The 12 Metre sailors in Newport, Rhode Island for the 12 Metre World Championship are more than halfway through their scheduled nine-race series.
The ten-boat fleet of historic 12 Metre sloops – measuring 68-72 feet long and split evenly into Modern and Traditional/Vintage Divisions – started racing Tuesday 1 August.
Excruciatingly light winds on that day only allowed for a single race, Wednesday’s 5-8 knot breezes yielded two races, and today’s 10-12 knot breezes generously fueled three races.
Thursday’s relatively stronger winds showed that Freedom had legs, but Challenge XII had the better pace and tactics to turn in a full string of victories over the three races, with Freedom taking second in all three.
“It was really fantastic 12 Metre sailing today,” said LeFort, explaining that Freedom is “extraordinarily well sailed” and in the second race the two boats were overlapped almost the whole time. “It wasn’t until the middle of the last leg (of the windward-leeward twice around course) that we were able to get inside them on a jibe.”
In Traditional/Vintage Division, Mark Watson’s Onawa (US-6) had the upper hand on Tuesday and Wednesday over Robert Morton’s American Eagle (US-21), but only by a point going into Friday’s racing.
Watson had said his team had done “a good job seeing where the wind was and getting into it” and Morton had been ecstatic over winning the first race of the series.
Morton’s goal was to sail consistently and his score line of 2-4-2 today, added to his previous 1-4-2, allowed him to take the overall lead.
With a 5-2-5 Thursday, Onawa dropped to third place behind Kevin Hegarty/Anthony Chiurco’s Columbia (US-16), which won all three races today.
Racing continues Friday, with two scheduled races, and concludes with a final race on Saturday, preceded by a 12 Metre Parade of Sail around Newport Harbour.
