Full-time Focus Required to Win Long Offshore Race at ORC Worlds

After 23 to 30 hours of racing and sailing courses varying in length from 157 to 203 miles, the fleet has now finished, and the results are in for the first race of the 2024 ORC World Championship held at the New York Yacht Club Harbour Court. These results are significant for all of the 43 teams competing because they are not discardable in the final score tallies.

Racing a 177-mile course in Class A, the first boat across the finish line off Fort Adams in Newport Harbor at 08:58:31 local time this morning was Austin and Gwen Fragomen’s Botin 44 Interlodge IV (above). 

“It was a great night for racing," said tactician Tony Rey. "We kept moving all night, and, even though this was mostly windward-leeward sailing, there were plenty of interesting parts of the course to provide a challenge. We feel a little lucky in finishing early because the wind seemed to be dying off, but we’ll see in the results.”

Since  1969, the Offshore Racing Congress has been a world leader in providing a scientific and transparent rating system used to create fair racing among a broad variety of boat types, from sportboats to superyachts. Since 1999, ORC has organized annual ORC World Championships and other inshore and offshore racing events sanctioned by World Sailing, with recent events attracting over 100 entries from dozens of countries around the world. The 2024 ORC World Championship will be held in Newport, R.I., and hosted by the New York Yacht Club. Registration and measurement started on September 27, with racing kicking off on Monday, September 30, and finishing on Saturday, October 5. The ORC World Championship is sponsored by Helly Hansen, Safe Harbor Marinas, Peters & May and Hammetts Hotel. The ORC World Championship will serve as the culmination of the Road to the 2024 ORC World Championship series, which encompasses four regattas in Newport, R.I., from June through October.

Next across the finish line at 10:02:06 was the first-to-finish Class 0 competitor, Peter Askew’s Botin 52 Wizard, the first of five similar designs in this class who all finished their 203-mile course only minutes apart. Navigator Peter Isler confirmed this was a long hard-fought race.

“It was full-court press for the team all night,” he said, “and everyone took turns being in the lead.”

Isler explained that one key move was made by Victor Wild’s TP52 Fox at the first offshore mark rounding southwest of Montauk.

“They slipped inside the pack, were first on starboard tack and held a narrow lead for most of that long [63-mile upwind] leg to Buzzards Bay Tower. Then we caught a few shifts in the final few miles and managed to get the lead.”

The next leg, 43 miles downwind to Cerberus Shoal, northeast of Montauk, had another key decision point: which way to leave Block Island, which was placed squarely in the middle of the leg. With Wizard and Jon Desmond’s Pac 52 Final Final locked in a battle to hold a narrow lead over the pack, Isler decided to pass the island at the northwest shoal at Buoy 1BI. Fox and David Team’s TP52 Vesper followed this route while Final Final and Andrew Berdon’s 52-foot Summer Storm instead gybed to pass the south side of the island.

The north route worked out for Wizard, but by only a few hundred meters as they popped out just ahead of Summer Storm and Final Final on the 9.4-mile port tack headsail fetch to Endeavor Shoal. From here it was back to Newport on a 29-mile upwind beat to the finish, where Wizard covered its rivals except for Summer Storm, which chose to break east from the pack to leave Block Island to port.

The north route worked out for Wizard, but by only a few hundred meters as they popped out just ahead of Summer Storm and Final Final on the 9.4-mile port tack headsail fetch to Endeavor Shoal. From here it was back to Newport on a 29-mile upwind beat to the finish, where Wizard covered its rivals except for Summer Storm, which chose to break east from the pack to leave Block Island to port.

In corrected time, Wizard won the race in this class by 10:16, with Fox in second only 15 seconds ahead of Hanno Ziehm’s Marten 49 Moana, which finished third.

Results were similarly close in Class A, where after 25 hours of racing David Fass’ Club Swan 42 Zammermoos won the 177-mile race, but only by 40 seconds in corrected time over Interlodge. Bob Manchester’s J/133 Vamoose corrected to third place, 12 minutes behind Interlodge. Manchester’s team was also the top of three all-amateur Corinthian teams in this class of 19 entries.

 Today’s first-to-finish entry in Class B was the reigning ORC World Champion team from last year’s event in Kiel, Germany: Marcin Sutkowski’s GS 44 Wind Whisper 44.

“Very interesting," said navigator Aksel Magdahl when asked about the race. "Even though the wind was fairly steady, there were many interesting options to consider with the local currents in the area. We tried to keep our eyes on the locals who we knew would know this area very well.”

Indeed they did, as shown in the results. John Brim’s local-based Italia 11.98 Rima98 won this race with 13:04, in corrected time, to spare over their runner-up sistership, Andrew and Linda Weiss’s Italia 11.98 Christopher Dragon XII. Another Western Long Island Sound-based team—Al Minella’s J/112 The Rocc—finished third, 2:29 behind Christopher Dragon and 7:20 ahead of Wind Whisper in fourth.

Another important feature of this race is that it was the first use of ORC’s Weather Routing Scoring in an ORC World Championship event. This innovative method produces the most equitable handicap ratings possible given the changes in weather and currents during long races.

“Our team has worked hard this year to test this method, and we’re very pleased with the results,” said Bruno Finzi, Chairman of ORC. “In this race, the predicted times from the routing and the elapsed times were very close—mostly within 5 percent—which helped produce very close fair results in race scoring.”

Today was also the start of racing in the 2024 ORC North American Maxi Championship, where windward-leeward races were held south of Newport on a course area just east of Brenton Reef. After an hour of racing on a 9.4-mile course Hap Fauth’s Maxi 72 Bella Mente won Race 1 by only 20 seconds over Jim Swartz’s Maxi 72 Vesper, with Art Santry’s J/V 66 Temptation another 1 minute back in third.

Race 2 was run on a longer 11.6-mile course and was won by Vesper by a margin of 1:20 over Bella Mente, with Temptation in third by another 2:55.

Racing in the 2024 ORC World Championship and Maxi North American Championship will continue tomorrow with two windward-leeward races planned in all classes. Buoy racing is also planned for Thursday and Saturday with a short distance race scheduled for Friday. The regatta will conclude with an awards ceremony Saturday evening.