With only three races in, two days cancelled, and the fleet in a 3 hour postponement, it wasn’t looking pretty 11am Thursday during Acura Key West Race Week. But then the ON switch was activated, and Peter Craig’s expert race management team ran off five races in the last day and a half, to ensure another successful week at Key West. Incredible results were turned in by the J fleet, in both one-design and handicap classes.In one-design action, Tom Coates and his team from San Francisco aboard MASQUERADE, won their 4th J/105 Midwinter title in champion fashion by 42 points over Damian Emery on ECLIPSE, Joerg Esdorn on KINSCEM and the rest of the 34 boat fleet. John Storck of Huntington, NY aboard RUMOR captured the J/80 Midwinters over perennial champion Kerry Klingler and Magnus Tyreman from Sweden. Storck, with son Eric driving and daughter Katie trimming, managed an impressive 6 bullets in 8 races. The J/109 Midwinter title came down to the final race, with Don Filippelli (NY) on CAMINOS edging out Bill Sweetser (Annapolis) on RUSH, and Jim Powers (TX) on SEATRIAL. Three points separated the top 3 boats.
Of the six handicap divisions that included at least one J Boat (5 PHRF divisions and 1 IRC division), J owners dominated the leader board, winning 44% of the top three class trophies. Jim Madden (Newport Beach, CA) on his J/125 STARK RAVING MAD won the PHRF-1 performance sport boat class. Will Hanckel (Charleston, SC) dominated PHRF-2 in his J/120 EMOCEAN. And Robert Armstrong of St. Croix, USVI commissioned his new, red J/100 BAD GIRL in time to take PHRF-4.
In the closely contested IRC-2 class, racing came down to the wire, with Jim Bishop’s J/44 GOLDDIGGER making the most of the final day’s windy conditions to edge out Andrew Weiss’ J/122 CHRISTOPHER DRAGON and Robin Team’s TEAMWORK for 2nd. Both J/122s won the prior day of racing and TEAMWORK was awarded the Boat of the Day by Premiere Racing. The top two boats were the Swan 45 and J/44, with the J/122’s leading the rest of the fleet of 37-41 footers. Results here