LE TIGRE Three-Peats J/80s, J/122 TEAMWORK Wins PHRF/ J-Class(Key West, FL)- Today is what everyone dreams about when sailing Key West. Gorgeous light bouncing off the pearl white sands creating a neon blue water color. Steady, oscillating ESE gradient breeze with near trade-wind like consistency flowing along at 10-15 knots. Solid race committee and PRO management making for fun, fair racing on mostly windward-leeward courses. One cannot imagine that anyone would be disappointed by such spectacular weather conditions.
While Thursday's sailing saw breezes in the NE quadrant, Friday's final day of sailing saw mostly ENE breezes that hardly fluctuated more than 15 degrees in direction. The key was staying in wind pressure and ensuring you sailed the lifted tack as long as possible. Some boats hit the corners and when they did it usually turned into a disaster-- corner shots sometimes pay in Key West, but not this week. For the most part, so long as you played the wind shifts and the wind pressure you could always stay in the hunt with the race leaders.
It was a runaway in the 18-boat J/80 class as Glenn Darden steered LE TIGRE to a steady stream of first, second and third place results. John Gluek was serving as tactician on LE TIGRE, winning with an 18-point lead over second place ROCAD RACING skippered by Mikael Lindqvist from Stockholm, Sweden.LE TIGRE was named Mount Gay Rum Boat of the Day for winning the class which had the closest, most competitive racing for the day on Thursday. The boat is co-owned by Reese Hillard, who works the bow while Karl Anderson trims the jib aboard the Forth Worth, Texas entry. They captured the J/80 World Championship in 2006 and got the three-peat for Key West!
“Our team really meshed well. We’ve had a lot of time in the boat and that makes a big difference,” Darden said. “John has done a great job of keeping us in phase and everyone else is just doing their job at a high level.”The next three places in the J/80s were a horse-race to the very end of the regatta. Snagging third place by virtue of a 5-5 on the last day was Ron Buzil on VAYU 2 for a total of 48 pts. Fourth place went to the fast-climbing veteran J/80 campaigners, John Storck Jr and family on RUMOR finishing with a 3-8 to get fourth overall with 50 pts. Behind them in fifth place was Chris & Liz Chadwick on CHURCH KEY with a 9-9 for a total of 53 pts. The SAIL Best Around Buoys Team, Ryan Glaze and the Scott brothers hung tough against some top J/80 teams and managed to finish off with a 6-3 for 54 points, good enough for sixth place.
SAILING WORLD'S Mike Lovett had a quick interview with this fast team: "What was the most fun is that the conditions were up and down, shifting around," says tactician John Gluek, who is president of Dimension-Polyant. "It was all about staying calm and not panicking, deciding a side that's favorable and digging through the fleet to get there, and shifting gears. From five to ten to fifteen knots, there's a range of adjustments [we] make that is really the speed, that's the gas pedal."Trimmer Karl Anderson is the team's gear-changer. "We try to keep the boat rolling, fully powered up," he says. "There's a lot of small adjustments you can make that are minor adjustments, but they all add up. The trick is to have it all in sync with the trim of the boat and the pressure on the sails. In that way, it's a little back to dinghy sailing. When the wind drops, we try to focus on making the boat go faster forward. We'll heel the boat to make it easier for the helmsman, and we try to keep everybody from freaking out! When everybody's working together, we're able to work through those lights spots."
Of course, skipper Glenn Darden prefers to avoid the light spots altogether. "What John [Gluek] did was keep us in the breeze," says Darden. "There were big breeze lanes—more than shifts, there were breeze lanes—and John kept us in these lanes. A couple of races, we didn't get off the line as well as we wanted, we were a little bit behind, and up the first beat we weren't looking great. John had the patience to work us into better lanes."
Gluek explains his wind-hunting method: "Today was what I call lake sailing, where you had to be patient. You couldn't hit a corner; you couldn't say it's right or left. You had to go with the velocity and move up the water, a little like skiing down a slalom course."
In the PHRF One Division, the sailing could not have been more interesting and more fun competitively amongst the ten boats sailing in the division. Many incredibly well-sailed boats, all with great teamwork, good tacticians, great boat speed. There was nowhere to hide amongst the top six boats, it was a tough battle every single race to scrap for every place you could get as each and every team sought to make incremental gains against one another-- perhaps some of the best "almost one-design" racing one could find sailing handicap racing. On this last day, the moderate conditions seemed to be working well for Robin Team's J/122 TEAMWORK (pictured at right) and Paul Stahlberg's J/111 MENTAL, each compiling a 1-2 record to be the "J-Boat of the Day". At the end of the day, the late charge by MENTAL was not enough to overcome the strong showing of TEAMWORK on the first two days/ five races of the series. Robin's team on TEAMWORK sailed a fantastic series to win with a total of 22 pts. Second by virtue of their three 1sts and two 2nds on the last two days was Paul's MENTAL team from Chicago, IL, good enough for 26 pts. Finishing fourth overall was Bill Sweetser's veteran J/109 RUSH with a 4-3 for the day and Doug Curtiss' J/111 WICKED 2.0 sailed to a 5-5 for a total of 43 pts to snag fifth place in class. Gary Weissberg's J/109 HEATWAVE sailed a strong last day to get a 6-7 and finish sixth in class.
Within the J/Division (PHRF Time-on-Time), Robin's J/122 TEAMWORK won the class with a 1-3 on the last day for 20 pts. Second was determined on a tie-breaker, with Bill's J/109 RUSH with a 3-2 on the final day to snag 2nd place. Losing the tie-breaker was Paul's J/111 MENTAL with a 2-1 for 23 pts to secure third place. Sailing their J/111 WICKED 2.0 well was Doug Curtiss' team that included skipper Ted Scott and tactician Neal Fowler (both Tufts Sailing Team classmates of the Editor), securing a 4-4 on the last day to finish fourth in class. Debuting for his first time in Key West was Gary Weisberg's team on the J/109 HEATWAVE, sailing to a 5-6 to get fifth overall in the J/Class. In the PHRF Two Division, Gerrit Schulze sailed strongly on the J/105 MAX POWER to finish fourth overall in class with a 4-5 on the last day. Ed and Justin Palm's J/95 STILL CRAZY sailed to a 6-7 to get sixth place and Dave Whealon's J/80 BOND---JAMES BOND sailed to 9th overall.
In the IRC Three Division, Jim Bishop on the IRC Modified J/44 WHITE GOLD had a serious battle on their hands going into the last day for second place on the podium. However, despite their valiant efforts to overcome stiff competition, the 2-4 was just not enough to win this cliff-hanger to get onto the podium. The WHITE GOLD crew missed 2nd place by one point and their two competitors in themselves had to settle the score on a tie-breaker at 33 pts each!
Photo credits- Tim Wilkes- http://www.timwilkes.com
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