Fast Boats and Rating Rules

Rating rules come and go, (along with their inevitable type-forming and loopholes), but good all-around boats are always fast and fun, and they keep right on winning no matter what rule is in vogue. Two of our designs drove this point home with huge exclamation points this past season.

Sforzando (Link)

The T-44 Sforzando had an amazing season that was all the more remarkable given that she was designed 11 years ago for IMS, but is still winning convincingly under IRC. Always well sailed and impeccably maintained, she dominated this year’s NYYC Annual Regatta, going 4-1-1-1 in IRC 3, and easily turning back a Corby 41.5, a Melges 32, and a Swan 45. (In fact, she has won an astonishing 12 of the last 16 Annual Regatta races she has sailed, dating back to 2005!). She next won the club’s Summer Race Week by an eye-popping 14 points, over a well sailed Farr 395 and a highly touted new Mills/King/Summit 40, a focused IRC design. This year’s Race Week opened and closed with squalls over 30 kts that overwhelmed several of these contemporary designs, but Sforzando was always under control, suffering no knock-downs or spin-outs, upwind or down. Bookended by the big breeze days, the rest of Race Week featured a full range of conditions, from light air with a huge lump to more typical Newport southerlies, and Sforzando excelled in each. She then scored well in the annual Cruise, topping a R/P 55 and 65. It was no surprise that she earned the NYYC’s prestigious Herreshoff Medal, awarded only when merited, for exceptional overall performance during a season. The fact that this is the second Herreshoff Medal earned by Sforzando, (and a remarkable third by her owner, all in Taylor designs), is a tribute not only to the boats, but also to the dedication, energy, and leadership of their owner, Blair Brown.

Sforzando completes a ‘no drama’ gybe in 25 TWS on a day that saw several recent IRC designs spinning out all over Narragansett Bay. (Photo courtesy of Amory Ross)

Taylor 42 (Link)

The T-42 Cabady was designed to the ‘pre-1994’ version of IMS and launched as the first Numbers, just in time for Key West Race Week in 1992. A blown outhaul and a blown chute cost her a win in her debut event (by 7 seconds in the final race!), but she has been winning under various handicap systems (IMS, PHRF, IRC and ORR) ever since. She and her near twin Drumbeat II have won their class at Block Island Race Week a remarkable five times, including a string of three in a row. (Drumbeat II’s 2nd owner recently lamented, “I never should have sold that boat…”). The Taylor 42 won a NYYC Championship under IMS, a New England Championship under PHRF, and most recently this fall’s American Yacht Club Fall Series under IRC. But her biggest win was arguably in this year’s Bermuda Race, where she won her class and was a remarkable 3rd overall under IRC (and 8th OA under ORR). Perhaps most impressive of all is the fact that she was also the top scoring boat in the Onion Patch competition, which might be the ‘decathlon’ of big boat racing, in that it combines intense short course buoy racing with a 635 mile blue water marathon. Congratulations to owner Randy Baldwin and his crew for adding still more luster to the resume of a design that has proven to be seaworthy, versatile, fast and fun for 17 seasons, no matter what the handicap system.

Cabady has speed and height on the competition right from the start in the 2008 Bermuda Race (Photo by Daniel Forster)

Fast Boats Off the Rack

Jeffrey Urbina’s Sabre 402 Il Bodacious and Cary Thomson’s Sabre 452 Freedom scored an impressive 1,2 in class (and 3rd and 7th in their 43-boat division) in the 2008 running of the biennial blue water classic Bermuda Race. Bruce and Dorsey Beard also scored well in their Sabre 386 Esmeralde, taking 5th out of 13 in their double-handed division. (It is hard to tell whether Bruce and Dorsey enjoy racing or cruising their S-386 more, as evidenced by their entertaining website, www.esmeralde.net ). The 2008 race was a very rough, breezy beat/close fetch for all but the biggest boats this year. This put a premium on upwind ability, stability, seaworthiness, and structural integrity, so it suited our Sabre designs www.sabreyachts.com especially well.

Il Bodacious quickly gets bow out on her way to a Bermuda Race win. A sister Sabre 402 has won her class in a recent Chicago-Mackinac classic as well. (Photo by Barry Pickthal)

Sabre 'Spirit' (Link)

Tom Drechsler’s Sabre Spirit Remain Silent won her second straight Wednesday night season series at Marblehead’s Boston Yacht Club, by a wide margin in a competitive fleet that included three J-100’s and two E-33’s. The fact that two of Remain Silent’s throwout races late in the year were 2nd place scores shows how consistently dominant her performance continues to be. She also finished a creditable 5th in her hotly contested spinnaker class in the 2008 PHRF NE Championships, following her 4th place in 2007, her debut year.

Two Sabre Spirits spar on a bumpy afternoon off Marblehead.

Fast Boats in the 'Spirit of Tradition'

There has been a wonderful resurgence of wooden boat racing in New England over the last few years. Much credit is due Steve White, of Brooklin Boatyard, for getting the ball rolling, and to Wooden Boat Magazine, also of Brooklin, Maine, for their continuing support. The main event is the annual Eggemoggin Reach race, but the Castine-to-Camden and Camden-to-Brooklin feeder races are now well established and popular as well. The racing has a vintage car racing feel, part competition and part parade, and in most classes the sweep of the sheerlines and the depth of the varnish are as important as the finish places. However, in the ‘Spirit of Tradition’ class the competition is a bit more, well, spirited. This class is open to contemporary boats that are built primarily in wood, and most show a classic, long overhang style above the waterline. Below the waterline, however, modern fin keels and spade rudders are the norm, and carbon rigs and high tech sails are allowed. The raison d’etre for the class is to encourage the continued development of new wooden boats that, over time, can replace the older ones that inevitably sail off to that great boat shop in the sky. The more immediate result is a diverse class of attractive boats, and some very competitive racing.

Bruce Dyson has been enjoying the Spirit of Tradition in his Taylor designed International 8m since 2004. Bruce built Pleione (www.8mrpleione.com) nearly single-handed in the small shop attached to his Marblehead home. The build took him 4 ½ years, but the result was well worth the wait; Pleione is drop dead gorgeous, and impressively fast to boot. She has had consistent podium finishes in events as varied as the 8m NA and World Championships in Toronto to the PHRF NE Championships in Marblehead, but she has simply dominated Spirit of Tradition racing in Maine. Coming as an outsider to what had been largely intramural competition between boats designed and built in Maine, Pleione was soon referred to as ‘that damned 8m…’ by the locals. She has four wins and four seconds in the eleven ‘Maine Wooden Boat’ races she has completed, and would have more were it not for the heavy ‘spread the wealth’ rating penalties she has incurred for her top finishes in previous years. Especially impressive was her remarkable 1-1-1 sweep in 2006 that included a first to finish in the Castine Classic race, despite the fact that the Spirit of Tradition class is the last one to start. (Pleione ghosted by every boat in the entire fleet in that race, including two Spirit of Tradition 75-footers). Light air and fog are often a challenge on Penobscot Bay in early August, but because of all the great boats, old and new, one always goes home smiling, no matter what the results.