By Dobbs Davis, New York Yacht Club
Today’s penultimate race day at the 2024 ORC World Championship held at New York Yacht Club Harbour Court featured a day-long distance race to fulfill the event’s requirement to give another test of offshore sailing skill among the 43 participating teams. And like Monday’s Long Offshore Race, the results of this Short Offshore Race may not be discarded from any team’s scoreline and are therefore critical to determining which teams will be world champions at the end of racing tomorrow.
The perfect 7- to 12-knot conditions for this race once again helped keep the racing close in all classes, and with long reaching legs, this race was an opportunity for some teams to use their specialty sails designed for wind angles not usually a part of windward-leeward buoy racing.
Class 0 raced a course with an interesting and scenic route. Starting in Newport Harbor with a downwind start, the fleet sailed under the Pell Bridge to the southern end of Prudence Island in Narragansett Bay, then had a short reach across to the north end of Conanicut Island before heading turning south and heading upwind through the Pell Bridge to exit the Bay.
The six-boat fleet then sailed southwest towards Point Judith, northeast to Elisha Ledge, then west to Breton Reef before turning north again to the finish just outside of the entrance to Newport Harbor. Total distance for this course was 53 miles.
Click here for complete 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.
Click here for ORC World Championship entry list.
Click here for race tracking.
With shorelines on both sides of the Bay, the first portion of their race was close and tactical, and sometimes too close. On the southerly beat down the Bay south of the Pell Bridge, Jon Desmond’s Pac 52 Final Final got a little too close to Andrew Berdon’s TP52 Summer Storm and did a 360-degree penalty turn to absolve themselves of the foul.
David Team’s TP 52 Vesper (left) had the advantage early on the long leg, but the class leader—Victor Wild’s TP 52 Fox 2.0—managed to slip ahead and take the lead but with continuous close harassment from Vesper at the turning mark at Point Judith. From there to the finish FOX managed to extend their lead to just over 5 minutes on Vesper who crossed the finish in second, but dropped back to fifth in corrected time behind Peter Askew’s Botin Wizard, Summer Storm and Final Final in that order.
With the win, Fox has established an insurmountable 11-point lead going into tomorrow’s final race, but the remaining podium positions will be fought for among the remaining four 52’s who are only 3 points apart.
The 19 teams competing in Class A sailed a 38-mile course similar to Class 0 but without the windward-leeward loop north of the Newport Bridge. And unlike the 52s in Class 0, this class has a much broader diversity of boat types with a consistently faster boat-for-boat leader in every race: Austin & Gwen Fragomen’s Botin 44 Interlodge IV. The remainder of the entries in this class therefore give chase to the leader hoping to get within the corrected time allowances needed to defeat her.
Like in most races in this series, this chase was not successful today with Interlodge scoring yet another bullet. Tom Rich’s GP42 Settler (above, right) scored another second, only 3 seconds ahead of Paul Zabetakis’ Club Swan 42 Impetuous in third. While the Gold Medal in this class looks assured, Silver and Bronze medals cannot be determined until tomorrow: Impetuous, Don Thinschmidt’s Ker 43 Abracadabra, and Henry Brauer’s Club Swan 42 Tio Loco are all within 6 points for the remaining podium positions.
While the situation in Class B after their 26-mile race today may look the same as Classes 0 and A – with the class leader Marcin Sutkowski’s Grand Soleil 44 Wind Whisper 44 from Poland winning yet another race in the series – the points lead is too tight to call who will be assured to win the world title tomorrow. The Poles have only a 2.5-point lead over John Brim’s Italia 11.98 Rima98 (above, left), and Bill & Jackie Baxter’s J/111 Fireball’s second place today kept it in contention for a podium finish tomorrow too.
“We’re having a lot of fun here,” said Baxter. “It’s a little frustrating to get used to being among bigger boats we owe time too, and if there were a greater variety of conditions maybe the results would be different. But it’s been really close racing and we’re fighting hard.”
Fireball will need to keep fighting tomorrow as there is only a 1.5 point margin over Linda & Andrew Weiss’s Italia 11.98 Christopher Dragon XII in fourth place, so for Class B all podium positions are up for grabs in tomorrow’s final windward-leeward race.
Among the 3 teams competing in the ORC Maxi North American Championship, the lead held by Jim Swartz’s Maxi 72 Vesper shrunk just a little with their 53-mile race being won by Hap Fauth’s Maxi 72 Bella Mente (right). The Maxi fleet can sail two races tomorrow, so the final outcome remains in doubt.
Racing in the 2024 ORC World Championship and Maxi North American Championship will wrap up with more buoy racing on Saturday. The event will conclude with an awards ceremony Saturday evening.
- Visit the New York Yacht Club YouTube channel for daily highlight videos.
- Individual races—both buoy and distance—may be replayed on the TracTrac system.
- More information on the entries, race documents, scoring, schedules of events, media resources and more may be found on the event website.
2024 ORC World Championship
September 27 to October 5, 2024
New York Yacht Club Harbour Court
Newport, R.I.
Click here for complete results
Class 0 (6 boats) (Place, Boat, Make, Skipper, Corrected Time): 1. Fox, Botin 52, Victor Wild, 2-1-1-1-1-(4)-1, 7 points; 2. Wizard, Botin 52, Peter Askew, 1-4-4-5-2-(6)-2, 18 points; 3. Summer Storm 52, TP52, Andrew Berdon, 5-3-3-3-(4)-2-3, 19 points.
Class A (19 boats): 1. Interlodge 44, Botin 44, Austin & Gwen Fragomen, 2-1-1-1-(3)-1-1, 7 points; 2. Abracadabra, Ker 43, Don Thinschmidt, 4-3-3-(8)-2-3-4, 19 points; 3. Tio Loco, Swan 42, Henry Brauer, 6-4-4-(5)-1-4-5, 24 points; 4. Impetuous, Swan 42, Paul Zabetakis, 5-(7)-2-4-5-6-3, 25 points; 5. Zammermoos, Swan 42, David Fass, 1-2-(13)-7-6-5-7, 28 points.
Class B (13 boats): 1. Wind Whisper 44, Grand Soleil 44, Marc Sutkowski, 5-1-2-1-(5)-1-1, 11 points; 2. Rima98, Italia 11.98, John Brim, 1-2.5-1-(6)-4-2-3, 13.5 points; 3. Fireball, J/111 Bill & Jackie Better, 6-4-(6)-2-2-3-2, 19 points; 4. Christopher Dragon XII, Italia 11.98, Linda & Andrew Weiss, 3-2.5-(5)-4-1-4-6, 20.5 points; 5. The ROCC, J/112, Al Minella, 4-(8)-3-5-3-5-5, 25 points.
Maxi North American Championship: 1. Vesper, Maxi 72, Jim Swartz, (2)-1-1-1-1-1-2-2, 9 points; 2. Bella Mente, Maxi 72, Hap Fauth, 1-2-2-(3)-2-2-3-1, 13 points.
