Record J/Boats Turnout Enjoy Spring Sailing! (Annapolis, MD)- With a virtual armada of 156 J/Teams attending the Sperry Topsider Annapolis NOOD Regatta (74% of the whole fleet of 211), the eight J one-design classes (J/22, J/24, J/70, J/80, J/30, J/105, J/35, J/109) all had their fair share of spectacular, sunny racing on Friday. From there it was only a matter of time that conditions would deteriorate on the notoriously fickle Chesapeake Bay.
For the most part the Annapolis NOOD weather conditions made for great fleet racing so long as sailors on the five division circles were well-behaved and the PRO's at each did a good job of managing the fleet and the racing. Some were clearly better than others. On Friday, the fleet was treated to a brisk ENE 10-20 kts with lots of choppy waters, a fast-flowing flood current and very shifty breezes with big puffs. In such conditions, most fleets sailed four races. By Saturday, the forecast was beginning to see diminishing winds and the sailor's confidence in the breeze fell along with those prognostications. The forecast ENE was in fact 100% wrong, instead the fleet was treated to mostly NW-NE 6-14 kts, getting even shiftier and was full of holes, so much so that the third races for most fleets saw their last leg or two become a matter of rolling the dice. Sadly, Sunday's forecast was even more wrong. The forecast easterlies never materialized until late afternoon with a gorgeous sunny day. Instead, the fleets were treated to an even crazier NW to E breeze blowing 0-10 kts with holes everywhere- a one race "craps shoot" for most, or none for others!
Debuting
as the largest class at the event, the J/70s simply had an epic first
day of sailing on Friday. Spending about 80% of the time in
planing-mode downwind, the fleet had big grins plastered across their
faces as they enjoyed some serious sparring at double-digit speeds.
While Saturday's and Sunday's racing was mostly in displacement mode,
the need to find the edge even in "soak-mode" meant that teams were
learning the fine-edge of how to maximize apparent wind speed for
optimum downwind VMG. Avoiding the pitfalls more than most was Bennet
Greenwald's team from California that sailed PERSEVERANCE. They not
only won the J/70 class, but also were awarded the "STSW NOOD Overall
Performance Awards" for the 15 fleets sailing the regatta (they get to
sail the NOOD World Championships in the Caribbean in fall 2013!).
Continuing their streak of finishing in the top five was Joel Ronning's
crew on CATAPULT finishing 2nd followed by Tim Healy's rapid ascent up
the ladder to snag 3rd overall sailing Team HELLY HANSEN. Fourth was
the Newport/ Marblehead team of Henry Brauer/ Will Welles on RASCAL and
in fifth was Brian Elliott's B-SQUARED (the only team to win 3 races). A
strong indicator of the strength and wealth of talent in the J/70 fleet
was the fact that 15 teams managed top five finishes over the eight
races sailed. And, this regatta produced the highest average score for
the winner- at 6.1 pts per race and the highest average to get a top 10
finish- 13.9 pts per race. Also of note were the fact that the two
youngest skippers in the regatta, Willy Comerford (14 yrs old) on
NORTHERLY and Dylan Flack (8 yrs old) on TORQEEDO were seen either
leading the fleet, winning races OR finishing in the top 10!Sailing photo credits- Tim Wilkes.com. For more Sperry Topsider NOOD Sailing Regatta sailing information
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