Short offshore racing on the penultimate day of the 2024 ORC World Championship

Today’s penultimate race day at the 2024 ORC World Championship held at New York Yacht Club Harbour Court featured a day-long distance race to fulfill the event’s requirement to give another test of offshore sailing skill among the 43 participating teams. And like Monday’s Long Offshore Race, the results of this Short Offshore Race may not be discarded from any team’s scoreline and are therefore critical to determining which teams will be World Champions at the end of racing tomorrow.

The perfect 7-12 knot conditions for this race once again helped keep the racing close in all classes, and with long reaching legs an opportunity for some teams to use their specialty sails not usually a part of windward-leeward racing.

Class 0 raced a course with an interesting and scenic route. Starting in Newport Harbor with a downwind start, the fleet sailed downwind under the Pell Bridge to the southern end of Prudence Island in Narragansett Bay, then had a short reach across to the north end of Conanicut Island before heading south again through the Pell Bridge to exit the Bay. 

They then sailed southwest towards Point Judith, northeast to Elisha Ledge, then west to Breton Reef before turning north again to the finish in Newport Harbor. Total distance for this course was 53 miles.

With shorelines on both sides of the Bay, the first portion of their race was close and tactical, and sometimes too close. On the southerly beat down the Bay south of the Pell Bridge, Jon Desmond’s Pac 52 FINAL FINAL tacked a little too close to Andrew Berdon’s TP 52 SUMMER STORM and did a 360° penalty turn to absolve themselves of the foul.

David Team’s TP 52 VESPER had the early advantage on the long leg but the class leader - Victor Wild’s TP 52 FOX 2.0 - managed to slip ahead and take the lead but with continuous close harassment from VESPER at the turning mark at Point Judith. From there on the remaining legs to the finish FOX managed to extend their lead to just over 5 minutes on VESPER who crossed the finish in second, but dropped back to fifth in corrected time behind Peter Askew’s Botin 52 WIZARD, SUMMER STORM and FINAL FINAL in that order.

With the win, FOX has established an insurmountable 11 point lead going into tomorrow’s final race, but the remaining podium positions will be fought for among the remaining four 52’s who are only 3 points apart.

The 19 teams competing in Class A sailed a 38-mile course similar to Class 0 but without the windward-leeward loop north of the Newport bridge. And unlike the 52’s in Class 0 this class has a much broader diversity of boat types with a consistently faster boat-for-boat leader in every race: Austin & Gwen Fragomen’s Botin 44 INTERLODGE IV. The remainder of the entries in this class therefore give chase to the leader hoping to get within the corrected time allowances needed to defeat her.

Like in most races in this series, this chase was not successful today with INTERLODGE scoring yet another bullet. Tom Rich’s GP42 SETTLER scored another second, only 3 seconds ahead of Paul Zabetakis’s Club Swan 42 IMPETUOUS in third. While the Gold Medal in this class looks assured, Silver and Bronze medals cannot be determined until tomorrow: IMPETUOUS, Don Thinschmidt’s Ker 43 ABRACADABRA, and Henry Brauer’s Club Swan 42 TIO LOCO are all within 6 points for the remaining podium positions.

While the situation in Class B after their 26-mile race today may look the same as Classes 0 and A - with the class leader Marcin Sutkowski’s Grand Soleil 44 WIND WHISPER 44 from Poland winning yet another race in the series - the points lead is too tight to call who will be assured the world title tomorrow. The Poles have only a 2.5 point lead over John Brim’s Italia 11.98 RIMA98, and Bill & Jackie Baxter’s J/111 FIREBALL’s second place today kept them in contention for a podium finish tomorrow too.

“We’re having a lot of fun here,” said Baxter. “It’s a little frustrating to get used to being among bigger boats we owe time too, and if there were a greater variety of conditions maybe the results would be different. But its been really close racing and we’re fighting hard.”

FIREBALL will need to keep fighting tomorrow as there is only a 1.5 point margin over Linda & Andrew Weiss’s Italia 11.98 CHRISTOPHER DRAGON in fourth place, so for Class B all podium positions are up for grabs in tomorrow’s final windward-leeward race.

Among the 3 teams competing in the ORC Maxi North American Championship, the lead held by Jim Swartz’s Maxi 72 VESPER shrunk just a little with their 53-mile race being won by Hap Fauth’s Maxi 72 BELLE MENTE.The Maxi fleet can sail two races tomorrow, so the final outcome remains in doubt.