When I walk out onto the bustling Catamaran Club dock a few hours before the start of the Royal Ocean Racing Club’s Caribbean 600, I’m surrounded by the broad-hipped carbon transoms and graphics of the world’s shiniest race boats. Wide decks swarm with sailors rigging up for a unique 600-mile romp around a dozen island “marks,” so I dutifully admire their prods, wraparound bows, and swept-back spreaders. But my gaze quickly strays to a far different profile: the slim waist, long overhangs, and immaculate varnish of Hound, tugging at its dock lines in the building trade winds, anxious to bound into open water. 

Casual boat-gawkers might assume that this 1970 Aage Nielsen design is just a poster child for a bygone era of yacht design, with race glory a distant memory. But there are 15 crew swarming its teak decks: loading sails, rigging sheets, removing the large boom tent. And the competition recognizes most of them because this is the same core team who won not just the classics ­trophy in 2023, but also IRC One. 

“Hound is a great all-around boat,” Taylor North explains, when I drag him away from prerace chores to ask why a sought-after bowman would choose to sail on a boat old enough to be his mother. Instead of rolling his eyes about the generational gap, he quickly ticks off Hound’s assets. “She looks good at the dock. And she sails really well. Some modern boats, you get into certain conditions where the boat just feels sticky. Last year, we held off boats that were much quicker than us on paper. We’re not going as fast, but we are going pretty well all the time; there aren’t very many times where we’re ­saying, ‘This is not our conditions.’”

He then glances out at the glorious trade winds, which are forecast to die away to nothing and then veer all the way around to the north. “Obviously, if it turns into light-wind running…maybe on Friday, I might have a different opinion.”

Hound (née Pleione) was commissioned by Arthur Santry Jr. and launched by Abeking & Rasmussen in spring 1970. Santry raced it to Bermuda, introduced the family to cruising, and gained a new sail plan and underbody before Frank and Delphine Eberhart took ownership in 1984. The new owners cruised extensively, including a historic 1991 passage to Leningrad with four kids under 9, just as the Soviet Union was collapsing. In 1998 and 2002, Hound posted its first two Bermuda Race class wins.

The boat sailed south almost every ­winter, and once Eberhart discovered the Caribbean 600 in 2012, it became his favorite race—despite finishing last in class that year. When the family-run and -raced boat returned in 2013, the official preview included a quote from its owner: “Hound has been sailing the Caribbean for nearly 30 years,” Frank Eberhart said. “This race is a unique opportunity to enjoy Caribbean sailing with a twist, while experiencing the beauty of the Leeward chain.” 

Two of Hound’s current crew raced the Caribbean 600 with the Eberharts, and though former captain Owen Johnson accurately describes the boat’s results as “horrible,” Hound missed only one of the next four races.

Dan Litchfield, of New York City, bought the boat in 2020, and he and Capt. Tom Stark immediately developed a long list of desired changes. Litchfield had admired the boat for years and knew that Eberhart was not into upgrades. “He would say, ‘It’s fine the way it is; everything’s great,’” Litchfield says. The new goals were to both ease boathandling and sailhandling and improve performance without ruining its classic status.

The most obvious upgrade was to replace the aluminum mast and its extremely top-heavy 1973 extension; the new carbon section reportedly weighs less than the old boom. They also added a short sprit to carry asymmetric kites. Over the next two and a half years, rudder and keel were replaced—21st-century sail plan, meet 21st-century righting moment. 

Hound won its class (again) in the 2022 Bermuda Race, but the first race with its third keel was the 2023 Caribbean 600. After hovering in second or third around most of the course, the crew sailed an excellent final beat to win IRC One.

Since that victory, they have continued to make incremental improvements. The original coffee grinders are finally working smoothly after chasing and strengthening a series of weak links between Barient and Harken technology. There’s a second tack attachment point on the bowsprit, better coordination between various navigational readouts, and the boom vang has been carefully inspected—to avoid a repeat of its breakdown last year, only 20 minutes before the start.

 Though the boat was undoubtedly as eye-catching during the Eberhart era, bowman Sumner Fisher says that Litchfield’s program is far more professional. He first raced on Hound in the 2015 Caribbean 600. “The crew were all friends of the captain. Really good kids but not a put-together group,” Fisher says. “We had no ­reaching sails, just a symmetric kite.” When they broke a halyard in the middle of the night, he doesn’t remember replacing it.

Perhaps the biggest contrast was race dinners on board. “Frank would sit in the corner of the salon, where that new toolbox is now, with the watch before the dinnertime change,” Fisher says. “Then you’d go on deck and the other watch would come down, and he’d still be sitting there, so happy.” 

Brianna Johnson, who met her husband Owen in 2013 when he hired her as Hound’s cook, confirms that dinners on board were always quite elaborate, even when racing. “We always had to set the table: place mats, silverware, the whole bit. I’d place the wine bottles on the middle gimbaled section.” 

This year, Johnson has premade the first race dinner; after that, it’s freeze-dried. Taylor North says he really likes the food, which is supplemented with a wide array of toppings. “And not cooking a meal down below when it’s hot is really, really beneficial.” 

The Caribbean 600 loops around 11 islands between a start and finish off Antigua’s English Harbor. “I’m just super flattered to be sailing on the Hound with Dan again,” navigator Ed Cesare says. This will be his ninth 600, including an overall win in 2013 on the Cookson 50 Privateer. “One really cool thing about the race is even though the wind almost always is from somewhere between 80 and 120 degrees, it’s a little bit different every year.”

The 2024 forecast is more than “a little bitdifferent,” thanks to a strong low that will seriously disrupt the trades. “The start will be more moderate than usual, and then it gets lighter through the race. Which might not set up so bad for us…those lighter breezes will keep the planing boats in the water.”

Cesare says that the most important tactical decisions are how close to round each island (a balance between minimizing distance and avoiding the worst wind shadows) and navigating the wind “potholes” left behind by squalls. This year, those might be lurking in unusual spots.

When I ask North how many sail changes they did last year, he shrugs. “Maybe 50? It’s something that you need to carefully manage. You’ve got a finite number, just from an exhaustion perspective. Sometimes the strategic minds in the back don’t necessarily consider the human capital that’s expended on a sail-change decision.” Which reminds him of another Hound asset: better sleep. “The boat is really quiet down below,” North says. “When you’re off watch, you can’t tell if it’s blowing 5 or 25.” 

Cesare prefers catnapping on race-boat sails to crawling into Hound’s snug navigator’s bunk, but he really appreciates the proper nav table. “I can occasionally go below and work in private, rather than exclusively on the tablet hiking off the back of the boat. So, less comfortable sleep but more comfortable navigating.”

Antigua’s Shirley Heights offers race fans a ­bird’s-eye view of the start, and despite Cesare’s memories of “squally and rough, lots of chaos, no one knows quite where the line is,” the sky and sea are Caribbean postcard-­perfect as Hound crosses the line. Though they are uncharacteristically late, the boat’s distinctive Nielsen bow parts turquoise swells just as cleanly as Nielsen intended, and they power past several stubbier competitors before disappearing around the northeast corner of the island. Soon afterward, the crew gets a heart-stopping taste of what can happen when the fastest boats start last: One of the three MOD70s, trying to thread the needle between Hound and a helicopter full of photographers, comes close to hooking their windward T-foil on Hound’s backstay.

The new goals were to both ease boathandling and sailhandling and improve performance without ruining its classic status.

For almost two days, “we were pretty much on last year’s pace,” Cesare says after the finish. “We sailed a good beat from Saba to St. Barts, had a smooth rounding, and then sailed another good beat up the Anguilla Channel, picking shifts and sticking to the right side of the course.”

But the long reach to Monserrat is a tighter angle than usual, and he calls the disturbed air east of that tall island “the first hiccup.” Three JPK 11.80s take a flyer west, but Cesare says only Cocody, the boat that will eventually take IRC One honors, makes it work. Once Hound is romping again, the beat along the southwest corner of Guadeloupe is “both beautiful and fun, bouncing off the shore there.” 

It’s rounding Les Saintes where they stumble into a more costly windless pothole; shaking his head afterward, Litchfield says, “I’ve learned a lot about squalls.”

Cocody is soon out of reach, but they sail the next two legs in lockstep with the JPK 11.80 Sunrise III, a starkly different design. Spinnaker running to the Barbuda mark in a very patchy southerly, mastman Owen Johnson says: “We’d get a puff and sail away, then they’d get a puff and catch up again. But when the wind shifted suddenly to the northwest and the kite backed into the rig, we got a jib up really fast. An hour later, they were 7 miles behind.” 

Once around that mark, they enjoy a ­rollicking spinnaker reach to Redonda, ­surfing down waves in the puffs and holding high of the rhumb line in the lulls to make sure they fetch the final rocky island. After a jibe and douse, they sail intentionally into its lee to put in two reefs for a two-­headsail reach to the finish. “That rounding was maybe the highlight of our race,” Cesare says. “Redonda is kind of ugly [rock-wise], so it was a high-stress situation. Everyone was clicking and doing their job, and the comms were great.”

With an elapsed time of 3 days and just over 15 hours, they secure 12th overall and the final podium spot in IRC One, behind Cocody and the Marc Lombard 46 Pata Negra. “Dan’s got such a great boat and crew,” Cesare concludes. “It’s a really good program.”

After the race, bowman Taylor North stands by his earlier assessment of Hound as a great all-around boat. “Very predictable, very tolerant,” he says. “She’s definitely not going to snap-broach on you! When the wind shifted northwest on the leg to Barbuda, we got the jib up, and I went out on the sprit to spike the kite away—and right after, there was this sudden quiet.” He smiles. “Pretty cool moment.”

When Hound returns to the Catamaran Club dock in the very wee hours of Friday morning, the almost-full moon is not quite bright enough for photos—but it does illuminate 15 smiles above a gleaming cap rail. The biggest grin of all comes from project manager Jason Black, because their podium finish “proves that last year was not a fluke.” Even in a light-air race, this well-sailed classic can pose a real threat to the far more modern offerings surrounding us—while catching far more admiring glances. Only hours after the finish, Litchfield and his team are already drafting work lists for the 2024 Bermuda Race and 2025 Transatlantic Race. Not just an eye-catching poster child for the “before times” of yacht design, these days, Hound is once again a racing thoroughbred. In a quiet corner of heaven’s yacht-design office, Aage Nielsen is ­definitely smiling.

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On a sun-kissed summer afternoon in Newport, Rhode Island, in June, three meticulously restored sailing yachts are tethered to New York YC’s Harbor Court landing. All are wooden, of course, and each a masterpiece of Captain Nathanael G. Herreshoff and the craftsmen of the eponymous manufacturing company in nearby Bristol. Representing different eras of one-design club racing at the New York YC are Amorita, a New York 30; Mar­ilee, a New York 40; and the strikingly maintained and heavily-raced New York 50 Spartan, soon bound for the Mediterranean in search of better competition.

The occasion to display these preserved icons of yacht racing is the Herreshoff Marine Museum & America’s Cup Hall of Fame’s Golden Jubilee, a summer-long celebration of wooden spars, white sails and buried rails. In a few hours, the bar will open and dinner will be served to 200 or so paying guests, but first it’s time for tours and the hushed admiration of these multimillion-dollar restorations. Spartan’s owners have restricted access to the deck, but even here there’s plenty to admire and quiz boat captain Judd Burman who’s delivered the boat from across the harbor.

On the western face of the dock is Marilee, the new acquisition of New York YC member Ken Colburn who recently sold his New York YC ClubSwan 42 and joined the classic yacht keepers club. He and his wife, he says, had been longing to own a wooden yacht of sorts and this one practically fell into his lap a few years ago. Texan Tim Rutter, Marilee’s previous owner, had poured more than $3 million into Marilee’s restoration before cleaning up on the classic yacht circuit in 2018 and then vanishing from the scene. Even Colburn, who I’m told bought the boat for a steal on auction, says he has never spoken to Rutter directly. But he sure is thankful Rutter got Marilee up to speed for the next 100 years.

“The joking comment is that there’s only one time to buy a boat and that’s after someone’s restored it,” Colburn says. “And that’s not to be rude, but restoring a boat is an unknown expense.”

So too is the upkeep.

This summer’s early-season races have been learning experiences for Colburn who has campaigned a J/105, the ClubSwan 42 and the New York YC’s latest fleet of IC37s by Melges. Colburn says coming to grips with Marilee has been rewarding for himself and his mostly amateur crew. His first step in preparing for the switch to Marilee’s big underwater appendages and sails, he says, was spending the offseason on a stationary rowing machine.

“She’s heavy,” Colburn says. “She’s wet [although less so for the bowman—Ed.] and has lots of weather helm. She’s a beautiful boat, but she is a workout.”

Colburn’s most noticeable addition to his area is a telescopic tiller extension, which allows him to see the telltales on his headsails. He also added a portable display box that houses chart plotter and boatspeed displays: “Telltales…speedo…telltales…speedo, that’s how I like to sail,” he says.

Marilee’s latest keeper is also learning the nuances of a unique sail plan that essentially requires filling the foretriangle with as much sail area as possible and balancing that against the big mainsail towering overhead from Marilee’s gleaming wooden spar. Sail changes don’t happen on the fly, says Colburn, so planning ahead and knowing the course angles is critical to establishing the right balance and heel angle—and not getting overpowered. “In the [New York YC] Annual [the wind] was high teens and it was a beast,” Colburn says, “but she has a sweet spot at 12 to 16 knots.”

Applying a similar ethos as he has with his previous one-designs, he says the learning process will be a gradual and methodical one, with the assistance of longtime sailmaker Jack Slattery. “It’s the same learning curve [as with any one-design]—get on a boat and try and tweak,” Colburn says. “I have not raced it enough to know [what is fast]. What I see in a race is 15 degrees either side of my headstay and the speedo, so we approach it like a dinghy.”

The appeal of the New York 40 class was that it could be raced by amateur crews and family teams, unlike the New York 50s that preceded them in the early 1900s. The New York 50s were a handful, and even today, racing Spartan requires a crew that knows what they’re doing, especially when the call comes to set or strike the jackyard topsail.

Burman, Spartan’s current boat captain of seven years, says New York 50s were raced with nine crewmembers in the class’s heydays on Long Island Sound, but today, Spartan gets around the racecourse with nearly twice that. “The boat was quite crew intensive for that period—they were a handful,” he says. “We race with 15, and in a breeze, it’s still a handful.”

Spartan’s current owners, according to Burman, joined the restoration while it was underway with the previous owner who started the restoration in the late 1980s, slowly picking away at the project as funding came available. The 72-footer was eventually moved from Connecticut to the Herreshoff Museum’s waterfront facilities in Bristol, where it sat on the hard for eight years or so.

The current owners, Burman says, fell in love with the boat at first sight. “They were fascinated by the gaff-rigged sloops of that era. And the fact that Spartan was designed by Herreshoff and built by Bristol—they’re both Americans—was quite enticing as well,” Burman says. “Plus, the fact that she needed to be saved.”

While the boat is now museum quality, Spartan’s owners have been racing it extensively, and they’re not afraid to press the boat to its limits, Burman says. “They want to race the boat and they want to go fast, but we do ask people to be respectful. If you can do it without trashing it…she’s a raceboat and that’s what she was built to do.”

Synthetic rigging has replaced wire in most applications and the sails are built using all the latest design suites, but the mainsail’s leather and bronze gaff saddle is still lubricated with good old-fashioned lanolin oil—which is good for the spar as well as the scalp.

The mainsail’s boom and gaff, which are hoisted 50 feet up the mainmast, creates the equivalent of a modern-day square-top, and secured on deck are Spartan’s jackyard topsail spars, which Burman says requires an orchestrated effort to get aloft. Once hoisted, it’s preferable to kept them there jackyard can capture the wind above the mainsail gaff itself, especially when racing in lighter conditions

“We do have a refined sail chart,” Burman says. “Mainsail only would be 18-knots plus, and in anything less than that we start thinking about the racecourse, possibly hoisting the jackyard.” There are five control lines to set this critical sail Burman explains: the halyard, the tack, the leader line that’s fed through a bronze ferrule at the top of the spar and then the two sheets associated with the club spar—an outer sheet and an inner sheet. “There’s a fair bit of unison that happens and a coordination of all five of them that takes a bit of practice,” he says. “If we’re going jackyard, it’s a decision for the day.”

From there, the team has at their disposal an assortment of headsails and spinnakers to work with, all in the quest for power, balance and heel angle. “It’s such a main-dominant powered boat,” Burman says, “so the main is being played constantly.” With such a short “J” measurement, and with having an inner and outer forestay, he adds, “everything gets paired up really close so all your leech profiles kind of land on top of each other.”

When the mainsail gets eased, therefore, the foresails must as well, which makes trimming on Spartan far more dynamic than one may think.

“It’s a lot of communication and developing a team that’s consistent,” Burman says. “A lot of the crew has been sailing for eight to nine years, and that’s huge. You can pull on the tiller as hard as you want, but until you ease the main, the boat is not turning at all. That being said, on powered up reaches we’ve had two people on the tiller, but generally we try to set it up so it’s balanced and we don’t put on the brakes.”

In other words, even after nearly a century of sailing, with Spartan it’s still about letting the ol’ girl run as fast as she can—a run certainly worthy of a celebration.

*Since its founding, the Herreshoff Marine Museum waterfront campus has grown dramatically, starting in 1971 when it had no home but instead consisted of a small fleet of Herreshoff boats, a literal “floating museum.” Today, the museum includes a number of original company buildings, the Herreshoff family homestead, and a modern exhibition building, the Isaac B. Merriman, Jr. Hall of Boats. Named for one of the museum’s earliest benefactors, this exhibit space displays more than 60 Herreshoff boats, steam engines, and an array of artifacts. The Nathanael G. Herreshoff Model Room & Workshop exhibit is a re-creation of Captain Nat’s own model room and workshop, and contains more than 500 original design models, tools and documents. Over the past five years, the museum has delivered STEM-focused experiential education programs to thousands of Rhode Island students. The museum is now partnering with the National Sailing Hall of Fame on an America’s Cup Hall of Fame exhibit at its new Sailing Museum in Newport, RI.

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Rolling out any new system is bound to have some bumps along the way but the Technical Committee of the Classic Yacht Owner’s Association, tasked with creating the latest Classic Rating Formula, known as CRF MkII, have found the first season’s integration of the formula a rousing success.

“The formula behaved as it was expected to,” says Robert W. Stephens, one of three yacht designers on the Technical Committee. Along with fellow naval architects, Jim Taylor and Greg Stewart, Stephens admits: “We know there were inconsistencies, but the margin was much smaller than the old formula. Now we are looking to take steps over the next year to smooth out those disparities by working closely with regatta organizers.”

Last winter, the experienced yacht designer sub-group examined all the technical aspects of what makes a boat fast and how to weight those factors to make races fair. They knew the old rule compared similar boats to each other and favored larger Classics over smaller ones. The Committee looked to remove that bias by adding a few more steps to smooth out the transition between short-wide designs versus long-skinny boats. The ultimate goal was to take care of the known flaws to produce a rule that represented the speed of the yacht.

Stephens attributes Taylor with doing much of the heavy lifting when it came to devising the formula to accommodate more variables. He took the newly designed rule and then tested it against previous results to see how boats’ results compared the new and old formulas. Essentially, he conducted virtual races for hundreds of boats over many years.

After the first major event with CRF MkII, the NYYC Annual Regatta back in June, there was a sigh of relief among the Committee as the formula performed as it was supposed to. “We were pretty pleased overall,” says Stephens. “Now we had a benchmark of where we can improve. The first obvious area for improvement is to work closer with Race Organizers when it comes to selecting courses and classes so that races match the rules’ assumptions.”

What Stephens means, is when the courses were balanced between upwind, downwind, and reaching legs, then the rule works better as the formula takes the intended speeds of different points of sail into consideration. If courses favor one direction, the CRF MkII does not work as anticipated.

The Technical Committee is aware that no formula can be perfect and work for all boats. They know the new system favors long-narrow yachts like meter-boats compared to Spirit of Tradition yachts. However, to mitigate this problem the Technical Committee recommends Race Organizers group similar Classics into classes because when sailed altogether the rule tends not to function as intended.

To get feedback on the new rollout, the Technical Committee has been talking to and more importantly listening to the competitors. Stephens went to Nantucket to represent the Committee during the Opera House Cup. “It was very informative to be there and get their perspectives. Most folks have been thankful and supportive. I got the sense that the new transparency brought to the rule is very appreciated.”

“What I love about classic yacht racing is not only the diversity of the boats but also the variety of the owners,” concludes Stephens. “Many of our owners love their classics and just want the joy of racing with other classics. We want to be able to keep everyone happy, and we don’t want to get to in the weeds with the rule, but it is part of the fun to keep it fair for everyone.”

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50th Antigua Sailing week 2017

Experiencing Kialoa III power through waves with a grace and beauty rarely found in modern sailboats today is a sensation not lost on Roland Pieper. The 61-year-old Dutch entrepreneur helmed the 43-year-old Sparkman & Stephens classic to a first in class, with seven race wins, at the most recent Antigua Sailing Week.

“It was a tough competition — we had plenty of waves right over the boat in the early part of the week,” says Pieper, “plus a young, new crew who were initially very inexperienced in racing such a big boat with so much power.”

The regatta was the second time Kialoa III had been back in true racing form since being purchased in 2013 by the K3 Foundation and restored for two years. The foundation first displayed the fruit of its labors at the Rolex Big Boat Series in 2015, an event during which Pieper recalls dealing with many failures and issues that triggered another phase of restoration. In 2016, Pieper raced Antigua Sailing Week and finished second overall.

“We did pretty well, given a number of breakages and failures, which hurt our end result,” he says. “Antigua Sailing Week 2017, however, marked the completion of her restoration with no breakages.”

The K3 Foundation was created to manage the preservation and ongoing maintenance of the classic beauty. The foundation has a number of goals, foremost among them to make the boat available to young people for sail training and ensuring the boat continues to fly Old Glory off its transom.

“You cannot take the flag off Kialoa III — it’s impossible,” says Pieper.

The idea behind the K3 Foundation, he explains, is to bring the four-decades-old maxi back to life and make big-boat sailing more available to young people. “There’s a lot of small-boat sailing, but big-boat sailing — practicing and feeling the boat and how that works — well, there are just not enough big boats,” says Pieper. “So, it’s one of our goals to take young people along; the average age on board [in Antigua] was about 23. We had a couple of training days before racing, and it’s amazing how maneuvering went by the end of the week. It was impressive to see the kids move this big boat around.”

A father of six boys, Pieper’s youngest son, Daniel, 21, was on board for his first ever regatta. “He’s worked his butt off, but he also enjoyed it, so I am happy with that,” says Pieper. “He’s now in the camp of [thinking] this is pretty cool.”

Getting Kialoa III race-ready is a big part of boat captain Stephen Stewart’s job. ­Stewart says the recent focus has been working on winch systems, which are under constant maintenance because they are so old. Next up, he’d like to see a full boom and mast refit so it’s adequately prepared for big-wave conditions. He was impressed with how the boat performed during Sailing Week, hard work aside.

“Kialoa III was really built as an ocean racer, so around the cans is intensive,” says Stewart. “It requires a lot of people because we have no self-tailing winches, and getting the sails up and down requires a lot of manpower.”

At 79 feet long, with 2,733 square feet of sail, the boat is physically taxing on short courses, he adds, but it’s immense fun on long courses: “a hugely powerful boat and such a lovely ride, smooth and comfortable.”

Over the course of Antigua Sailing Week, Kialoa III proved it still has pace upwind, but like any big boat, it will have a tough time when the breeze is light and waves are high.

“No boat likes [those conditions], and of course we are heavier, which means we go into the waves,” says Pieper, “but downwind is our favorite spot, and perhaps we have the advantage because most of our competition uses asymmetric spinnakers, and thus were unable to sail the angles we could.”

Pieper, a familiar face on the international racing scene, having owned and raced various Swans (he helmed Favonius, the Swan 82, to victory in the 2008 Swan World Cup), confesses that sailing Kialoa III is no walk in the park.

“Someone jokingly referred to her as a ‘man’s boat,’” says Pieper, laughing. “And that’s true — I feel it everywhere in my body, and I think a lot of my crew feels the same. Nonetheless, she is fantastic to sail and she is historic. The 1974 design is just amazing and still works today. Now I think she is back, and at the least, we have preserved her for another 10 years.”

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Debuted in 1907 and raced in the Olympics 100 years ago, 8-Metres remain one of sailing’s most majestic international classes. With 45 feet of sleek, sexy lines, displacing 20,000 pounds and sailed with a crew of six, they require finesse and strength in all conditions. “People think of it as an old class, but they’re really high-tech racing machines,” says 8-Metre devotee Richard Self. “They just don’t go that fast.”

The class experienced a renaissance three decades ago, and of 500 8-Metres built over the past century, roughly one-third continue to carve ­sweeping wakes wherever they race. On the racecourse, they’re grouped in two divisions: classics and modern (post-1968).

Each boat is a work of art, so they’re raced with gentlemanly preservation in mind. “You rely on the skill set of the sailors,” says Self. “Getting close to one another and yelling really doesn’t accomplish much.”

2016 8 METRE WORLDS, TORONTO

Generational Shift

At an age when other young men are tearing about on high-­performance skiffs or ­jumping off cliffs in a flying-­squirrel suit, “Little John” Mitchele’s obsession lies with old boats. “I like going fast,” he says, “but I have a real passion for ­classic boats. I love the 8-Metre fleet. I ­absolutely adore it.”

Mitchele was days old when his ­parents, Heather Ann and John Mitchele, first took him sailing on Thisbe in May 1999. A recent high school graduate, he has his eye on his own 8-Metre. “It needs some love,” he admits, of the object of his affection. The hardest chore though, he says, will be getting the family’s blessing to branch out on his own. He’s third generation on Thisbe, once skippered by his grandfather Richard and now his father. “Sometimes we butt heads — and when I say sometimes, I mean all the time,” quips Little John. “I’m pretty sure this is my last year doing a whole ­season on Thisbe.”

He describes ­himself as “a very old soul,” playing blues, funk and soul on his guitar. And he ­simply can’t get enough of these enduring 8-Metres. “It’s a class of its own and such an awesome thing,” he says. “If we can keep building it up, the class can keep going strong.”

“He’ll be one of the mainstays and driving forces of this fleet long after the rest of us are gone,” says Self. “A lot of ­teenagers go off on other ­adventures, but this is his adventure.”

2016 8 METRE WORLDS, TORONTO

The King Competitor

Sailing is the king of sports, and the sport of kings. King Harald, of Norway, was lauded for making a concerted effort to attend the 2016 8-Metre World Championships in Toronto as an ambassador for the 2017 World Championship in Fredrikstad, Norway. The 2017 event will also mark the King’s 80th birthday. “It’s going to be fun, and quite laid-back,” says King Harald. “It’s a small community, a small island and a small club, with a big porch so we can all gather there.”

In Toronto he raced the distinctive green-hulled 8-Metre Sira, originally his father King Olav’s. It was transported across the Atlantic on a specially built cradle on 80-meter Royal Yacht K/S Norge, which graced the Toronto waterfront, and where King Harald admitted he was “on vacation.”

“One of the things I like about sailing is, to the wind, it doesn’t make any difference who you are or what you are — the wind blows on everybody the same way. You have to figure it out.”

His lifelong ­passion for sailing stems from a familial ­competitive streak. “I like the competition more than I like sailing,” he admits. “It’s what spurs me on. I never go sailing to go on a cruise. If I go ­sailing, it’s for racing or for training for a future event.” Royalty or not, his competitors treated him as an equal on the 8-Metre racecourse — to an extent. “As I see it, he’s on vacation from being a king; he wants to be a regular person when he’s sailing,” says Little John Mitchele. “So I like to scare him a little bit.”

“That is a boat you just definitely don’t want to hit,” Mitchele’s father counters. “We had a ­port-starboard, and we were on port, and my son gave me hell for missing him by more than a boat length. But my brother agreed with me: ‘That was exactly the right distance to miss him by.’ Maybe he got a tiny bit of preferential treatment, but not enough to make a ­difference.”

2016 8 METRE WORLDS, TORONTO

Respectful Rivals

“We’re coming after you, you bastards,” hollers Richard Self, from the deck of Gefion, as they beat toward the ­windward mark. Hollandia, the newest of the 8-Metres, crossed well ahead of them. “Again,” says Self. “I just thought I’d let them know we were still racing.”

Rivalries in this class are intense and convivial at the same time. “We are kindred spirits,” says Self. “We are people who love racing sailboats, beautiful sailboats, and that makes for great racing and great camaraderie.”

Gefion is Self’s 1987 Ed Dubois design, but he and a partner also maintain Raven, a 1938 classic, overseas. Later, as Gefion arrives at the dock, Hollandia is already tied up and put away, and the jovial skipper ribs his competitors: “Hey, did you guys ever leave the dock?”

“Our philosophy on Gefion is you race with and against your friends,” says Self. “They might happen to be some of the best sailors in the world, but foremost, they’re your friends. And that attitude creates a different atmosphere here.”

Hollandia went on to win the World Cup, and Bangalore edged out the King in the Classics Fleet, earning the Sira Cup trophy.

2016 8 METRE WORLDS, TORONTO

The Royal Venue

Light air elicits a dock hold on the third day of the regatta, and crews linger at the long tables that fill the Royal Canadian YC’s lush green lawn. Later in the day, the crew of Lafayette laments its results thus far in the regatta. Crowded around a trio of pitchers of beer, they tease: “This is what misery looks like …. We’re on suicide watch …. We’re switching sports to synchronized swimming.” But in truth, the mood is merry.

The Royal Canadian YC’s clubhouse is a rambling, white plantation-style building. Its wraparound veranda floors slope and creak from the weight and whispers of more than 100 years of ­sailors and their tales. The bucolic outpost complements RCYC’s posh but landlocked downtown facility. Ferries take patrons to and from the trio of islands that houses the club, its docks and other amenities. Despite the somewhat exposed ferry passage across the inner harbor, a dress code is still enforced. Club members stroll in bowler hats and collared shirts: Combined with the Dixieland band that entertains competitors and guests on the lawn, and the whop-whop of ­rackets hitting tennis balls on the adjacent courts, it feels like a scene from The Great Gatsby.

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In the long and storied history of the J Class, Newport Rhode Island is a very special place. It was when the event moved from New York City to Narrangansett Bay for the 1930 regatta that the America’s Cup was first raced for the very first time in J Class yachts. The Vanderbilt syndicate’s Enterprise prevailed against Shamrock V. Harold S Vanderbilt won again in the colours of the New York Yacht Club on Rainbow in 1934 and then once more in 1937, winning 4-0 on the mighty Ranger.

Those three America’s Cups in Newport reflected the J Class in its pomp before it was superseded in 1958 by the 12 Metre which raced eight subsequent editions off Newport.

An exciting new chapter in the history of the J Class and its colourful association with Newport and with the passionate hosts and organisers, the New York Yacht Club, will be written over coming days when a record fleet of six J Class yachts will compete for the very first J Class World Championship.

The class’ recent incorporation as a member group of the International Maxi Class Association allows the J Class yachts to compete for the World title – as ratified by World Sailing – for the first time ever. The chance to bring a J Class race crew to Newport to challenge for the inaugural world title has proven simply irresistible to the active, competitive minded J Class owners. Indeed for several teams this championship has been the absolute pinnacle event they have been working towards since it was announced in 2014.

Six shooting for title

Crews of the six yachts – Velsheda (1933), Ranger (2003), Hanuman (2009), Lionheart (2010), Topaz (2015) and Svea (2017) – have been training on the Bay over recent days, building up to Monday’s official Practice Race before the start of racing today. A flexible programme of five days of racing – three of windward-leeward contests, usually two per day, and two days of Navigator Races, middle distance coastal races using a variety of fixed navigation marks – should prove a fitting challenge. Forecasters suggest normal sea breeze conditions for the opening days, some stronger winds midweek tapering to lighter airs for the final races. The choice of racing format for each day will be decided the previous evening.

All of the competing yachts raced in June’s America’s Cup J Class Regatta in Bermuda where Lionheart only clinched the overall win on the last run of the final race and Velsheda finished second. And Hanuman, which is steered by Newport’s Ken Read, will be looking for a world championship win as a salve to memories of losing out to Lionheart in Bermuda.

“Look, any one boat could win this here. It will be super, super competitive.” Emphasizes Murray Jones unequivocally. The six times America’s Cup winning Kiwi returns as tactician on Ranger after missing the Bermuda J regatta due his commitment as a performance coach with the Cup winning Emirates Team New Zealand but is back in the hot seat on Ranger.

One of Lionheart’s winning strengths is their strong and very settled crew line up. Tactician and project manager Bouwe Bekking signed up more recently for his seventh lap of the planet racing in the Whitbread or Volvo Ocean Race will again skipper Team Brunel, but he insists his long standing commitment to Lionheart and their bid to become World Champions is non-negotiable.

“This is a long term commitment and for me a commitment is a commitment. You can’t let a team of 35 down because of another later commitment.” Smiles Bekking, whose own Newport history includes training with Dennis Conner’s Winston Whitbread Round the World Race team in 1993-1994.

“In Bermuda everything went our way. We sailed well but sometimes it goes your way during a regatta and there it did.” Bekking says of Lionheart’s Bermuda win in June, “But we are comfortable in how we are sailing the boat. Our crew has been together forever, our manoeuvres are excellent and we are confident in how we sail the boat.”

Asked if there would be any additional incentive to win on rival Read’s home turf, Bekking responded, “Not at all. Of course it would be nice to win here, winning is good wherever you are and that is what we are here for. But it is great to be here, it is a great place to sail and everyone here knows what this regatta is. This city thrives on sailing and its sailing history. Being back here with these historic boats is exactly what Newport is about.

Home on the Js, from J/24 Worlds to J Class Worlds

Newport born and bred, Narrangansett Bay and the highly competitive J/24 fleet is where Hanuman’s skipper-helm Kenny Read, America’s Cup helm and Volvo Ocean Race skipper cut his teeth as a racing sailor. Holder of more than 40 world, international and national titles Read might still smarting after missing out on the J Class title in Bermuda but he does not show it. Being back to race the mighty J Class yachts on his home patch is a huge honour. “I don’t think any of us ever considered we might race on a J Class yacht when we were growing up here far less to race a J Class World Championship here.” Read grins wistfully, “If there is any home which does not really grant a local knowledge advantage it is probably Newport because almost everybody else has sailed here as much as I have, even though I live here.”

“As world championships go this is as big as anything because it is more than just a regatta and a title, it sets a beautiful tone for sailing. It is more than just a sailboat race, that is very clear.” “It is such an honour and a privilege to sail these boats and we never forget that. We will see some big crowds out there on the water. They will have their jaws on the ground watching us get these boats around the race course.” Read affirms.

“There is no extra pressure on me. As long as we have good communication it will be fine. I just have to do my job. When you sail with such a talented group as this and everyone is in position to succeed, to do their jobs very well, then I just have to do my job well and not try to micro manage things. Typically that works.”

“There were a lot of things we were happy with in Bermuda and some things we were not so happy with. We targeted our downwind speed, we struggled a little downwind. We have changed a couple of spinnakers around a bit. We thought we got off the line well but first windshift we were not always happy with. We were not always in the best position for the first shift. There were a lot of good things and obviously you can’t cry over the things which are toughest to take.”

Read has his brother Brad sailing in the Hanuman afterguard. Brad runs the highly successful Sail Newport initiative but the pair sailed together originally in the J/24, winning the J/24 Worlds in Newport in 1986, their second successive world title. Brad won the J/24 World title twice in his own right in 2000 in Newport and 2002 in Kingston Canada.

“I think every time I have sailed here it is too easy for me to get sucked into the local knowledge tactics part of it for me. On a boat like this any loss of concentration to the boatspeed part of this is a failure to the rest of the group. So just to make sure I don’t get sucked into the local knowledge part of it I brought in one of the best local knowledge experts I know. The fact he is a relative who I used to beat up when we were kids is neither here nor there. Brad and I grew up sailing out of Barrington YC just up the coast here. He is solid.”

“Sail Newport speaks for itself and what it has done for Newport, getting events like the Volvo here, like this and the new sailing centre they have built, they bring so many kids through that program. And he has politically finally allowed the State Government to realise what they have in the sport of sailing here from a tourism point of view and so the state are now behind a lot of what he is doing with sailing and that is making a world of difference.”

The newest J Class Svea, launched earlier this year, made her debut in Bermuda and proved very quick from the outset. After a forestay swivel failed, threatening their rig in Race 2 of the series, the team have had to work long and hard since to be ready to race at this inaugural world championship. They only finally restepped their rig just over a week ago. But Svea have a galaxy of past Stars & Stripes America’s Cup talent rich in Newport history including including Tom Whidden, Peter Isler and Vince Brun.

Svea’s project manager and tactician Charlie Ogletree says, “We had the rig out of the boat and re-set everything and so the last few days we have just been flat out getting it together. The boat is going really great now we have to get some good starts and sail it well. It is ready to perform and it is up to us to perform. I have raced here off and on my whole life. And we have a lot of other guys like Vince Brun, Peter Isler, Tom Whidden, so I think we are happy when it comes to local knowledge. Our goal is to finish each race in a respectable position and to shoot for a win.”

Topaz showed considerable potential in Bermuda and has supplemented their afterguard with Newport ace Tony Rey who sails as strategist for tactician Ross MacDonald and helm Peter Holmberg. Rey comes directly from winning the last 52 SUPER SERIES regatta with the Provezza project he runs, working with Holmberg as helm. Topaz’s Ross MacDonald adds, “It is always a challenging place to sail with the current and even the sea breeze has its quirks about it. If we do some of the navigator courses there are current gates and lots of strategy that plays into these courses.”

Reflecting on the International Maxi Class’s role in establishing the first J Class World Championship General Secretary of the IMA Andrew McIrvine reflected, “Personally I have been inspired by the J Class since seeing images of the very early days and then seeing the restoration of Velsheda and her racing subsequently. So there is a huge pride to see this magnificent fleet lined up here. It was a great opportunity for the J Class to establish a world championship and to see it all happening here now is just great.”

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