Tuesday, May 14, 2013

J/70 Sailing Tips & Tricks - By Tim Healy

J/70 sailing fast upwind(Newport, RI)- Recently, the Key West and Charleston Race Week winner, Tim Healy from North Sails, offered to all J/70 sailors the latest know-how, go-fast ideas that have propelled him to two significant class wins in the two largest fleets of J/70s assembled to date.  As Tim describes,

"I just returned from beautiful Charleston, South Carolina after completing another fantastic Sperry Top-Sider Charleston Race Week! The entire event was so impressive and the organization on every level was impeccable, from the race committee work to the hospitality on shore, the event was well run, welcoming, and fun. The food was fantastic, and even though the sheer number of boats and sailors must have been a huge logistical challenge, the Charleston event team pulled it off seamlessly which made for an incredibly enjoyable regatta.

A whopping fifty-five J70’s were entered, making it the largest class of the nearly 300 boats that competed. As with the two other J/70 regattas our team has sailed in 2013, our learning curve was steep. Here are our thoughts, lessons learned, and the adjustments we made to our boat in conditions that ranged from 8-30 knots and water that could be flat one minute and extremely choppy the next."  Please read-on here-- lots of good info from a past J/24 World Champion!  Click here to read more about tuning a J/70 for hyper-space mode.