J/70 Worlds, BBS, VOR—Sailing news from the U.S. and beyond

by David Schmidt, Sail-World USA Editor on 16 Sep 2014 While it’s fair to say that the eyes of the Olympic-sailing world have been riveted to Santander, Spain for the Santander 2014 ISAF Sailing World Championships (September 8-21), two important regattas took place on U.S. waters this weekend, the first in Newport, Rhode Island, the second on the notoriously breezy San Francisco Bay. In both cases, the post-racing reports involve lots of hyperboles and glowing comments about the level of competition, organization and overall fun that people had at the inaugural J/70 Worlds, and at the Rolex Big Boat Series.

The J/70 can be considered one of the biggest One Design successes in recent years, with hundreds of these speedsters creating crisp wakes all over the world. Given that J/Boats is based in Newport, Rhode Island-not to mention the fantastic sailing conditions on Narragansett Bay and the town’s sailing heritage-it makes a lot of sense that the class’ first Worlds would be hosted by the venerable New York Yacht Club on these storied waters.

The competition was intense at this inaugural Worlds but this didn’t stop Tim Healy and his 'Helly Hansen' teammates (Gordon Borges, Geoffrey Becker and Paul Abdullah) from taking top honors, followed by Joel Ronning and his 'Catapult' team and Brian Keene and his 'Savasana' crew.

'The key to doing well is time spent in the boat,' said Healy. 'From day one when Jeff Johnstone called and said ‘we have the first two boats ready to go, are you interested in doing some sea trials?’ I jumped on it. As soon as I sailed the boats I knew the class was going to be huge. I think it’s the simplicity of it. Anybody who grew up sailing dinghies or got into small keelboat sailing can go down and look at a J/70 and say ‘I get it.’ They can look at the rig and see that it’s simple, and how the spinnaker works and how the main works, the deck layout is totally simple and clean and it’s easy to handle.'

On the West Coast, the wind machine was switched on for the Big Boat Series (BBS). While the competition was fierce in all classes, the HPR class in particular commanded plenty of spectator and media attention. After four days of racing, Donald Payan and his MC38 'Whiplash' team beat-out Greg Slyngstad’s well-sailed J/125 'Hamachi' and Anatole Masfen’s TP52 'Beecom' to take home a shinny new Rolex watch.

'One of the big reasons I race this boat is because of these guys,' said Payan, referring to his team. 'They work so hard at getting the most out of this boat, and we’re going faster than ever before. The boat is great, and I really enjoy racing in HPR, as the competition was really tough this week.'

Get the full report from the BBS, inside this issue.

Meanwhile, on the Olympic-sailing scene, the Santander 2014 ISAF Sailing World Championships are commanding international sailing headlines, including reports of some great results from several US Sailing Team Sperry Top-Sider members. At the time of this writing, Stuart McNay and David Hughes were leading the hunt in the Men’s 470 class, while Charlie Buckingham had moved up to second place in the Men’s Laser class, and Erika Reineke was applying significant pressure on the leaders of the Laser Radial.

'I’m psyched to be in the top 3, since it’s my first time [being in that position] at the Worlds,' said Buckingham. 'Getting off the [starting] line clean has been a focus for me this year, and it’s been going well in Santander. It’s pretty difficult to do in this fleet.'

Even more important than individual finishes is the fact that the United States has now qualified for the Rio 2016 Olympics. Get the full report, including more news on the qualification process, inside this issue, and stay tuned to the website for more news from Santander, as it becomes known.

Also in Spain, the Volvo Ocean Race conducted 'Leg Zero' of the 2014/2015 edition over the weekend. This mock leg is used to simulate different problems that crews might encounter, for example a dropped rig, or a MOB. While this leg doesn’t count for points in the actual VOR, Team Vestas Wind edged-out Team Brunel by ten seconds to take the victory. This is especially impressive, given that skipper Chris Nicholson and his Team Vestas Wind only announced their plans to participate in this year’s VOR last month.

'If you’d have told me a couple of days ago that I would finish this way, I would have said it would have to take some luck but there was no luck,' said Nicholson. 'I couldn’t be happier. We learned so much about ourselves and the boat in this race - but there’s still a long way to go.' More, inside.

Also inside, get the latest news from the 2014 Rolex Swan Cup, the Extreme Sailing Series and the America’s Cup.

May the four winds blow you safely home,