By: Ken Legler

For the last week of September, 2005, I had the good fortune to watch nearly all 270 races at the Grey Goose ISAF Team Racing World Championship at the New York Yacht Club in Newport, RI. There was some disparity in the competition as expected, in fact, much more so than the Hinman Trophy for the US Championship or the top ten at the Wilson Trophy for the British Open. USA 1 and 2 dominated the semi-finals over GBR 1 and 2 respectively. The Brits dominated their opponents in the quarters. Ireland clearly was the third best country finishing 5th and 6th. Italy had great sailors with little team racing experience and improved throughout to finish 7th. New Zealand and US Virgin Islands were essentially great high school teams and finished in the middle ahead of the young Australian teams, Japan and the rest. The last two entries into the quarters were decided by a five-way tie breaker. USVI, the most penalized team in the regatta, fought for play two (2-3-6 into 2-3-4) throughout their last round and as such ended up third in the five-way tie and 9th overall.

Why was USA so dominant? Both USA teams trained incredibly hard. Both experienced the last worlds in 2003. Both entered all the team racing regattas they could and both trained with top college teams at Yale, St. Mary’s, Tufts and elsewhere. Both USA team are full of Vanguard 15 fleet racing champions. GBR and IRL had six V-15s each at home for training but that couldn’t compare to fleet racing NA’s, team racing Mid-Summas, etc. in the USA. Finally, all 12 USA sailors had extensive team racing experience in college.

At recent Wilson Trophies at West Kirby near Liverpool the Brits (GBR 1/Spinnaker Club and GBR 2/New Forest Pirates) were dominant. The thinking among defeated USA teams was that the Brits in May are near the end of their a

nnual team racing cycle and have their Firefly dinghy boat handling down to perfection. This was most helpful at the starts when they would break from a down speed team racing or match racing maneuver, and just make the line at full speed. This is exactly what the USA teams were able to do in the V-15s, break for the line and just make perfect starts almost every time. When team racing further up the course USA had great moves at the Wilson but so did the Brits. At this worlds, there were a few moves USA had that no other team could match.

The finals between USA 1 (WHishbone, coached by Karl Ziegler) and USA 2 (Silver Panda, coached by Bern Noack) were classic races. WHishbone prevailed 3-1 but not without four incredibly hard fought races. Two team racing plays stood out to this observer. WHishbone’s Tim Wadlow/Ery Largay in 3rd of a 1-3-6, luffed a Panda boat way back into last. Although 1-4-5 is not considered a stable combination, it’s better than 1-3-6, they figured. Though Wadlow would eventually drop to 6th in that race, teammates Tim Fallon/Karen Renzulli were able to spring Mark Ivey/Matt Lindblad ahead of the unbalanced Pandas into a 1-2.

The best unique moves by WHishbone, how they took penalties, was done throughout the regatta. Whenever most teams fouled and were protested, they waited until the umpires made the call, often resulting in last place, following their two turns penalty. Everyone knew the spinning boat would be 6th and began team racing maneuvers with the new combination in mind even before the turns were complete. However, the umpiring was at such a high standard that most protest outcomes were predictable. Not only were the worlds best team racing umpires present, they too were hot after hundreds of races throughout the week.

WHishbone did not wait for umpire decisions. If they thought they might get penalized, they spun a one turn penalty immediately, thus avoiding the two turns penalty dictated by umpires. One turn penalty would result in a 4th or 5th place by the spinning boat, not 6th. Meanwhile the other WHishbone boats would begin working the new play before the one turn was complete, as they could anticipate right where the spinning boat would come out. This was so quick after the incident that the other teams were caught flat footed waving protest flags and awaiting the more common result of a delayed umpire call.
Example: Fallon/Renzulli would foul going into 4th of a 2-3-4. The one turn would drop them to 5th. At the same time Fallon would spin, Wadlow/Largay would drop into a position to prevent the opponent from tacking on Fallon and Fallon would tack right back into 4th to reestablish their 2-3-4, the same combo they had before the foul. It was an impressive display of confidence, poise and team racing mastery by the champions. The Silver medalists from Silver Panda (Colin Merrick/Amanda Callahan; Pete Levesque/Liz Hall; and Patrick Hogan/Carlos Lenz) also sailed at an amazingly high level.

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