At the Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta Series in Detroit the J/120 fleet put on a show once again on the opening day of the regatta. It was just the sort of day where “anyone could have gone out there and won,” says Charlie Hess, skipper of Funtech, which leads the class in the overall standings, although tied with their Bayview YC J-dock neighbors on Mike and Bob Kirkman’s Hot Ticket. The four-race opener for the J/120 fleet was a light-air affair, putting a premium wind shift awareness and fleet management.
For Funtech, the first race revealed the cruel business of racing on Lake St. Clair.
“We got off to a nice lead through the first three legs,” Hess says, but a critical call ultimately cost them the race win. “We decided we really like the pressure on the right—and to not cover our competition that’s all going left.”
The consequence of the call was immediate.
“We lost Hot Ticket on that one decision and finished second,” Hess says, emphasizing the cutthroat nature of this Great Lakes racing group. “You don’t get to make an error and not pay for it in the J/120 fleet.”
Funtech’s second race followed a similar pattern, Hess says. “We were late on Leg 1 to get to the pressure on the right, and the boats that “bailed out to the right” reaped the benefits of better breeze. Still, Funtech finished second, a keeper for the first of this three-day regatta.
The turning point for the team came in the third and fourth races as the wind got lighter and the shifts more dramatic. In the fourth and final race of the day, especially Hess says, they had a good start, got ahead, and having learned from the earlier race, “we were a little bit more careful to cover.”
His tactician, Greg McCliment, “just did an awesome job calling some great laylines and for once, I listened to him.”
A similar scenario played out among the regatta’s J/35 teams, 10 of which are contesting their Great Lakes Championship. Starts and mark roundings were plenty busy, but with wind shifts coming into play, there were ample opportunities to make—or recover from—mistakes.
Back at their slip at Bayview after three races, Filthy McGyver skipper Jake Wonly and his crew were happy to be sitting atop the standings with a 1-2-3 scoreline for the day.
“Strikes and gutters,” says Wonly’s teammate Ian Pouliot, recounting the day’s wild ride. The first race was a difficult start to the regatta. What could have been a race-winning pin-end start went south and they found themselves ducking the entire fleet after the start. But with speed, determination and good boathandling, they clawed their way back.
“We were fourth, then second, then first,” Wonly’s teammate Denny Meagher says. Throughout the day, the left side of the racecourse was their salvation whenever they needed it. The fourth race was particularly chaotic. A collision while battling for the pin end once again had them doing penalty turns—no fast feat in the J/35—which promptly had them escaping right even though they wanted to go left. But again, their boatspeed got them out of trouble.
“We’re definitely winning an award for passing the most boats today,” Pouliot joked.
Meanwhile the six-boat J/111 fleet was on the hunt of Kevin and Seth Young’s Black Seal all day. Two race wins of four has them 1 point ahead of Brad Kimmel and Steve Young’s Diablo, which also won a pair of races.
Chris Benedict’s Santana 35, Shape, won two of three races, the last one by mere inches over their rivals on Andrew Morlan’s Avatar. The two boats with matching spinnakers were at each other’s transoms all day and are only 1 point apart in their battle for the class’s North American Championship title.
“We swapped leads with them a bunch of times in that race,” Benedict says, “when it’s that close, it’s like who can fool who and we decided let’s see if they chase us to the finish on the last jibe to the finish and they didn’t do it soon enough. It was back and forth all day, great racing.”
On the regatta’s second circle, with the Tartan 10s and S2s, the T-10 action was all Hooligan Racing, which won two of three races to put a 2-point buffer on Hanson Bratton’s team on Taz. Hooligan skipper Trey Sheehan put the wins on all the shoulders of his crew, and the goal was to simply focus on clean starts and clear air. Nothing more.
The six S2s enjoyed close racing, but Dan Cheresh’s team on Extreme 2 were always a step ahead off the start and put a 2-1-1 scoreline to lead the fleet, followed by John Spierling’s Rebel, 3 points behind.
Saturday’s racing brings 34 additional teams to Lake St. Clair with the distance races for ORC and PHRF divisions, as well as five youth teams, which will be vying for the inaugural Youth Keelboat Invitational trophy using Bayview’s fleet of Ultimate 20s. The Melges 24s continue their Great Lakes Championship tour and the post-racing social will then feature the remote-control racing of the DragonFlite 95s, the smallest boats of the regatta at only 37 inches.
