J/111 Garmin World Championship – Final day

by Louay Habib on 4 Aug 2016 Martin Dent's JElvis is the J/111 Garmin World Champion. Racing with a young team including family members, JElvis only joined the J/111 Class last year. After a thrilling final day, British J/111 JElvis held off a strong challenge from Peter Wagner's Skeleton Key to take the world title.

The final day of racing delivered two windward leeward races in a southwesterly gradient breeze. Once again, enhanced by thermal breeze the wind speed piped up to 20 knots, giving thrilling conditions to the fleet. In the pre-start to the penultimate race, Skeleton Key engaged JElvis, with the two combatants weaving through the fleet.

However, Skeleton Key misjudged the line and arriving early had to bare away. It was a position that the American team found hard to recover from, ending the race in 10th, which was discarded. Race eight was won by Mike Mayer's Kashmir. The team from Chicago became the fifth team to score a bullet at the J/111 Garmin World Championship. The intensity of the competition saw nine teams out of fourteen make the podium.

JElvis had a five point cushion going into the last race but a poor first beat left JElvis in seventh whilst Skeleton Key took the lead. However McFly and Kashmir, who were both in front of JElvis, almost simultaneously ripped their spinnakers, allowing JElvis to climb the necessary places on the leaderboard to win the J/111 Garmin World Championship.

“I would like to thank our competitors, the locals we race against all the time, and to all the foreign teams that have come from so far away to compete, especially Skeleton Key who pushed us so hard.” commented Martin Dent. “It has been great racing against Skeleton Key, who never gave up, right until the end and raced so well. A big thank you to my own team, on the boat and off the boat. You have all put a lot of work in and it has paid off.”

Tony Mack's McFly was third for the championship and has been a great supporter of the class and decided to put up a Corinthian Trophy, for a team fielding only amateur sailors. This year the Cornish team racing Stuart Sawyer's Black Dog were the winners.

“We came second in the worlds in 2014 and to be there, or there about, this year has been wonderful. I live miles from the coast and we can't put as much time in as some of the other teams but we enjoy it all just as much. I put up the Corinthian Prize because we want to encourage people to join the class that what to sail with friends. Only one professional is allowed, so the J/111 teams are very much amateur but the standard is very high. They are all very good sailors but the pro-rule stops it from getting too serious.”

Skeleton Key's Peter Wagner spoke at the end of the Prize Giving about next year's J/111 World Championship. “ This has been a great regatta, some of the crew have sailed here once or twice before but we have all had racing in Cowes on our bucket list. There are only a handful of places like this in the world and San Francisco Bay is one of them. Put August 24th in your diaries, the next worlds is in San Francisco Bay, hosted by the St.Francis Yacht Club and on behalf of all of the J/111s in North America, we encourage you to come and join us. This year was great racing, and our thanks to the race committee for that and hopefully we can put on as good an event, where it will be a lot sunnier!”