One race and barely a breeze at the J24 Worlds

by Andrew Campbell on 8 May 2009 Yesterday, Cinco de Mayo greeted the J24 Worlds fleet with hardly a breath of air. We motored out to the Chesapeake at the mouth of the Severn River to find flat and often glassy conditions.

The race committee could barely muster a starting line, much less a full race as the breeze pulsed in and retreated to some unknown location. At around 3pm our race officers gave us AP over H sending the fleet back to the dock at what seemed to be a premature hour. But, only minutes after the boat was packed up and at the dock, the overcast skies turned quickly to dumping rain and left the fleet secretly thanking the AYC race committee for not having us sit in the rain for a second day in a row.

Today, was not much better in terms of breeze. As we motored out in a strong ebb tide, thanks to almost a week of consistent rain, a light southeasterly filled to the excitement of the racers. Although light, the breeze was sufficiently steady to set a line and long beat with two knots or more current running directly upwind. Only a handful of boats were over the line and we took our lane from the middle-pin all the way left towards the 70 foot deep channel on that side of the race course.

We tacked shy of the port tack layline and feathered into a each vein of light pressure into the weather mark. We had to fend off two boats from the left of us but were relatively unscathed out in first place down the first run. The breeze died bit by bit as we sailed the next four legs around a shortened race track. We fought off a brief rally by 'Rental,' the boat that would ultimately be third in the race, but were able to extend on the last beat for a comfortable lead across the finish line.

As happy as we were to have dodged a bullet in a light and flukey race, team 'Talking Heads' had to remain cool-headed for the next two hours anticipating a second race. Unfortunately, the breeze died ahead of the rain in similar fashion to yesterday and we were sent home under AP over A leaving us with two days left to sail and seven races left on the schedule. For what they’re worth the results got plenty jumbled today as the light air conditions got the best of some very good teams.

1 28/ ITA 434 Fiamma Gialla Andrea Casale Italia 21 9 8 5 43.00 1
2 70/ CAN 2827 Clear Air Rossi Milev Canada 23 5 6 10 44.00 2
3 65/ USA 2934 Mookie Peter Levesque USA 10 31 9 9 59.00 3
4 30/ GBR 5237 Hedgehog Ian Southworth England 1 24/ZFP 18 24 67.00 4
5 21/ ARG 5194 Carrera Matias Pereira Argentina 8 14 17 29 68.00 5
6 68/ USA 5078 Paraloc Will Welles USA 14 7 22 26 69.00 6
7 91/ USA 5362 National Sailing Hall of Fame Chris Larson USA 2 22/ZFP 43 6 73.00 7
8 16/ JPN 5289 Three Bond Tetsuya Matsunaga Japan 12 3 23 35 73.00 8
9 37/ BRA 37 Bruschetta Mauricio Santa Cruz Brazil 6 1 63/20% 11 81.00 9
10 58/ USA 58 Bangor Packet Anthony Parker USA 5 22 2 52/40% 81.00 10

Check J24WorldChampionship2009.com for up to date results, and see our frontman Charlie Enright getting grilled by the SailGroove.org guys here.