2007 J 30 North Americans

One Man’s Perspective

Story by Michael Mark

ANNAPOLIS – And so, it all comes down to last race.  David McConaughy’s White Boat and Bob Putnam and Mary Grealy’s Better Mousetrap are tied for the lead with three other teams, Insatiable, Big Kahuna and Fuzzy Wuzzy within two points.  Any of five different boats can win the regatta on the last day.  None of the top three boats has yet to score a bullet.  No one team has dominated.  Everyone has a pocketful of “if only’s” and “what if’s” and “why did we do that’s?”  Who would put together the winning combination of speed and smarts on the last day in the last race with a national championship hanging in the balance?  Better Mousetrap wins the start, takes the lead and approaches the windward mark in first place.  Can this team of amateurs actually win this final race?  Well, it would have made for a great story, but hey, it’s Annapolis and some days you just don’t get the wind to cooperate.  As it was, the winds did cooperate for the first two days of the 2007 J 30 North Americans hosted by the Annapolis Yacht Club and provided for some great racing in varying conditions.

Months earlier, I had been asked to sail in my first J 30 NA championship by my dear friends and longtime class stalwarts, Bob Putnam and Mary Grealy.  I had sailed with team Mousie in the 2005 NOODs and jumped at the chance to sail with them again.  Bob and Mary’s team of Eric, Kathy, Whitney and Todd were a well oiled machine.  Bob had the boat perfectly prepped and going fast.  My job was to catch a few shifts, play the main and keep us out of trouble.  And as the regatta played out, keeping out of trouble was huge.  On the first day with the breeze up and a shortish line, there were a number of things flying, including red flags and Russell Dunleavy, the bowman from Smiles.  Some of those red flags involved Bill Wallop’s Cannonball with Larry Leonard onboard who a great day on the course but not so much in the room.  The wind was consistently inconsistent and tough to figure out as evidenced by the fact that there were nine different boats that placed either first, second or third in the three races sailed.  The trick was risk management on the first day and Bengt Johansson’s  Fuzzy Wuzzy did the best job at that and took the first day lead by two points over Better Mousetrap.  Fuzzy Wuzzy also rescued the flying, swimming crewmember that I mentioned earlier.  The swimming crewmember resulted from an unfortunate port/stbd collision just before the third race that put Smiles out of commission for the day.  We scored Russell Dunleavy a 9.5 on degree of difficulty and 9.7 on style as he did a back flip off the bow pulpit and landed in the water between Smiles and Fat City.  Smiles had to withdraw before the start and motored back with a gash in the port bow, bent bow pulpit, head stay sheared off and the crew member who “jumped ship”!  AYC did a great job with their RC and the dinner and the class did an awesome job with some beautiful awards for daily first, second and thirds.

The second day dawned with a stiff breeze and predictions for it to build.  Everyone bundled up, put on their foulies and put up their number threes for the first race.  Amazingly, Smiles showed up at the starting line ready to race looking like “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer” from the red duct tape used to cover the port bow gash.  Big Kahuna took an early lead in the big breeze and got the bullet with the White Boat second.  The wind dropped substantially for the next race and Cannonball took the win with Kahuna, Ron Anderson’s Insatiable with Jonathan Barlett and the White Boat putting up some low numbers and moving up the standings and looking forward to the sixth race when the throwout would kick in.  Seeing that wind was dropping, at the next start we decided to try the America’s cup trick of sending a man up the rig to spot the wind.  Well actually we lost a halyard in the previous race but I thought the AC story worked better.  Unfortunately, he was having such a good time that he refused to come down, so we had to do the old “man up the rig, no headsail” start.  I don’t recommend it.  Deckworks found some breeze and a nice shift and cruised to victory with Circus second.  After our nonrecommended “man up the rig, no headsail” start, we had closed the fourth and had Cannonball in our sights.  Foolishly our tactician, me, called for a slam dunk not realizing that you can’t do it in a J 30 in light air.  Well, you CAN do it but it doesn’t work and is not recommended.  With the throwout now in play, we got to the dock with no idea of the actual standings but I knew it was going to be close between a bunch of teams.  I had no idea it was going to be five teams within two points!

Again AYC provided a great dinner and again the J 30 class provided some great daily awards.  With the standings so close there was some good natured ribbing and some attempts to over serve certain team members in order to gain an advantage for the next day’s racing.  If we only would have known that there would be no race the next day, we could have bought ourselves more drinks instead of our competitors!!  Nonetheless, it was an extremely close fought and well sailed contest.  Congratulations to Team White Boat on their first NA win.  Congratulations to Team Mousetrap on their second place and top amateur prize and thanks Bob and Mary for letting me sail with you.  Thanks to all the competitors and everyone at AYC.  I certainly hope to do some more J 30 events in the future.