News Around the World
The Welbourn-designed DSS 46 Maverick decently powered-up during the Rolex Giraglia. Latest stop on the Maverick world tour was the Transpac where she did Europe proud, keeping ahead of many of the much bigger boats including several big sleds and duelling her way to Diamond Head against the ‘Offshore TPs’ of the Pac52 class... all only briefly interrupted by a night’s fishing with her A5
Week and started in 1965), Block Island has certainly had its ups and downs in popularity like any big regatta. Yet by nearly any metric this year’s event pointed towards its enduring value – one of the most telling is that 50 per cent of the 122 boats this year were first-time entries. And unlike at Kiel Week or Cowes Week, these are not dozens
and dozens of dinghies or daysailors. They are proper big boats with keels and cabins and crews who need to be housed and fed and entertained on a small, picturesque island with not much more than some protected harbours, a few fields, some nice houses to rent in bush or beach, and enough bars to keep evenings lively. This is not a place you commute to from home – planning and logis- tics are needed. So to do this event you have to really want it. One of these newcomers was Bill Zartler from Lakeshore YC
south of Houston, Texas, who brought his J/105 across on an extended east coast tour. ‘It’s a week-plus commitment but I made time to do it,’ Zartler said. ‘If you’re a serious sailor this is just one of those regattas you have to experience. Block Island is kind of the summertime version of what Key West used to be.’ Hmmm… high praise indeed. Besides the setting and timing, part of what drives the popularity
of Block Island is the diversity in conditions and Storm Trysail’s flexibility with racing formats. In one week the weather patterns are active enough to generally get a little of everything: dead morning calms in the fog to ‘smoky’, brisk southwesterlies driven by the 20° thermal contrast. Where some classes may want only windward/leeward buoy
races, and just as many as daylight allows, others want one race a day on a casual ‘navigator’ course. Of course some, like the IRC and ORC classes, want both, so one day of the week is given over to racing around the island where by the end of the lap you are assured to have experienced just about every angle and every manoeuvre. In IRC1 Gavin Brady and Chris Larson led Karl Kwok’s TP52 Beau Geste (ex-Onda, a 2018 Botín design built at King Marine) to a
28 SEAHORSE
victory so complete, winning seven out of nine races, that for Victor Wild’s Pac52 Fox and Tony Langley’s TP52 Gladiator the week was a race for second – in the end taken by Fox. These boats will have another go against each other in a larger,
less specialised fleet at their next event, the New York YC’s 175th Anniversary Regatta, where they will also be forced to deal with Irvine Laidlaw’s Fling 16. This potential TP-killer is 1.3m longer, 1,400kg heavier, 0.5m deeper, with a spar 2m higher that carries massive sails held down by only a slightly higher righting moment. The IRC class in Block Island was depopulated by fear of having
to face the TPs (even though two years ago the Botín 44 Interlodge held up pretty well against them). So, not wanting a three-boat IRC class, Interlodge and two recent Ker40 transplants from the UK Fast 40+ fleet – Christopher Dragon and Tschuss – joined a larger ORC1 class alongside another carbon weapon, Jim Grundy’s Dunning 42 Bella. The five carbon speedsters had to face a range of more modest
foes: some well-sailed Swan 42s, John Cooper’s ageing but still competitive Mills 43 Cool Breeze, a Swan 45, an older Ker50 and Tom Rich’s 1997-era Tripp 43 Settler… an embodiment of wind- driven diversity. Led by Geoff Ewenson and Tom Burnham, the Interlodge team
took the victory in this class, but not by much: they won four out of nine races, but their margin of victory over another all-pro team on Christian Zugel’s Tschuss was only 4.5pt, in turn only 0.5pt in front of Paul Zabetakis’s Swan 42 Impetuous. The use of ORC Triple Number (ie non-variable fixed GPH) scoring helped keep things close and the front of the fleet left satisfied with the closeness of the results, several talking of ramping up their campaigns next year. With next year’s IRC/ORC Worlds in Newport, RI, such talk is
encouraging. (Many) more new designs in this space are needed in the US, which risks being left behind in big boat racing just as we struggle to get back into the frame in Olympic sailing. Well-run events like Block Island are key to turning things around. Dobbs Davis
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CARLO BORLENGHI/ROLEX
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