As David Welch peels foil wrap from the neck of a Champagne bottle he’s just stepped off the stage with, he advises his teammates to step back. His crew, in matching blue T-shirts, fan out into the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd inside the regatta village at St. Barts’ Gustavia Port Marina. He wrestles the cork free, and with a muted pop, it soars into the star-filled sky above. Welch’s grin is ear-to-ear as he fills the plastic cups of his crew and toasts his team’s success at Les Voiles de St. Barth Richard Mille.

Judging the enthusiasm of this impromptu celebration, you might think Welch and his teammates had won their five-boat ­offshore multihull division—but no, that honor goes to Kent Haeger’s team on the undefeated silver Gunboat 62 Mach Schnell. Still, on the fifth and final day of this grind of a Caribbean regatta, Welch and his crew on the HH 66 catamaran Flash have sailed their best race. More importantly, they and their boat persevered where so many others failed in St. Barts’ big-breeze, trade-tossed seas, eight-hour race days and nightly soirees.

“This is definitely a war of attrition,” Welch says, “but the ­sailing… It really is incredible.”

That’s the one statement heard round the waterfront at Les Voiles de St. Barth, now 11 editions running. It’s a unique regatta, with winners and losers up and down the scoreboard. But as the cliché goes in the upper echelons of sailboat racing, “yachting is winning,” and when it comes to yachting on the blue waters surrounding this fantasy island of wealth, beauty and charm, everyone’s winning. Put it this way: First, second, third or dead last are equally Champagne-worthy.

Thus, corks soar over the course of the hourlong awards fête, just as they were a few days earlier when dozens of the sailors gathered for the legendary Nikki Beach lay-day party, where oversize sushi boats sail from the kitchen to beachside tables, and waiters wander with rosé rehoboams slung over their shoulders, refilling glasses as if it were water. Tug of wars between leg-bruised and bikini-clad crews and the hulking grinders of the big boats follow the traditional Champagne scavenger hunt, where sailors rush into the surf and dive for bottles tethered to the ­seafloor. It’s a scene.

Pop, pop, pop, all afternoon. The attrition continues.

Not everyone is into the whole Nikki Beach bacchanal. Others have scattered across the 10-square-mile island to pristine beaches, hillside villas with infinity pools, and the restaurants, boutiques and cafes that give this French outpost its reputation as the glitziest getaway in the Lesser Antilles. If it weren’t for the easterly trade winds blowing streaks of sargassum across the racecourse, you’d swear you were racing in the Med.

Les Voiles has everything wanting of an upscale and Med‑caliber regatta too, and the late-April race week’s reputation for big breeze, big waves and high-quality race management attracts the elite of the yacht-racing world, as well amateur teams that sail to the island on their own bottoms, or sign on to charter boats, tie up stern-to Gustavia Harbor’s seawall, and endure sleepless nights riding the surge. Late-night boarding can be so perilous that piles of sail bags and crew gear often suffice as bedding to sleep off a boozy night.

But enough of the afterhours. This regatta is physical racing, and an estimated 900 sailors are here to play hard. Sixty-eight teams have signed on for this edition, spread across six Caribbean Sailing Association (the regional handicapping system) divisions, two multihull classes and a Diam 24 one-design trimaran class. The crown jewels of the regatta are the glamorous Maxis, moored in the deeper water of the outer harbor. This year, there’s George David’s silver Rambler 88; Jim Schwartz’s mint-green Maxi72, Vesper; Hap Fauth’s dark-blue Bella Mente; and the newest of the fleet, Wendy Schmidt’s 80-footer, Deep Blue. The full might of the American Maxi fleet is present, each loaded with 20 or more professionals. Having arrived midweek, just in time for the Thursday lay day, I’ve hitched two very different rides for the remaining two days: Welch’s Flash and David’s Rambler 88.

Chris Battaile, a professional boat captain who commissions and manages the big cruisers and racers for HH Catamarans, picks me up from the seawall at 0900 as planned and shuttles me out to the big blue catamaran where I meet the crew: a mix of friends and professionals, including America’s Cup veteran and US SailGP Team wing trimmer Paul Campbell-James.

Welch, a fiber-optics engineer and social philanthropist from Los Angeles, is relatively new to this whole big-cat racing thing, but he’s hooked and tells me he’s on the hunt for something bigger and faster. So far this week, his family cruising boat has been unable to match the pace of Mach Schnell or the space-age-­looking Fujin, campaigned by Greg Slyngstad. The results are getting repetitive: one, two and three across the line no matter how hard they try. Flash’s sailmaker, Alan McGlashan of Doyle Sails, opines they’re plenty quick upwind, but lack the proper downwind sail. The boat’s butchered red spinnaker-in-a-sock (not built by his employer) is more triangular, he says, and would be better served as a tarp. They’ve rigged a system to pull the spinnaker tack to weather to get it out from behind the giant mainsail, but even that’s not helping much.

The day’s course is a 29-miler that starts outside Gustavia Harbor on the island’s south side, and heads east around the end of the island before snaking through anchored buoys and rocky islets. The race committee has 28 different courses at its disposal, all of which include rocks, islands, and open stretches of Caribbean runways.

One by one, classes set off every 10 minutes. When it’s Flash’s turn, we run for the line with Mach Schnell to leeward. Campbell-James, steering for the start, appears to have timed his approach well, but with 30 seconds to go, he quietly curses to himself: “We’re f—d.”

Sure enough, Mach Schnell is soon out in front, and a wall of Diam 24 one-design trimarans pins Flash. Once the traffic clears, Campbell-James tacks, and Welch takes the wheel on the opposite hull and points his bow’s upwind leg to the eastern tip of the island. Welch prefers to steer standing, his hip pressed against the load on a long, white tiller arm wrapped in grip tape. McGlashan rests on the helmsman’s bucket chair, fingers keying buttons that control the mainsail’s traveler and mainsheet. He calls angles to Welch and keeps him attentive to the jib’s telltales.

Meanwhile, Campbell-James tippy-toes across the traveler beam, peering over Flash’s rooftop solar panels for a better view of the racecourse ahead. The rest of the crew is either piled into the forward cockpit managing the big ropes, jib sheets and halyards, or scrambling from side to side to reposition their weight. For the remainder of the day, there are long stretches of ideal time interspersed by action on the trampoline as the spinnaker sock goes up and down. The wind is strong, pushing the catamaran around the track at respectable speeds, and despite precision layline calls from the navigator, Flash’s crew is simply lacking in its sail inventory.

After Welch glides the boat across the finish line after nearly six hours of racing, there’s word on board that Fujin has retired from the race—and the regatta—having hit a submerged object and damaging a daggerboard.

“Well, that’s a bummer,” McGlashan says. “But we’ll take the second.”

The attrition continues the following morning, when I’m set to race on board Rambler 88 and learn that owner David is sitting out the day’s race. He’s not feeling well, so Brazilian all-star Joca Signorini, an Olympian and three-time Volvo Ocean Race helmsman, owns the wheels for the day. He’s been a ramblin’ man for six years.

As soon as Rambler 88’s tender strikes its mooring lines, the deck is abuzz with 25 big guys in white tech polos checking their areas, cuing snaked headsails on big furlers, running sheets and wiping down winch drums. The boat’s young navigator, Anderson Reggio, has briefed them on the day’s racecourse and the angles they will sail while weaving through islands and rocks one last time.

The wind forecast is the weakest of the week, and everybody knows the boat needs a lot of runway, a big blow and just the right angles to have a chance of winning the day. Still, these pros are in the business of winning, so it’s business as usual.

Once the briefing ends, the crew get to work, most of them America’s Cup and around-the-world regulars. With the exception of a few nippers on the bow for Les Voiles de St. Barth, this squad has been tight for the past six years, says crew boss Mick Harvey. They’ve had a good, long run with the boat since David launched it in 2014, and the boat’s win list runs down the back of Harvey’s T-shirt.

Soon the foretriangle is full with another big, black North Sail—top-of-the-line stuff—and the pre-start warmup is textbook: Head upwind to confirm sail shapes, loads and angles, ping the line, and formulate a starting-line exit strategy. Every fleet ahead and up the course confirms the afterguard’s assessment: A big lefty is coming.

On the final approach, a port-tack slingshot, Signorini assumes his perch behind the wheel, shoulders hunched and his attention locked straight ahead. Vesper enters the picture, approaching fast from the other end of the line on starboard. But there’s no panic. These guys are pros, and as if on cue, Vesper tacks to leeward, and all four Maxis are on port at full speed, rails packed with bodies. The race is on.

The boat’s pitching is dampened by the sheer size and volume of the hull, as well as the topped-off water-ballast tanks. The rest of the Maxis are miles behind, their towering rig tops often appearing above islands.

Inside Rambler 88, the engine grinds below as the big orange bulb at the end of the canting keel appears below the surface. The chatter stops and the boat is silent, save for the rush of wind across the deck and the grunt of highly loaded sheets rubbing against winch drums.

After a few short tacks along the coastline, green, beige and steep, Reggio calls for one final tack, and then they’re into the downwind inventory. There’s a lot of it, and with nearly 40 more miles of racecourse to cover, the call is to deploy them all and, one by one as the bow’s angle to wind deepens, another headsail rolls out and fills with a thud. The amount of sail above the deck is breathtaking, leeches and draft stripes perfectly curved and matched. The crew immediately shifts aft, water hisses from the transom, and the big gray boat practically sails itself on its chine. Signorini keeps a soft touch on the wheel and only occasionally reaches between the spokes to press the ­keel-cant buttons on his pedestal.

With three gigantic headsails deployed, they’re down the track in a blink, and Reggio guides the team to one last rock to round to starboard. The big jib is power-winched up the forestay, downwind sails furl and disappear down the forward hatch, the crew hit the rail as the boat’s rear admiral, America’s Cup Hall of Famer Brad Butterworth, goes straight for his blue windbreaker.

“Right, then,” he says aloud to no one, as if to psych himself up. “Time to go upwind.”

Rambler 88 pounds into the steep waves, pacing at 12 knots in 20 knots of breeze. The boat’s pitching is dampened by the sheer size and volume of the hull, as well as the topped-off water-ballast tanks. The rest of the Maxis are miles behind, their towering rig tops often appearing above islands, and Butterworth and Reggio are happy to be piling on the distance in the fresher-than-expected winds. Still, there’s just not enough racecourse, and that much is obvious as the crew completes their final rock rounding and Signorini points the bow to the area outside the harbor where they started five hours earlier. With each slow and agonizing jibe, which requires the big gennaker to be mostly furled to clear the headstay, Schmidt’s big blue machine is closing the distance with big gulps.

After finishing, Rambler 88’s afterguard watches intently as Deep Blue, a mile or so behind, nears the finish. All eyes are on the blue boat as it suddenly heels over, hit by harbor gust, and its gigantic white spinnaker splits in half, horizontal across the middle, from luff to leech. On Rambler 88, there’s a collective “Whoa!” and an instantaneously fleeting hope that the known race result could magically be different.

With no clue as to the time allowance for Deep Blue and the other Maxis, I ask Reggio for his assessment of the race, which seemed to have gone just fine: A good start, the sails went up and down, they didn’t hit any rocks. I mean, what else could they do?

“We’re last,” Reggio replies candidly. “Not enough wind. Not enough racecourse. Oh well.”

Later that evening, midway through the awards, Les Voiles de St. Barth emcee Phillipe Kin introduces the Richard Mille Monohull Record Trophy. Rambler 88 set the record two years ago, before COVID-19 paused Les Voiles, and earlier in the week, David missed beating his own record by a mere 13 minutes. On the record course to St. Maarten and back, Rambler 88 was the quickest of the Maxis and therefore has earned the trophy—a giant piece of glassware—as well as a Champagne magnum and a bottle each of rum and wine.

Kin calls for David, or anyone from Rambler 88, to come to the stage until, in the awkward pause, someone in the crowd alerts him to the fact that I’d been on board the boat one day. Standing stage side, deer in the headlights, I decline Kin’s invite twice. But egged on by the crew of Flash, I finally cave and rush up to accept the booty on behalf of Mr. David and the Rambler 88 crew.

Their rum and wine quickly disappear into the hands of the crowd, and I regift the Champagne to a few of the regatta’s volunteers. The glass slab will land in Reggio’s hands the next morning at the ferry terminal, a mass exodus of professional sailors. But until then, I stash it, cash in my last euros for drink tickets, and wrestle my way to the bar, where the attrition will continue into the night.

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Congratulations, you’ve made it to the top of the beat. Now it’s time to nail the first weather-mark rounding, which, when done well, will set you up for a good position on the run. For simplicity, let’s look at three useful weather-mark moves: the starboard-tack approach, the port-tack approach and the 80 percent approach.

Starboard-Tack Approach

We are doing well in the day’s first race, on starboard tack, and comfortably laying the windward mark. We are slightly overstood and threatened by a lineup of port-tackers coming in just below the three-length zone. They will be looking to tack to starboard, inside and to leeward of us. Our concern is that, if they do tack, they might gain mark room on us and control our positioning going into the offset. To defend our position, we want all port-tackers to dip our stern rather than tack to leeward of us.

When you see this situation ­developing, the move is to bear off sharply and aim well to leeward of the windward mark until you get right on (or slightly below) the layline. Then aim for the mark. Done well, the port-tackers have some difficult escape options: 1) forcing their tack below the layline and attempting to pinch to the mark, which risks them hitting it; 2) taking our stern, and probably several other sterns as well; and 3) worst of all, being forced to tack or jibe before laying the mark. We all know how that plays out, and it’s not pretty.

Don’t give the port-tacker room to pass in front of you on port tack, or they might do so. Bear off just enough that you can still make the mark when you head up again, yet without giving the port-tacker the room they need to complete a tack and still lay the windward mark. In other words, you will make it but they will not.

For you, there are two risks. First, if you bear off too much, you might end up not laying the mark, so you must know exactly where the layline is and be ready to pinch and use your momentum to get around the mark. (Don’t forget about the current strength and direction, if it’s a factor.) Second, because you are a right-of-way boat and altering course, you must do so early enough and far enough away from the port-tack boat to allow them an escape. Otherwise, you violate RRS 16, “Changing Course.”

Port-Tack Approach

It’s the next race, and now the shoe’s on the other foot. The first rule of a port-tack approach is to get onto starboard before the three-length zone. Therefore, we always aim to be tacking onto starboard at least four boatlengths from the windward mark or farther to ensure our tack is completed outside the three-length zone. Nothing good happens to a port-tacker tacking inside the zone.

As we approach the zone on port tack, we are looking at the starboard parade from a long way out. We need to know where and how we are going to fit into the lineup of starboard-tackers. They’re probably playing follow the leader, most of them slow and sailing in bad air. We have several options. First, if we find a gap larger than a boatlength, we can probably tack into it and not risk fouling the boat ahead or astern. We need to complete our tack in accordance with RRS 13, “While Tacking.” We might have to foot a bit to find the right gap, which could be well worth it compared to lining up in the ­starboard-tack parade of bad air. Here, speed is our friend.

Second, it might be possible to cross clear ahead of a starboard-tack boat and then tack to windward of them. This works well if you have a clear cross but not enough room to tack to leeward or ahead. Sure, you will probably round the windward mark and the offset mark behind that ­starboard-tack boat, but you will likely be ahead of everyone else. This is one of those moves I’m surprised not to see more frequently.

Our third option is the aggressive port-tack approach. Let’s refer to the diagram: We are on port tack, attempting to slot in between two starboard-tackers, S3 and S4. If we make our duck too late, we will be unable to complete a J-hook turn or tack without fouling S4. But if we bear away early, anticipating the necessary tack to starboard, we can pass astern of S3 and already be above closehauled on port. In other words, we do the turn early, approaching low, and start the turn as soon as possible after clearing S3’s transom. The advantage of this is we have much less of a turn to make to complete the tack and can more easily slot into the narrow gap between S3 and S4. With the port-tack approach, speed and momentum are our friends once again. It’s tough to get clear air near the windward mark, which is why the port-tack approach can be so effective. Plan the maneuver early and maximize speed while minimizing the final part of the turn from high port onto starboard, with sails filled as quickly as possible and ­without fouling S4.

The 80 Percent Approach

We’re in the third race, and things aren’t going as well. This time, we’ve had a bad start, the upwind slows, or perhaps we had a penalty turn or went to the wrong side of the course. For whatever reason, we’re mid fleet at best, and there’s a ton of bad air on both the starboard- and port-tack ­laylines. Now’s the time for the 80 percent approach. This means that for the first 80 percent of the beat, we stay away from the port and starboard laylines. By waiting until the final 20 percent of the beat to get to a layline, we should be able to enjoy relatively clean air to leeward of the starboard and port parades, and reach our goal of rounding midfleet. One measure of a top team is to always advance in the fleet. We think of advancing (or declining) throughout the race as the “delta factor.” We always strive for a positive delta and to pass more boats than any other team.

As we sail on port or starboard beneath the layline parades, we carefully watch for our perfect opportunity to tack and advance closer to or onto the layline in clean air. Our choices of when to tack also consider windshifts, wind gusts, traffic and perhaps current. But the 80 percent approach allows us to chip away at several of the nearby mid fleet boats, round the windward mark in a respectable position, and maintain a positive delta factor.

Offset Mark Exits

Once around the windward mark, we have a short reach to the offset mark in many keelboat classes. There are five basic exits from that mark, so the key is to have a simple, effective way to communicate to our crew which playbook maneuver we’ll be using. We use a simple code:

Hot Set The goal is to be higher than all boats ahead and behind, and immediately shift into the passing lane. To perform the Hot Set, plan ahead with the crew, be sure the vang has been eased, get the halyard up, guy or tack line on quickly, sheet in and hike. The Hot Set is a difficult maneuver that requires careful and skilled boathandling to avoid broaching, especially in heavy winds. It’s ideal for passing slow boats in front, particularly boats having trouble with poor sets. Do be careful, though, because those boats can be particularly dangerous if they luff you with the jib (only) still up.

Normal Set The goal here is to follow the boat in front of us. We don’t try to gain a leeward or windward advantage, just follow. The Normal Set is a go-to exit from the offset mark when you at least want to maintain the status quo. It puts you in position to gain, and you should never lose. Use it to maintain your position in the race and prepare for the next positive delta gain. The tactician must carefully inform the helms­person if an overlap does occur with the boat ahead, and whether it should be on the windward or leeward side.

Low Set The objective is to gain depth on the fleet ahead or behind, and to stay on the starboard jibe. With the Low Set, the helmsperson steers to leeward of the boat(s) ahead. We quickly square the pole or, on an asymmetric spinnaker boat, max out easing the sheet. Windward heel helps. The Low Set is best when there is a gap of clean air behind so we don’t get blanketed.

Set/Jibe Our intent is to set the ­spinnaker and then immediately get onto port jibe with smooth speed, maintaining our turn and ideally keeping the spinnaker full through the maneuver. On a boat such as an Etchells, a tip is to set the spinnaker pole on starboard because it helps rotate the spinnaker around the headstay for the jibe.

Jibe/Set The goal is to immediately jibe to port and then set the spinnaker. With both the Set/Jibe and the Jibe/Set, be careful of jibing to port ahead of port- and starboard-tack parades. They can seriously blanket all boats jibing within 100 to 300 meters of the windward and offset marks.

The post Weather Mark Tactics appeared first on Sailing World.

A 25-knot wind streaks across Ivanpah Dry Lake on this cold March afternoon in California, dust whipping across the racecourse ahead. I’m having trouble relaxing my breathing. Maybe it’s nerves. Maybe it’s the 30-pound sack of lead duct-taped to my chest for extra weight. I’m about to start my first dirt-­sailing race at the 2022 America’s Landsailing Cup, and I’m hoping this extra weight will help keep my Manta TwinJammer—or rather my lawn chair with a sail—on all three wheels.

Thirty of these 105-pound aluminum craft with bench seats crowd the starting line, which is a 100-yard piece of rope stretched perpendicular to the wind from the starboard side of the race-­committee trailer. My competitors look like Mad Max dragoons, their identities masked by helmets and ski goggles. Their jeans are caked with dirt, some of them wearing motorcycle armor. While we wait for the previous fleet to finish, there’s a strange pre-start shuffle. Unlike the regimented starts of DN iceboats I’m more familiar with, where half the fleet starts on starboard and the other half on port, land-sailing starts are a free-for-all.

Everyone lines up on starboard in whatever position they like, and for the next 10 minutes, competitors walk their boats into openings on the line, repositioning and relocating for more space, but mostly crowding on the favored end. I decide to play it safe and start in the leeward third of the pack. I want to be able to get this three-wheeled vehicle ripping before beating my way up to the mark.

“I wouldn’t start there,” I hear one competitor say to another. “I’m going to roll right over you before you have time to blink.”

A woman bearing a green flag on a stick strides to the front of the race-committee trailer and holds it to the wind, at which point I overhear someone say: “I hope you guys brought extra underwear. You’re going to need it.”

Before I have time to exhale, the woman whips her flag through the dust, and I use the heels of my feet to crab-crawl my boat into action, Fred Flintstone-style. I’m no match for my pre-start adrenaline, and I mistakenly pull in my mainsheet too quickly. My windward tire goes off the ground and I’m two-wheeling. I ease the sail, the tire plops to the hard-packed mud, and I’m instantly eating everyone’s dust.

I finally manage to get my boat moving forward for a good 15 seconds, when a competitor to windward starts two-wheeling, veers downwind, and plows straight into the side of my boat, bending my steering bar. After making sure I have all my body parts and slinging a few choice words, we untangle and I sail toward the left-hand side of the racecourse. My only hope is to bang the corner, which ends up paying off when a gust surges me into the middle of the fleet.

Maneuvering up the course is a blur of kamikaze ducks and crosses, boats weaving through each other’s dust trails. I manage to duck one boat the way I would in a dinghy, mere inches separating my front tire from its stern, which is far too close for any sane person to attempt.

Yet sanity and dirt-boat racing seem mutually exclusive at times, and as I round the weather mark, I feel the full force of the Manta Twin’s speed howling downwind near 60 mph. On downwind legs of the course, the windward boat has right of way, and when one particular gust hits, I yell as loud as I can to a pilot below me to let me turn down to depower the sail. We both snake to leeward ­accordingly, though soon he’s a speck on the horizon.

The pack spreads out, and when I eventually bear away to cross the finish line, another gust hits and I capsize just to windward of the race committee, plowing over a set of traffic cones. Surprisingly, this moment is not as violent as I thought it would be. Most capsizes happen at low speeds, and unlike other land yachts, Manta TwinJammers have seat belts.

“You OK?” someone asks.

“I’m fine,” I reply, apologizing for tipping over on top of them. “It’s OK,” they say, sensing my embarrassment. “We just had a 38-knot puff roll through.”

Whereas iceboat racing’s redline is somewhere around 20 knots of wind, dirt boats can handle much more. “The deciding factor is the dust,” says Dennis Bassano, the North American Land Sailing Association’s race director. “If the dust is low, we’ll race in up to 30 [knots]. But if it’s really dusty and we have a lot of boats, we’ll call it off at whatever speed it is because no one will be able to see at that point.”

Bassano has an easygoing personality that he conceals behind a hardened exterior. Having organized this event for more than 15 years, he’s used to being a hard-ass when the situation calls for it. Before he took over, the typical racetrack featured six or eight turning marks and more than 40 different course configurations. They had a numbered start system and courses featuring both port and starboard roundings, as well as reaching legs and other quirks that were confusing for even the most experienced competitors.

“When I took over, we went to modified windward-leewards, with either port or starboard roundings depending on the wind direction,” Bassano says. “Everyone can start where they want, and instead of a set number of laps, we do a timed race, so whoever does the most laps in the allotted time wins. This way, you don’t have to wait 30 minutes for stragglers to finish.”

To score these races, each boat must pass through the finish line every upwind leg so the race committee can count laps, which can get confusing quickly with 30 Manta Twins zipping around the racecourse.

Scoring isn’t the only unique aspect of land yachting. Instead of a mark-set boat, the race committee uses a pickup truck, which is the only vehicle allowed on the lake bed itself. The regatta’s command center is a trailer at the center of the race village, which consists of a long and orderly row of campers, trucks and RVs.

Even though land sailing began and remains popular in the tidal beach towns of northern Europe, the American scene is naturally more rugged and individualistic. Regattas take place on the dry lake beds of America’s Western deserts, forcing competitors to travel long distances to camp in the middle of nowhere. Ivanpah Dry Lake crowns the northern edge of the Mojave National Preserve on the border of California and Nevada. Over centuries, this area has hosted many a wayward pilgrim, a tradition still alive as land sailors from every corner of the union haul their rigs across the country to set up shop for a week. Some pilots bunk at the resort a few miles north in the border town of Primm, but most camp on the playa itself. When the mornings are still, the air fills with the sound of impact drivers and fairing tools. The aroma of bacon grease hovers over the sagebrush, and laughter echoes out from campsites. The camaraderie is ironclad, but factions have developed over the years.

Bassano is part of the S.A.S.S.A.S.S.—Sunny Acres Sailing, Sipping and Soaring Society—which is based in the Black Rock Desert in northern Nevada. There are the Los Angeles Wind Wizards and the Flying Monkeys hailing from central Nevada. There’s an East Coast club, a Midwestern clan, and an entourage from the Pacific Northwest. And at the America’s Landsailing Cup, there are more types than just Manta Twins. Sixty-eight pilots are registered for nearly 90 boats, with sailors from as far away as England and Germany.

The event is split into five starts for 10 separate classes, ­including the wooden, garage-made Mini Skeeters; 5.6 Minis that look like rideable torpedoes; Manta Twins and WinJammers (single seaters); various NALSA and FISLY class boats that look like larger iceboats on wheels; Sportsmen; and the super-sleek Standarts.

One competitor, Rene Fields, is racing in four different classes: both Manta classes, the FISLY Class 3 and the Standart. She’s looking to defend her title in the Manta TwinJammer fleet, which is the largest one-design fleet in the country. “Hopefully, I get a little break between races,” she says. “If I do well enough, I should have time to run to the bathroom before grabbing the next boat.”

Fields drove her van, “Bubba,” down from Reno, Nevada, where she works as a forensic engineer. At regattas, she sleeps on a wood bunk built into the cabin of her van. A fabric shelf hangs from the back of her passenger seat, storing toiletries, Ziploc bags and spare racing components. Sail bags dangle from the walls, and the rear opens into a mobile workshop.

“Every girl must be adorned with fine jewelry and great tools,” she jokes, swinging open Bubba’s back doors and revealing everything she needs, from spare tires to socket wrenches.

Fields has been a die-hard on the land-sailing circuit since 2014. Like most others, she found the sport through traditional sailing, which she took up on Lake Tahoe after a cancer scare. One of her friends eventually introduced her to the Manta TwinJammer, which, with its bench seat, is a perfect boat to take beginners for a ride.

“We went out at Misfit Flats in Dayton, Nevada. It was blowing over 20, and we were flying along at 50 mph,” Fields tells me. “Eventually, he let me go by myself. Right away, I hiked a wheel and started screaming, and by the time that wheel set down, I was like, ‘I have got to get me one of these.’”

The 2014 Land Sailing World Championship was held in her backyard at Smith Creek in Austin, Nevada. With more than 50 Mantas on the starting line, Fields recalls nothing but “dust mayhem.”

But she was hooked right away and has since become a leading figure on the scene, both socially and competitively. She’s been to Europe several times to race on the beaches, which she describes as “like motocross through a car wash with sand blasters.”

While her fleet has grown to include other land-sailing classes, her true love is the TwinJammer. “To do well in this class, you have to tend the sail at all times,” she says. “It’s the fastest piece of patio furniture on the planet, and the perfect place to start if you want to see what it is all about.”

One easy observation of America’s land-sailing scene, however, is the absence of youth sailors. In Europe, land sailing is a popular high school beach sport, but a quick look around the camp in Ivanpah reveals mostly older men—which makes sense given younger people tend not to have the time and money it takes to disappear to remote corners of the country for weeks at a time. In addition to acquiring a land yacht in the first place, trucks, trailers and tools are also required.

Of course, there’s always an outlier. That’s where 25-year-old Augie Dale comes in. Dale’s grandfather, Bill, has been coming to Ivanpah for more than 40 years. At 82, he’s a land-sailing and iceboating legend, who has won three Knight class national championships and once clocked 120 mph while ice sailing on Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. He now spends his time imparting knowledge to his grandson, which, he admits, is difficult at times.

“You’d think with 42 years of experience, he would listen to what I’m saying,” Bill says of his grandson, “but he doesn’t believe me most of the time. He’s right every once and a while, but very seldom.”

Throughout the week, I watch the two of them butt heads over rig adjustments between races. Young Dale is racing two boats: grandpa’s Knight and a C Skeeter, both of which can race on land or ice. “There’s definitely some tension at times,” Augie says, “but at the end of the day, we’re just stoked to be out on the ­racecourse together.”

Augie Dale started in ice Optis, where he bagged a North American Championship in 2008. Ten years later, he won the Intercollegiate Sailing Association Team Race Nationals with College of Charleston. In 2019, he won the A Division on his way to a coed national championship, and was runner-up for College Sailor of the Year. He’s now assistant coach at Stanford, but gets to the desert as often as possible.

“There’s a lot less traction on dirt than on ice,” Augie says. “It’s pretty crazy to race against other boats in something that hits 70 mph on the downwind legs and can spin out in an instant. When you look at what the America’s Cup and SailGP have been doing with their wing masts—there’s no way the average sailor can find speed like that without something like land sailing.”

Even the 37th America’s Cup Defender, Emirates Team New Zealand, is getting in on the action. Tapping the team’s designers and engineers, they’re now gunning to break the 126.1 mph wind-powered land speed world record, set on Ivanpah Dry Lake in 2009 by Richard Jenkins’ Greenbird.

The previous two records were set at Ivanpah, but where and when the New Zealanders intend to go for broke is unknown. “Building the boat is the easy part,” Bassano says. “You’ve got to be in the right place at the right time. You could sit out here for three months and never see the conditions you need to break the record.”

Bassano remembers the day the record was last broken. He and Jenkins had prowled dry lakes and salt flats from Nevada to Australia searching for the right conditions, until one day Jenkins happened to bring his boat to Ivanpah because other land sailors had gathered. The forecast was for a completely different speed and direction, but soon the breeze built to 42 knots out of the west, setting up a perfect beam-reach angle. In a matter of ­seconds, Jenkins captured a dream 10 years in the making.

“The likelihood that [Team New Zealand] are just going to build the boat and break the record next year and move on is very slim,” Bassano says. “Of course, they have more money and computer power than anyone that’s ever tried, but their design is almost an exact copy of Greenbird, which was really radical when it first came out. The Kiwis haven’t gone radical. They’re just trying to improve everything by 5 percent.”

By the time I line up for my next race, I manage to get a cleaner start, yet a windshift leads me to the wrong side of the course, and I find myself in a massive hole. I finish mid fleet once more, and to be honest, I’m not happy about it. I’m no slouch when it comes to water sailing, but none of that means anything out on the playa. Racing in the desert can be frustrating and unpredictable, but it’s always a wild ride. I still have a lot to learn about dirt boats, but rest assured, I’m itching for more Mojave mayhem.

The post Landsailing Mayhem in the Mojave appeared first on Sailing World.

Adequate insurance ­coverage is an essential part of our lives. Boats, homes, automobiles, health, art collections and businesses should be properly covered, and the same is true for individuals who manage our sport, especially races officials, instructors and coaches training our youth sailors and adults on the water every day. For many years, US Sailing carried an insurance policy that provided coverage for race officials and sailing instructors, but recent accidents and subsequent settlements are prompting many of our institutions and race officials to look more carefully at their coverage and exposure.

Previously, US Sailing’s basic policy provided up to $1 million in coverage per incident and up to $20 million in excess coverage. Insurance for a large portion of American yacht clubs has been provided by Chubb Limited and the Gowrie Group, an insurance agency headquartered in Westbrook, Connecticut. The partnership has been working well to appropriately cover claims for fires, floods, fatalities and injuries over the years, but an incident in November 2020 is having a major impact on how insurance policies are written and who can receive coverage.

The accident, now well-­documented, occurred during a sailing practice in Optimists hosted by Florida’s Sarasota Youth Sailing Inc. The sailor, 10-year-old Ethan Isaacs, was killed by the propeller of a coach boat. A US Sailing-certified 18-year-old instructor was running the practice session near Ken Thompson Park on Sarasota Bay when, according to an incident report published in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, he “reportedly lost his footing and fell, putting the vessel in gear. He was thrown from the boat that continued forward unmanned, striking several 8-foot sailboats in a SYS Green Fleet practice. Two sailors had minor injuries, and Isaacs died as a result of his injuries at Sarasota Memorial Hospital.”

Carter Gowrie, managing director of the Gowrie Group, says Chubb promptly paid the $1 million claim, which was the policy limit. “The attorney for the parents went looking for another pocket and found that US Sailing covers named insured that are certified instructors,” Gowrie adds. “So, they came straight to US Sailing.”

Chubb then paid $12 million for the claim without going to court, Gowrie says.

Andrew Clouston, senior vice president of programs and ­services at US Sailing, says that after the incident in Sarasota, Chubb realized it needed to clarify its coverage. “The $12 million settlement that came out of our policy wasn’t a judgment—it was a settlement,” Clouston says. “Chubb felt it was better to settle with the family.”

There have been other sailing accidents over the past decade that resulted in fatalities. One accident took place in Annapolis, Maryland, in June 2011 when 15-year-old sailor Olivia Constants drowned after her 420 capsized. An in-depth review panel investigated the incident and made recommendations that resulted in better trapeze equipment for boats, as well as improved procedures for instructors and yacht clubs when accidents happen on the water. The Constants family did not pursue an insurance claim.

An accident similar to the fatality of Ethan Isaacs took place in July 2017 at the Centerport YC on Long Island, New York, when a propeller of an instructor’s boat ran over 12-year-old Ryan Weiss. A Suffolk County police officer, Sargent James Scimone, investigated the accident and reported: “We’re investigating this strictly as an accident. Nobody is at fault. The instructor is a young instructor, and he was doing everything he was taught to do.”

Chubb settled a claim by the Weiss family for $880,000, and the family encouraged elected officials to introduce a requirement, called “Ryan’s Law,” for propeller guards on boats used to instruct children. The Suffolk County New York Legislature passed the bill in July 2018 requiring that an encasement or cage surround the propeller of a boat being used for ­instructional ­sailing courses.

The Isaacs family has proposed different legislation in Florida. Their proposal, published by the Schrier Law Group, is “to require the operators of support boats under 26 feet to wear a device that automatically shuts off the engine if the operator is thrown overboard.” The Schrier paper points out that seven states have similar laws in place. Florida State Rep. Fiona McFarland introduced “Ethan’s Law” in 2021, and the bill is progressing through the Florida State Legislature at this writing, having received unanimous approval to move forward at the committee level.

After the Isaacs family settlement, Chubb clarified that its coverage only applied to race officials and sailing instructors participating specifically in US Sailing Championships, US Sailing events or US Sailing courses.

“In the new form, if a volunteer or employee of a yacht club is working at a regatta, that person is covered by the yacht club’s policy, but not by US Sailing’s policy,” Gowrie says. “The Burgee Program provides coverage for employees and volunteer race officials.”

When asked if independent sailing instructors should have their own insurance policies, Gowrie was forthright: “The instructor should get his or her own insurance. You can’t really rely on other entities to protect you for a liability situation. If you are serious about being a professional coach like that, [then you should] start an LLC and buy your own insurance.”

More than 1,300 organizations across the United States are protected by the Burgee Program, Clouston says, and it “protects not only the organization, but also the board members, flag officers, volunteers and employees.” It is designed for sailing organizations and managed by the Gowrie Group, underwritten by Chubb, and endorsed by US Sailing.

Clouston believes, however, that there should be different levels of insurance depending on who is insured: “The risk is higher for an instructor in a chase boat compared to a judge in a hearing room,” he says. “We are looking at different options for different risk profiles.”

Clouston recommends all yacht clubs and sailing organizations review their policies carefully. “It’s important that clubs pull out their policies and have a good look at them,” he says. “In Sarasota, they had a $1 million policy and no umbrella coverage, and clearly, that wasn’t enough. A race official needs to make sure the club organizing authority has adequate insurance so the race official doesn’t need his own umbrella. If a yacht club is in the Burgee Program, they have good coverage that includes race officials and instructors.”

The Isaacs family settlement has prompted Chubb to put a spotlight on some of the language in policies that were negotiated 20 years ago, Gowrie says. Consequently, Clouston makes an important recommendation for all sailing organizations: “They should look to see that their primary insurance is in place. Those conversations are happening all over the country now, which is a good thing.”

Insurance is an important part of our daily lives, including sports. And while we’re in proliferating litigation, it is the responsibility of US Sailing, yacht-club leaders, boat owners, race officials, sailing instructors and, in fact, all sailors to review their insurance policies. The basic concept of insurance is to spread the risk of loss, and everyone is in this cause together. Higher premiums could jeopardize participation in sailing, so we need to continue to ensure the sport is as safe as it can be. Gowrie says his company provides extensive safety information for yacht clubs, which is available upon request, and this renewed focus on insurance is a good reminder for us all to take the proper steps to help keep people protected and safe on and off the water.

The post Organizations Face New Insurance Challenges appeared first on Sailing World.

Just ask Australian Tom Slingsby, CEO and driver of the Australia SailGP Team. He’s now hit this seven-figure payday twice, most recently on San Francisco Bay, where he led his team to a decisive win in SailGP’s Season 2 Grand Final. Checks, trophies and Champagne fountains aside, this 2-for-2 win is also a classic sports story involving friendly, respectful rivalries between three top SailGP skippers and teams that stretch back to the America’s Cup in 2013, when wingsail-powered multihulls first raced across San Francisco Bay. One marked difference, of course, is the ocean of data that’s available for anyone seeking to decipher the critical ones and zeros.

While history suggested that the Australia SailGP Team would win SailGP’s season-ender in March, the outcome was far from certain going into the preceding Mubadala United States Sail Grand Prix. Slingsby and his mates had won four of eight regular-season regattas, but the United States SailGP Team, led by Jimmy Spithill, demonstrated impressive leaderboard consistency themselves, with five podium finishes. Nathan Outteridge and his Japan SailGP outfit also consistently proved their on-the-water prowess. But while the season’s title may have been Slingsby’s to lose, winning it required the Aussies to strike the right balance of boatspeed, boathandling, and that oldest and most ephemeral quality of competition: confidence.

In SailGP’s first season, Slingsby and company enjoyed $1 million worth of spoils and the first taste of Champagne from the SailGP trophy, while Outteridge and company ­finished second to the Australians. The US team, under different ­leadership, finished DFL.

The American team’s second run at the title and the money didn’t start off well either. It almost seemed as if they were cursed.

“Given everything that’s happened, we somehow made the finals,” Spithill says, referring to his team’s Season 2 setbacks, which included a no-fault regatta-ending collision with Japan in Bermuda, a collision with an unidentified floating object in Italy, rudder problems in Great Britain, and a badly timed maneuver ahead of the Denmark event that resulted in a leg cast and last-minute replacement for wing trimmer Paul Campbell-James.

Amid this racecourse strife, however, the United States SailGP Team dug in and, ahead of the San Francisco event, earned their spot on the starting line of the three-boat Grand Final in San Francisco—alongside the Australian- and Japanese-flagged foilers. Outteridge led his team to wins in Italy and France, but a sixth-place finish in England plus a pair of fourth-place finishes in Spain and Australia meant the Japanese-flagged team wasn’t guaranteed a spot in the Grand Final race until they posted strong results in San Francisco.

“Initially, it was a story about eight teams, then it [became] a story about three teams,” Slingsby says. “Anyone who counts out Nathan Outteridge isn’t really on the ball.”

All three contending SailGP drivers, plus many of their ­crewmembers, were involved in the 34th America’s Cup, where wingsails and foils changed the game. Outteridge was a helmsman for Artemis Racing, while Slingsby served as Spithill’s strategist for Oracle Team USA’s comeback win against Emirates Team New Zealand.

RELATED: Australians Ace First Event of SailGP Season 3

“We know these guys extremely well—we’ve worked with them in the past,” Slingsby says. “It brings a level of respect. We know their skills, and maybe we know their weaknesses also.”

SailGP, however, isn’t the America’s Cup. This traveling grand-prix sailing circus is raced aboard one-design F50 ­catamarans, each of which carries 800 sensors producing more than 240,000 points of open-source data per second. As part of an information-shari ng approach, each team can study and dissect each other’s data. SailGP also records and shares on-the-water communications and video from each boat during races, which can often be equally important to performance measurements.

“The data is super helpful,” Slingsby says. But he admits his team’s usual up-fleet position means others are watching the Australian boat’s data more closely than the other way around. “But if we’re struggling a bit for speed, or we’re struggling a bit in our maneuverability, we’ll look at other teams to try and figure out what the differences are and how we can improve.”

Few people know this deep-dive analysis game better than Philippe Presti, Spithill’s longtime coach who also worked with Slingsby during his first SailGP season.

“It can be overwhelming if you don’t know what to look for,” Presti says when we meet in his office at SailGP’s Technical Base on San Francisco’s Pier 96 before the racing gets underway. He’s showcasing his proprietary software that synchronizes the team’s data with recorded audio and video feeds, which we watch on a pair of giant monitors.

“I can tag moments and study them later,” he says, explaining that he can take a photo from his coach boat or talk into his microphone, and the software synchronizes this media with the boat’s raw performance data.

“You’ve got a huge amount of data and you have a small amount of time training, and the goal is to find the golden stone,” Presti says. There are two ways to identify the most important information: “Either you go for the big data and you treat a lot of information, and you get some information back eventually,” he says. “Or you do it the other way around: You look at what you think will make a difference and then you dig around its specific information.”

While teams and coaches can operate in raw data, SailGP runs the numbers from all eight boats through Oracle’s cloud to create a second-level analysis that’s shared equally among teams. Presti presents both his and the league’s findings ­during team debriefs.

“People have this impression that because there’s data, the computer decides for you,” Presti says. “It’s totally different. The feeling is super important—it helps you look at the correct information, and this information helps you convince the [team] that this is the thing to look at. This is not a human reduction.”

Presti’s philosophy of mining performance gemstones wasn’t lost on Slingsby and the Australia SailGP Team. “For sure, we look at the performance report each day,” Slingsby says, “but we go to the data after we see something on the water.”

He explains that on his team, everyone is responsible for different areas. “I’m often looking at rudder lift and steering angles and turn rates and maneuvers,” he says, adding that the jib trimmers, for example, typically look at lead positions and sheeting angles, while the flight controller looks at ride-height and stability numbers. “We all do this in our personal time and come back with conclusions on how we can improve.”

Each team might tackle its data management differently, but parallels remain.

“Jimmy and I are pretty similar in that we’re both confidence sailors,” Slingsby says. “When Jimmy’s confident, he does amazing things, and when he’s down on confidence, I think—like myself—we can struggle a little bit.”

While it’s always interesting to pit two confidence sailors against each other in a match race, Slingsby is clear that the goal in the Grand Final is to beat two teams, not just one.

“The strategy is to be the odd boat out that avoids the fight,” Slingsby says. He describes Spithill and his squad as a team that’s exceptionally good at minimizing mistakes and chipping away at small gains, while Outteridge’s team is less predictable. “Nathan is more of a high-risk sailor and flamboyant,” Slingsby says. “He can do things that no one else can do on the water, but he might make a few more errors.”

Yet confidence can be an unreliable ally. Hours after our interview in San Francisco, the Australians capsize during practice, wrecking their wingsail, damaging platform fairings, soaking their electronics, and costing valuable training time ahead of the weekend’s fleet racing.

Radio chatter about “protecting the asset” persists ­during the Grand Prix, but Slingsby and crew decisively bounce back, claiming four top-three finishes—including one win—in the five fleet races. They’re sailing smart, but it’s clear they’re also pressing hard.

Spithill’s unpredictable shocker arrives in the fourth fleet race, when young and inexperienced helmsman Jordi Xammar—in his debut as the Spain SailGP Team’s driver—loses control during a windy leeward mark rounding, crashes into the American boat, and nearly knocks Spithill and company out of the regatta—just the thing for a confidence sailor foiling into a three-way boxing ring.

Playing cool as usual in a pre-Grand Final interview, Spithill says: “You need to be comfortable being uncomfortable. The only thing we’re trying to do is win. Second isn’t a good result.”

He’s not alone in this analysis.

“The main thing is that when you go around the first mark, [you want] to have options—you want to go straight or jibe,” Outteridge says. “If you’re overlapped with the lead boat but can’t jibe, it’s quite compromising. The third guy will probably jibe off and get the split.”

Outteridge is focusing on the first mark for good reason: Statistically speaking, the first boat around it has a strong chance of winning.

Fast-forward to the winner-takes-all final race. Spithill and the United States SailGP Team round the first mark in pole position in a breeze that’s oddly flowing from the south—a seldom-seen direction on San Francisco’s normally sea-breeze-dominated racecourse. The American team falls off its foils, handing the Australians the lead and giving fans the kind of leaderboard change that keeps them glued to the livestream.

That’s when spotters identify a whale in the racecourse. SailGP rules stipulate that racing shall halt for charismatic megafauna, so the race is abandoned.

The shiniest stone on display was that most ephemeral quality of competition.

The race committee then reconfigures the racecourse to suit the weakening conditions. The race broadcast window is closing, the whale swims off, and tension rebuilds as the game becomes a contest of first to foil.

At the start, the Australian’s green-and-black F50—dubbed the Flying Roo—is first to fly, and it’s game over as Slingsby rounds the first mark in command while Spithill and Outteridge are stuck to the water.

An 800-meter lead is hardly common play in one-design racing, but the Aussies enjoy this handsome positioning until the wind dwindles near the third mark and the boat’s hulls find the brine. The Americans and Japanese make short work of this last-gasp opportunity before finding the same soft stuff, but it’s too late: The Aussies hook into the stronger breeze first and reclaim flight. Precious little sand falls through the hourglass before the first celebratory cheers erupt aboard the Flying Roo.

Queue the Champagne.

“In the end, it came down to my call,” Slingsby says at the post-race press conference when asked why he and his team pushed hard in San Francisco’s final fleet races. “I said to the guys, ‘Look, I need to be at 100 percent in the lead-up races. I can’t go zero to 100; I can’t go from having fifth-, sixth-, ­seventh-place [finishes] and then expect to turn it on for the next one. I need to sail at a high level the whole way through.”

Proof positive that even amid SailGP’s clouds of data, the shiniest stone on display on San Francisco Bay was that oldest and most ephemeral quality of competition. The ­ultimate winner was supremely confident, and it’s as ­simple as that.

The post SailGP’s Season 2 Stunner appeared first on Sailing World.

To meet one of the hardest-working ­hombres in the sailing industry, you’re going to want to head west on Texas Interstate 30 toward Rockwall and Lake Ray Hubbard. Just past Cavender’s Boot City, where cowboys and girls source their Western wear, is a place called Vela Sailing Supply, where yachtsmen and women now score their sailing gear. Inside this 4,000-square-foot warehouse are racks and shelving to the ceiling packed with sailboat hardware, clothing and dinghies. There is a wall of cordage spools and, at the far end, a loft table for managing sails. In the office is a fast-talking Venezuelan, phone to the ear, laptop open, white-framed sunglasses nested on a tussle of jet-black hair.

That’s Rod. Rod Favela. Mr. Vela. And if you’re a sailor in need, he’s a friend indeed.

What started as an online chandlery business from Favela’s laptop in 2011, the operation is now a bustling business with nine employees—including his wife and son, who manage international shipping logistics of everything from $1 split cotter rings to $35,000 VX One sportboats. Their e-­commerce website and walk-in warehouse offers virtually anything and everything a sailor could possibly need, especially hard-to-find stuff for racers—the niche gear you’ll never find at other big-box marine stores.

While business is booming on account of a pandemic bump in sailing, it’s well-known that those who are loyal to Vela Sailing Supply are so because of the man himself. He’s a champion sailor, a friend to all, and one heck of a salesman. For Favela, there’s no such thing as an eight-hour day or traditional work week. If he’s not in the warehouse, he’s racing the keelboats and dinghies he hawks, or coaching on the side because he’s good at that too.

“For us, the company is very much about connecting to our beliefs, and I don’t want to sound corny about it, but the truth is that you can buy a Harken or Ronstan block anywhere, but what we are doing here is offering solutions to sailing problems,” Favela says. “To make sure sailors have a source and a business friend that they can rely on. We sell everything that makes a ­sailboat a sailboat—that’s what we do.”

There’s an example he uses to enlighten new employees: “When you need a quarter-inch drill bit, you don’t need a quarter-inch drill bit. What you need is a quarter-inch hole, so no matter what, we can never lose sight of what people are looking for and what their problem is—we have to give them a solution.”

Favela’s business and customer savvy didn’t come from formal business schooling, but rather through a long and twisted sailing career that started back in Venezuela. An extremely abbreviated version of his story goes something like this: He was born in Caracas, and at age 10, his family moved 200 miles east to the coastal town Puerto La Cruz. As a kid, he was terrible at other sports, so his parents forced him to try sailing. A fleet of Sunfish leftovers from the Pan American Games was his first bite of the sport.

“I still remember my first coach,” Favela says. “He was very good and very firm, and after my first session, he said I was ready to go on my own. Most kids would take three or four days, but for this guy to say I’m ready—I remember how it gave me so much confidence.”

Favela rose through the ranks of the local Sunfish scene alongside the native greats, like multiple-class world champion Eduardo Cordero, before crewing on bigger boats—IOR dinosaurs that retired in Venezuela. He eventually moved back to Caracas for school, but never finished. Instead, he “lived in the jungle with the natives for five years,” earning a good living in the ecotourism industry. “But it kept me away,” he says. “I would do some regattas from time to time, and one day I was invited to a PHRF regatta, and all the demons came rushing back… Something was telling me I have to come back home; sailing is my home.”

Favela left the jungle gig and worked weekdays at a North Sails loft, living in a marina on a J/24 with his wife and driving two hours to the coast to coach on weekends. Then, in 2005, he had an opportunity to relocate to the United States and work for a Texas-based chandlery—another story for another day. Six years later, at the age of 35, he struck out on his own and started Vela.

“It was intimidating because, here, in the Texas desert, we didn’t have a strong local market, at least not enough to sustain a business,” Favela says. But with the support of early investors and the good faith of suppliers, he was able to make it happen. “I am blessed that the moment I got off the plane in this country that I have had a lot of help from a universe of people believing in us. By no means have I built this on my own and got to where we are today.”

Those who know and sail with Favela note his boundless energy, pearl-white smile and supply of jokes—always at his own expense—as defining traits that make him fun to be around, on and off the water. He’s always happy, he says, because running a business 24/7 and racing as often as he does allow him to enjoy the fruits of both. “We play hard, we sail hard, we work hard and love the sailing world,” he says. “It’s as simple as that.”

Still, it’s not always easy being the face of the company and on the road as often as he is at home. “The long hours and trips do put a toll on the time that I can spend with my family,” Favela says. “They’ve been a crucial part of this. There is the blessing of technology, and the curse because we are connected all the time. There are expectations from customers, and we are committed to them, and sometimes we get behind when I’m away at regattas. But when I do it, I always do it for the business. We have to maintain the connection of what we believe, to be with the sailors.”

Otherwise, he says, he’d be just another hardware hawker.

If Favela had his way, he’d be sailing more and tethered to the laptop less, but there’s a life balance he’s managed to keep by following his own formula. “When I have to make a decision as to whether I go sailing or not, I have essentially three approaches: First, I ask myself, ‘Rod, what do you want to do?’ Second, there’s the family. Is this time away the right time to do it or not? Third, there’s the business. How much is it going to be pulling me away? I have one great way to nail it down, and that is my level of regret. Regret is a scary thing; I know I will regret one of those three, so dollars and pennies aside, which one will I regret the most? And that’s how I decide.”

His boat of choice is the VX One, which has an active fleet in Texas and he can now race with his son. And while he’s accomplished a lot over the past few years, his personal highlight was winning the 2021 J/22 World Championship in Corpus Christi, Texas, with Jeff Progelhof and Olympian Paul Foerster, who Favela says is the ­greatest sailor on the planet.

“It’s a big deal to win the regatta, but just forget about the sailing…just [what] good humans Jeff and Paul are,” he says. “To sail with such amazing humans—and then to win too? I counted my blessings that day. Actually, I count them every day.”

The post Purveyor of Performance Goods appeared first on Sailing World.

“There was a long oily swell and very little wind,” Harold Cudmore recalled more than 40 years later. “We realized there was bad weather coming. So, we had the last supper because we weren’t going to eat again. We headed into nightfall… We were going to get a beating. The glass was falling something like three millibars an hour.”

It was mid-August 1979, and an unsuspecting fleet of more than 300 hundred boats was headed for the Fastnet Rock off the southern tip of Ireland. They were all racing in the Royal Ocean Racing Club’s biennial classic, the Fastnet Race. In the space of the next 24 hours, 24 crews would abandon ship, battered by 60-knot winds and 40-foot breaking waves. Eighteen lives were lost among those who were competing and those who came to rescue them. It was the greatest tragedy in modern sailboat-racing history.

At the time, I was a young dinghy sailor racing out of a small, unfashionable club a long way from Cowes and the Solent, the hub of British ocean racing. The only story that reached me from that storm was triumphant, not tragic, and its star was Harold Cudmore. An Irishman, Cudmore carved a stellar career across several decades, encompassing wins at world championships and the America’s Cup, when he was part of Bill Koch’s successful defense in 1992.

In 1979, Cudmore was racing with his countrymen as a ­tactician on a 44-foot yacht called Golden Apple of the Sun in the Irish Admiral’s Cup team. Golden Apple was, as Harold put it, “one of the glamour boats of the year,” and it was turning out to be a good year. At the start of the Fastnet, the Irish were leading 18 other national teams.

Early on the morning of August 14, with the storm reaching its peak, Golden Apple of the Sun was the first of the Admiral’s Cup yachts around the Fastnet Rock. The boat turned for the Scilly Islands in a world of monstrous waves and howling spray, and when the wind shifted far enough aft, the crew hoisted the spinnaker. Cudmore took some precautions: He had a man strapped to the mast armed with a flare gun. The instructions were simple. If the helm started to lose control, shoot the flare through the spinnaker.

The appeal to a teenage boy disconnected from the tragic realities of that storm is obvious. What nerve, what bravado. Men and women were abandoning yachts all over the Western Approaches, and here was the piratical Cudmore, hurtling through this awesome storm with the spinnaker set and only a flare gun to separate death from glory.

A few years later, I started my pro sailing career with Cudmore’s 1987 British America’s Cup team, and then we raced the Fastnet together in 1989. We even rounded the legendary lighthouse on another wild, black night—but I only recently got around to asking him about the 1979 race.

“We got around the rock, and it was 52 knots across the deck. I remember looking at the dials as we rounded,” he told me. “We were over-­canvassed, we had two reefs in the main. We speared off, and fairly shortly afterwards, when it began to really kick in, we dropped the mainsail. Later we dropped the jib and replaced it with the storm jib. [The wind] was west and then round to northwest. We ended up running back to the Scillys.”

This was the moment for the spinnaker. “We survived the night driving pretty hard, and then come morning it began to ease up and the sea began to build some length into it, and so it was less threatening,” Cudmore continued. “We put the main back up, and I remember saying to the guys, ‘We’re down to 35 knots, we should put the spinnaker up.’ It was the only time—you know what I’m like in a boat—the only time I had a strike. ‘We will not!’ So, we settled for a boomed-out number-two jib. The guys were up on deck to do that when the rudder broke.”

It was the end of their Fastnet. There had been no spinnaker, no flare gun. The crew of Golden Apple had eventually chosen to take a proffered lift ashore with a helicopter that was finishing operations for the day. “The only thing of note that came from that was the note we left on the chart table saying, ‘Gone for lunch,’” Cudmore added. The yacht was later safely recovered, but they were done—the race, the Admiral’s Cup, all gone.

When they were running before a storm, the skippers were said to have chained a man to the main mast, armed with an ax to cut the halyards if the helmsman lost control. If there was one thing that boats built to the International Offshore Rule didn’t need with the spinnaker up, it was extra weight near the bow.

I told Cudmore the story I’d heard more than four decades ago, and his reaction was immediate. “That’s an old story that dates a generation before my time. I heard the story back when I was a kid. It’s an apocryphal story,” he said, before explaining further. “I think the story related back to after the second World War, when you could buy these Very pistols, and the word was…that if you were caught with a sail up in heavy conditions and the halyard jams, what do you do? You fire a Very pistol into the sail—seamanship in the 1950s!”

I did some research, and the story has even older antecedents, back with the clipper ships. When they were running before a storm, the skippers were said to have chained a man to the main mast, armed with an ax to cut the halyards if the helmsman lost control. If anything, the story about the square rigger is more plausible. If there was one thing that boats built to the International Offshore Rule didn’t need with the spinnaker up, it was extra weight near the bow. I suspect that this knowledge, once acquired, was the reason I took so long to talk to Harold Cudmore about it—why wreck a great tale with the truth?

John Rousmaniere’s book Fastnet, Force 10 is probably the most authoritative account of the storm, and he tells of the need for the survivors to talk it down, to somehow “inoculate ourselves against the awareness that, at its worst, the storm was much more dangerous than, say, the 1972 Bermuda Race gale, and that there had been excellent reason to be frightened.” So, was the sailing community reaching for a time-honored myth and recasting it to feel more comfortable with the ferocious challenge of that storm?

If so, there is a reason to puncture these tall tales of daring with a cold dose of reality. In reshaping the experience in this way, the flare-gun story feeds our natural overconfidence and makes these storms less frightening. The effect might be slight, but no one should be going out there without fully understanding what they might be taking on. “It was a pretty wild night, no doubt about it,” Cudmore told me, 40 years too late. “I would be terrified if I was out there today, knowing what I know.”

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Stan Joines has been racing in the St. Thomas International Regatta for almost three decades, winning the Performance Cruising class a number of times, most recently in his J/36, Paladin. But it’s not so much his participation or his wins that make his story interesting. Since the early 1990s, Joines has been bringing teenagers along with him from his native St. Croix, teaching them to sail, race and simply enjoy being on the water. By his count, he’s exposed 200 to 300 kids to sailing. That’s with no organization, no funding—just Joines giving the kids of Croix a slice of the good sailing life.

“When I first arrived here 32 years ago from Georgia to teach music at St. Croix Central High School, I had never sailed before. But I wanted to. There were some serious sailors here, and I asked them questions about port and starboard, and they looked at me like I was an idiot and walked away. So, I hung out with the kids on the beach.”

Joines, with his boyish looks, sun-bleached red hair and infectious laugh, fit right in as he learned to sail with the local yacht-club kids. “Before long, I’m out there racing in 420s with them. They’re having sea wars, pelting each other with fruit. You learn how to jibe and tack pretty quickly when you’re about to get hit on the head with a genip!”

Joines did learn to sail and, because of the high price of property on St. Croix relative to his teacher’s wages, he bought an Alberg 35 and lived aboard. “One day, I found myself surrounded by a dozen junior high and high school kids. They said, ‘We’re taking your boat to Puerto Rico to race, and you have no choice in the matter.’ I asked them, ‘What about your parents?’ and they said that their parents had already given them permission. So, off we went.”

Joines recalls there being very little wind at that event.

“There were 17 boats in our class. Our heavy boat was able to glide through the holes with momentum, and we beat them all. And that was that.”

From then on, there was a constant stream of diverse kids, ranging from local high-schoolers who had never been on a boat to the yacht-club kids who knew their way around the racecourse. “And they bonded,” Joines says. “A lot of those kids are still best friends, and they’re now in their 40s.”

One is Peter Stanton, who sails out of the St. Thomas YC. “We were sailing Optis in St. Croix, and as soon as we got on the water, we’d sail up to his boat, knock on the hull and yell, ‘Stan, are you up?’ And he’d come up out of his companionway and throw Chips Ahoy cookies at us. He always had those aboard. He loved it. He was like our big, older friend.

“When my twin brother, older brother and I got bigger, he said, ‘Hey, why don’t you come sailing with me in St. Thomas?’ So, about four to six of us would go over there, sleep on his boat and race. It was just him and the kids. As we got older, we jumped to the spinnaker racing boats, but as we and others moved on, new kids always came aboard his boat.”

Eventually, it got to the point where his Alberg was no longer competitive, so he moved on to a J/36.

“We won the 2013 STIR in that boat, and all the kids were really excited. It was so cool,” Joines says. “I’d tell them what to do, and they’d do it. If it was wrong, well, it didn’t work out so well. But if they had another way to do something, I’d listen, and by gosh, they were usually right. It’s a democratic boat, so everyone has a say—they aren’t treated like kids.”

It was not uncommon for Joines to come home from teaching and find a dozen kids on the dock waiting for him. “They’d say, ‘We’re going to St. Thomas for the weekend,’ and I’d say, ‘Fine.’ And then they’d say, ‘On your boat!’”

The big thing is self-esteem, he adds. “If you treat them like they’re somebody, not necessarily putting up with them, but listen to them, it makes a world of difference.”

Stanton says: “He’d give us some room and then bring us back in. And then he’d show us, and we would be like, ‘OK, you’re right, Stan.’”

It was not uncommon for Joines to come home from teaching and find a dozen kids on the dock waiting for him. “They’d say, ‘We’re going to St. Thomas for the weekend,’ and I’d say, ‘Fine.’ And then they’d say, ‘On your boat!’ So, if I didn’t have a music performance to deal with that weekend, we’d go. We’d get to St. Thomas YC, pick up a mooring in the dark, and then go and get a burger. The next day, we’d go surfing. It was so much fun.”

A lot of kids from the informal Joines school of sailing have moved on to bigger things. Some have become boat captains, and many still race regularly. “One of my former kids contacted me about a month ago, and he’s in Chicago doing design work on some carbon-fiber rocket they’re building out there. He’s also done the Chicago-Mac race for years.”

Joines retired from teaching in 2021, so the pipeline he had to the kids at St. Croix Central High School is not what it once was. His J/36 was destroyed in Hurricane Irma several years back, and it’s been replaced by an aging Albin Stratus given to him. “The sails all don’t fit, and the mast is pushing a hole in the bottom of the boat,” Joines says. “It’d be great to find something better, but until then…”

However, Joines is still at it, racing at the 2022 STIR. Although, now it’s with a mix of adults and kids. But his imprint on Caribbean sailing is indelible. Stanton points to the post-race crowd at STIR and says: “If you look around here, you’ll see a lot of people who sailed with him. Any kid around here that sailed small boats and progressed up into big boats has probably gone through Stan.”

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Sailing is a simple sport. It’s easy to get caught up overthinking it, but if you want to do well, just remember there’s a basic way to do everything, from starts to boat ­handling and straight-line boatspeed. However, getting a good start is the first step to getting good results, so let’s get to the basics of getting off the line and then take it from there.

First things first: Get out to the racecourse at least an hour early. In the half-hour or so before the start, do a number of head-to-wind checks. I do them in a timed sequence, not randomly, which is important. It could be every five minutes or every two minutes, but absolutely do your checks in the same time sequence so that what you record isn’t random. If the wind oscillates through a specific time period, you can better identify the timing of the shifts. If you do your checks at random, you could miss an oscillation. You’re looking for a pattern, so keep doing it until you recognize one. Then go off and sail upwind on both tacks. Record your headings relative to your head-to-wind readings—just write them on the deck or wherever is easiest.

The next thing I’ll do is ping the line once it’s set. One thing we see people do wrong is they ping the line going head-to-wind. You don’t start head-to-wind, so you want to ping it on your normal upwind angle; otherwise, whatever device you’re using will be inaccurate. You can do your ping on either side of the pin; it doesn’t matter. The angle should be whatever angle you’d start the boat at, and you want to be going straight for about five seconds before the ping so the GPS isn’t in wandering mode.

Next is your line sight. I won’t start ­without having a line sight. In fact, I will do three specific line sights: one on the line, one from two boatlengths down, and one that’s four boatlengths down from the line. Your first line sight will be on the line, your second will be one length back, and your third will be two lengths back from the middle of the line.

While you’re doing sights, run along the line, or use a handheld compass and figure out the bearing of the line. Either subtract or add 90 degrees, depending on which end you’re facing, and you’ll know what wind direction the line is even for. If the wind is right of that, then the boat is favored; if it’s left of that, then the pin is favored. It’s simple, and you can do it anywhere on the line.

Now that you’ve recorded your wind checks, have a good sense of what the wind pattern is doing, and have your line numbers, it’s time to take at least two runs at the line. You want two runs of at least a minute, on starboard tack, to get your ratio of time and distance to the line. The most commonly used starting devices display distance in meters. So, for example, let’s say you go 2 meters for every second. That means you can be 120 meters behind the line and hard on the line with no interference—that gets you to the line on time and at speed. So, do two of those runs to feel what that ratio is. Let’s say the ratio is 1-to-1 (like it usually is), and I have 30 seconds to go but I’m 40 meters from the line. This tells me I will be 10 meters late no matter what I do. That’s why it’s important to have that ratio.

It’s also important to keep in mind that you can always slow down. You can’t go faster when you’re hard on the wind. So, when I get to the actual number and still have 40 seconds to go, and there’s anyone between me and the line, I’m not going to get there on time because I don’t have a clear line.

Again, you’ll need a couple of runs to get that ratio right. And then, of course, the ratio depends hugely if you’re on a lift or a header in that moment. If it’s a header, you’ll need more time to get to the line; if it’s a lift, you’ll get to the line sooner, so it’s important to know where you are at, and that’s why it’s important know where you are in the wind pattern. You might have a 1-to-1 ratio in an even wind, but if you’re in a header, you better plan on an extra 10 seconds. If you’re in a lift, you might need to burn 10 seconds more.

The final bit of prep is with two and a half minutes to go before the start. Here, I’ll set up a couple of boatlengths over the line, near the middle, and do my last head-to-wind check. Why? Because I want clear air to do the check. This tells me where the windshift is in the cycle and where I want to start.

A good start is being able to sail for three minutes uninterrupted, in clear air, and not restricted by the boat below. If you can do that alone, you’ll be in the top percent at the weather mark, regardless of what happens after that. If you want to go right, then you need to start in a place that allows you to go right within 30 to 40 seconds after the start. I’m always willing to give up a boatlength or two to not start in the perfect place on the line if I have a reason to go to the right. Off the starting line, if it’s a header and oscillating, you want to go fast to the next shift. If you’re in a persistent shift, then you want to go high into it, not fast forward. It really is that simple.

Starting at the favored end isn’t the ticket to success—most of the time. It’s more important to be able to go the direction you want immediately. At some point after the start you will need to tack, and that should be as soon as you’re confident you can cross the boats behind you and on the other side. Don’t wait until you get to the layline. It’s OK to give up a few boats on your side to go back a little early and be able to close off half or more of the fleet. It’s a good gamble, and we don’t see that done often enough. The best people can see the big picture and a couple of moves ahead. They can see what wins the regatta rather than that race, and that’s a big distinction.

Soon after the start, you should be sailing either offense or defense. Offense means you’re not happy with where you are in the race, and you have to take some chances to improve yourself in the regatta.

Now, we all know even the best plans can go wrong in the closing minutes of the start, especially in big fleets, so it’s also important to have an exit plan so you’re not getting tacked on right of the start and bounced back and forth. Predetermine which tack you want to be on and where you want to go. So, if things go wrong, determine ahead of time whether you want to exit on port or starboard tack, and be ready to do it.

In the bottom third of the racecourse, meaning soon after the start, you should be sailing either offense or defense. Offense means you’re not happy with where you are in the race, and you have to take some chances to improve yourself in the regatta. Defense means you’re happy with where you are in the regatta, and you stay with the group you’re with. You’re doing anything you can to maintain your position rather than doing everything you can to go forward in the fleet. Just like any other sport, playing offense or defense means you have to count points—and I’m astonished by how many good sailors do not.

A word about relying on GPS devices and pings: You have to be careful because the race committee will occasionally move stuff after you’ve pinged, so these might not be accurate. This is why it’s important to use your eyesight and your line sights all the time. For example, if your ping says you have 15 meters to go and your eyes tell you ­differently, then you better be careful.

Also, if you have your ratio to the line and know you’re behind it, it’s better to make something happen sooner—even if that means a tack. It’s better to tack with 30 seconds to go than a minute or two after the start when you’re about to get ping-ponged. Decide at 30 seconds to go whether your approach is going to work. If not, you can either tack or put the bow down and try to sail around people who are going slow. Either way, you can’t just sit there and wait. When things are good, time is your friend; when things are bad, time is your enemy. If you don’t like what’s going on in the moment, do something about it. It really is that simple.

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When Emirates Team New Zealand arrived in Bermuda in 2017 for the 35th America’s Cup, they ­spectacularly wrong-footed their rivals when they unveiled a mini peloton of four “cyclors” pumping away on a row of fixed bikes instead of a ­traditional grinding team. Using legs rather than arms to power the hydraulic systems aboard the AC50 catamaran turned out to be a game-changing move. With a steady supply of oil pressure, the New Zealand crew could execute any maneuver they chose and twist their wingsail into speed-enhancing configurations that other teams could not match.

Cyclors were prohibited aboard the AC75s introduced by the New Zealanders for their defense at the 36th America’s Cup in Auckland, but they could be back on board for the 37th edition in Barcelona, Spain, in 2024. All five America’s Cup syndicates are tight-lipped about which direction they will be taking for their ­power-generation systems for AC37, but all of them are looking seriously at using pedal power, particularly given crew numbers have been reduced from 11 to eight, with only four sailors allowed to produce the power required to run the flying boat’s complex systems.

Tim Meldrum is a mechanical engineer with Emirates Team New Zealand and was a key member of the group that developed the Kiwi’s original cyclors’ mechanical system. He agrees the crew number reduction and the benefit of using legs rather than arms means teams will all be ­seriously assessing this approach.

“What was a six- to eight-person power-delivery group is now a maximum of four, and that’s a significant reduction,” Meldrum says. “Teams will need to review what tasks are managed by each ­person. There is still the need to steer, trim sails, control flight and navigate, so at a bare minimum, two of the eight will be needed for those tasks. Throw in tacking and jibing, and the question of split roles or transitional handovers also comes into the mix.”

Those teams who do opt for cyclors will be investing heavily in the development and optimization of the hardware deployed to deliver the human-generated power as efficiently as possible to the hydraulic pumps that feed the boat’s myriad systems.

Meldrum says the bikes on the Bermuda boat shared few ­components with that of a traditional bike. “If we do end up cycling, I think we would share in concept a lot of the Bermuda solution—but there is still a lot to explore and discover,” he says. “The main elements that cross over are the cranks and the pedals and seats. Beyond that, it’s all custom parts to deliver the power to the pump. The frame doesn’t need to fit wheels, and so can have struts ­bracing it sideways to the hull.”

Importantly, Meldrum points out that the AC34 class rule allowed about three times the hydraulic accumulator capacity and had a peak pressure limit about half that of the AC75. “This made the hydraulic demand a lot smoother and more ­consistent on the cyclors, since the peaks of the fluctuating hydraulic function needs could be smoothed,” he says. “In comparison, the AC75 rule now means that the hydraulic input is more direct to each cylinder ­function, which will be a factor in how the boat is configured.”

While design groups beaver away on the technicalities of that, within the America’s Cup grinding community it seems that bets are being hedged, with the key protagonists swapping the upright grinding machine and the gym for two wheels on the open road.

“The teams are looking for some big, powerful units—some of the wattages that are being bandied around are eye-watering,” says Ineos Britannia grinder David Carr, who believes it will take him the better part of two years to hit his performance targets for AC37.

“You just have to look on Strava (the fitness measuring app) and you will see that there are lots of America’s Cup grinders doing a lot of miles on their road bikes at the moment.”

If the choice was his to make, Carr says he would opt for cyclors over grinders. “It doesn’t blow me away to be moving a hydraulic pump with my arms,” he says. “The training for that was endless hours standing behind a TechnoGym grinder in a gym, listening to podcasts as I got the necessary time in at a low heart rate. Quite frankly, it was mind-numbing.

“When we are out on our bikes cycling as a group, we can be ­riding for six hours, but you can stop for a coffee and a bit of cake. It is really sociable, and at my age (40) it’s a completely different challenge, and I’d be really excited to see where I can get to with this other side of things.”

At this stage, Meldrum believes none of the teams will have made hard and fast decisions about how the power-delivery systems will fit into the 3D puzzle of an AC75. “The crew integration into the yacht impacts the deck layout and aero performance of the hull,” he says. “The sheeting points of the headsail system historically compete for space with the crew, so there are some trade-offs to consider.”

Nor does he believe that choosing cyclors over grinders is the no-brainer decision it might appear to be. “The differences from grinding to cycling are not as great as you would think when applied to an AC75,” he says. “The hydraulic demands of the yacht vary radically due to the small permissible accumulators. This translates to a lot of variation in fluid flow and pressure—which can mean frequent crank rpm and effort changes. Grinding is much better at managing these sudden changes. I suspect the teams will need to explore and do CFD performance-review iterations on the impact of all the various configurations.”

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