bulb to make the boat self-righting, and more recently, changing the rudder sweep. It’s now more vertical, for better bite. It is a Viper, after all. It should bite.

When Johns and Orsini first sailed their own Viper back in Washington eight years ago, they were coming out of the ol’ Santana 20 class. Making the switch from pole-back to pole-out sailing had it challenges, but Johns says the transition was just fine.

“We thought it was going to be a wet boat, but it turns out it’s not the case. It’s pretty beamy so when sailing to weather you’re heeled out of the weather enough, and downwind you’re just screaming over the top of everything. That said, it was a huge learning curve for us with the angles; the downwind angles comes so fast.”

Gluecksmann, Orsini and Johns are each of the opinion the boat is simple to sail, and with a bit of effort, anyone can eventually be competitive. “There’s not much in terms of operating the boat,” says Johns. “It’s about little bits of speed. It’s easy to jibe and crashes softly, when it does crash. One thing we’ve learned about it is that the more it’s blowing, and the faster you’re going, the more stable it gets.”

Once you’ve got the rig dialed in, he adds, good races are simply a matter of boathandling and racecourse management. The performance subtleties are the same as for other sportboats, says Johns: Flat is fast going to weather. One trend, he notes, when racing in windier venues, sailing four-up is fast. During a regatta in The Gorge in 2007, “it was super windy and the guys that had four…it was tough to keep up with them upwind.”

As much as he hated losing to the four-man squads, it didn’t taint his own experience of tearing down the Columbia River with the boat creaming along in its ultimate planing glory.

“Talk about a ride,” he says with a longing grin. “Going downhill in gusts of 40 knots, I will always remember that for sure.”

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Nope. It’s his Melges 24.

“I’m anal about the boat and take very good care of it,” says the Melges 24 skipper and southeastern class ring leader who went to lengths to ensure the Melges 24 fleet at the HellyHansen NOOD in St. Petersburg was robust. Take a look at his boat, Obsession; it’s immaculate and hardly looks like a raceboat built years ago.

It’s Schwarting’s fourth Melges since he first saw one in 1999, when he was sailing his Capri 25 in a Long Island PHRF Race. “The first time I saw [a Melges 24], I said, ‘Wow!’” Schwarting was 45 at the time and said to himself that if he didn’t buy one then, he’d be too old to sail one later. “So, I said I’m just going jump in and do it.” The first year was like jumping on a thoroughbred horse, he says. The boat was way more powerful than what he was used to, and the first thing he learned was to have the mainsheet in his hand all the time.

“As a driver, if you want to be good, you have to give everything up and just drive,” he says. “A lot of controls, driving, mainsheet, traveler and backstay, and shifting gears all the time. It happens quickly. It’s taken 20 years to figure it out, but you learn something every day you sail in something different.”

Schwarting’s first Melges 24 was Hull No. 86, which he campaigned until 2005. He treated himself to a new boat from the Melges factory in Zenda, Wisconsin. He’s since sold it and bought No. 587 from Melges 24 North American champion Allan Field. He bought Hull No. 174 in 2017, fixed it up, and sold it to the MudRatz sailing team in Connecticut. Now, he’s looking at buying another new one.

You get the point: Schwarting likes his Melges 24s and he doesn’t mind racing with an all- amateur crew in a pro-laden fleet. He’s also been in the class long enough to see the proliferation of pro teams shift to the current Corinthian makeup that driving the class’s resurgence.

“There’s been highs and lows,” says Schwarting. “A few years ago, we had 45 boats in St. Petersburg and then a few years trying to get eight boats, which was tough. It’s coming back because people realize the type of boat that it is. It’s a great boat that’s affordable and way more fun than other boats like it.”

Back in Naples, Schwarting has a special garage to keep the Florida sun off his Melges 24, and after the NOOD, the obsessive post-regatta process repeats itself: “I put a lift in backyard to wax and sand the bottom and get the covers on and off,” he says. “Wash it down, clean the sails and the inside of the boat. Plug in the humidifier and dry it out again.”

That’s a healthy obsession to detail.

The post Inside the Classes: Melges 24 appeared first on Sailing World.

More on those meatballs later.

Justin Scagnelli, from New York, is Minella’s boat manager and it was he who built and now manages the crew for the Long Island-based program. The skipper, from Milwaukee, is a busy fella and prefers to show up to regattas with a race-ready crew and raceboat, and that’s all on Scagnelli, who was the one who suggested Minella buy a J/88 in the first place.

“When Iris [Vogel, skipper of the J/88 Deviation] got her boat I thought it was really cool,” says Scagnelli. “I got a chance to drive her boat in one regatta, won a few races and fell in love with the boat. When Al was looking for a new boat, I said we’ve got to get a J/88.”

It’s the perfect boat, he says, because “it can be trailered everywhere, the crew is small and the sails are small so it’s more affordable. It’s a great boat that sails well in light air and very well in heavy air.”

In 17 knots of breeze the J/88 will plane, he says, and in most breeze it “gets up and going pretty quick.”

The J/88 class is a gregarious group because setup from trailer to water is straight forward – no more than two hours, says Scagnelli, and the upfront investment required to get into the class is reasonable for a boat its size. The sail plan is smaller than that of the J/111, so sail costs are less, and in terms of crew, he says, a solid trimmer and driver are a must: “The bow team needs to know what they’re doing because the racing is always close and mistakes are costly.”

The J/88’s deck-stepped rig is straightforward, but requires strict attention when racing in changeable conditions. For Scagnelli, the past few years have been an exercise in learning, experimenting, and changing sail designs and rig tune. “It’s been a lot of trial and error over the last year,” he says. “We were very slow for a while, but now we know what we have to do with the rig. A lot of these races are won or lost on rig tune.”

Given the competitiveness of the class on the water, one might expect more guarded notebooks and tuning guides when it comes to boatspeed and rig setup, but that’s not the case at all with the J/88, says Scagnelli. “Everyone is super friendly and helps each other out. It’s a great class that has a lot of fun.” The class has pockets on Long Island Sound, the West Coast, Chicago, and Milwaukee, and while they’re spread out, they do travel plenty.

And here’s Scagnelli’s own tips: “Upwind, you have to get it going in the groove and carry that speed, you really have to scallop the boat by feathering it up. The boat responds and holds speed well. The same thing with downwind; you can soak as much as you can, but once you feel the boat slowing down you have to get it back up to speed.”

Weight placement is huge, too, he adds. “We are the heaviest boat – because we eat a lot of meatballs,” so where you put your weight makes a huge difference.”

The post Inside the Classes: J/88 appeared first on Sailing World.