Hardesty wins the World Match Racing Champ title

by Lynn Fitzpatrick, US Editor, Sail-World.com on 8 Dec 2007 There were few sailing events this year that drew the crowds and excitement of the World Match Racing Tour. European, Australian and Kiwi teams comprise the players and the stops on the tour are all over the world. The Monsoon Cup in Kuala Terengganu, Malaysia marked the grand finale of the season.

Going into the regatta any of a handful of European teams could have taken the World Championship title away from defending champion, Australian, Peter Gilmour and his team. In the end, Team Pindar, with Brit, Ian Williams at the helm and American, Bill Hardesty, as tactician laid claim to the Monsoon Cup and the World Championship title.

Hardesty finished up his collegiate sailing career at Kings Point Merchant Marine Academy not only as an All American sailor, but was College Sailor of the Year. Hardesty, a native of San Diego, has never spent very much time away from a sailboat and has usually been connected with a sailing campaign. As a junior, he qualified for the Snipe Western Hemispheres and in 2001 he finished 5th in the Snipe Worlds in Uruguay.

It wasn’t long afterward that a friend suggested to Hardesty that he consider match racing. Hardesty and some friends from San Diego (Matt Reynolds, Steve Hunt, Eric Champagne, Peter Isler and others) organized Tuesday and Thursday night practices in two borrowed Etchells. They studied the rule book, watched America’s Cup races, read through the call book and did what they could with what they had. They may have limited their match racing attempts to San Diego Bay had it not been for one very auspicious event.

The area where Hardesty and his friends practiced was in full view of the running route of a newcomer to San Diego. That newcomer just happened to be Australian James Spithill, the young America’s Cup skipper. Spithill was looking for things to do and people to play with, so he ran over to SDYC and asked if he could join the group. Spithill brought the San Diego boys way up the learning curve by taking the helm of one boat while Hardesty steered the other. They would switch crews every evening and finish the sessions with informal debriefings.

When Hardesty’s team decided to sail the qualifier event for the Bermuda Gold Cup, they received a call from Peter Holmberg asking if they would train for a week in Newport with him. Hardesty said, 'We sailed 80 or 90 races over four or five days and Holmberg won 90% of them. We were good in the pre-start, but we just didn’t know the fine art of getting around the course in a match race.'

Hardesty’s team went down to Bermuda and qualified for the Gold Cup. Not only that, as things happen in match racing draws, they were paired against Holmberg. This time the tables turned and the match was action packed with Hardesty taking the match. Hardesty was eliminated in the next round by Russell Coutts.

Not long afterward, Hardesty started sailing professionally and focusing on fleet racing. Client obligations took precedence and his match racing suffered. The team sailed some other match races in the US, such as the Ficker Cup and the Prince of Wales. Hardesty’s fortune changed at the next Bermuda Gold Cup when he met Ian Williams. Williams asked Hardesty if he wanted to join his team. Hardesty sailed with Williams throughout the 2006-07 World Match Racing Tour season. Team Pindar stood at the top of the Tour rankings throughout much of the season, but toward the end, Frenchman, Mathieu Richard and his Saba Sailing Team stole the lead.

Through a series of close matches, the final one coming against the defending World Champion, Peter Gilmour, Hardesty, the only American at the Monsoon Cup, was one of five sailors crowned the 2006-07 World Match Racing Tour champions.

At the press conference following their win, Williams said that he planned to race with the same team next year. Hardesty is going to have another busy year next year between his commitments to Team Pindar, his own Etchells campaign and a Melges 24 campaign. If Hardesty is not in the driver’s seat, he’s calling the shots and he’s up at the top of the fleet.