Four skippers in the fleet of 13 at Stenungsund, Sweden, last week, had won the IOD Class Championship before, each more than once, and collectively they’d won it 20 times! It was time for someone to upset the pecking order, and this year it was another veteran class sailor, Urban Ristorp, of Sweden, who got the job done. Urban had always shown flashes of brilliance at previous championships, but this time he sailed extremely consistently throughout the first six races of the regatta, never finishing lower than fourth place. Then on the final day, he lost a little of his magic, but still sailed just well enough to hold off two-time defending champion Charlie Van Voorhis, of Fishers Island, USA, topping the final standings by one point.

Urban Ristorp, 2009 IOD World Champion

In fact, the final finish positions show four teams within five points of each other. Urban scored 22 points, Charlie, 23, our team (also from Fishers Island) had 24, and Penny Simmons, of Bermuda, had 27. Penny, a six-time winner, had struggled early in the regatta but won two straight races heading into the last day, moving ahead of our team. However, a mediocre finish to the morning race for him put us back in third place to stay.

We had our own opportunity, near the end of the first race when there was a four-boat scrum at the last mark. I played it wrong and paid for it, as we dropped to fourth in the race. If I’d played it differently and we’d gained a couple of points there, the difference might’ve been telling, but I wonder if we might’ve been a little less relaxed under those circumstances and not gone on to win the final race, which is what made our score as good as it was.

For Charlie, the defending champ, getting into the top five in any race wasn’t always so difficult. He finished second twice, third twice, fourth twice and fifth twice. Charlie played the percentages throughout, and by regatta’s end had an even more consistent scoreline than Urban, but I’d have to say that this one time the percentages let him down. Winning a race along the way would’ve earned him the championship title again.

Second and third place finishers, both from Fishers Island, N.Y. Charlie Van Voorhis, 2nd place skipper, at far left. John Burnham and Peter Rugg, co-skippers in third place, in two yellow hats at right.

But as Charlie said at the awards ceremony, the best sailor at the regatta wins, and he gave Urban and his team high marks for their victory. From my perspective, the key to Urban’s win was his ability to catch up when he fell behind, particularly on the second day of racing when he had a couple of bad starts and we thought he would end up far behind us. In both cases, he ended up passing us near the end of the race and one time sailed almost into first place. Any one of the points he made in passing could be counted as the difference in the regatta.

Champagne on the Stenungsund Sailing Club docks; Urban Ristorp at right.

Other race winners in the series were Martin Rygh, Norway’s top sailor, who finished fifth, one point ahead of Bill Widnall, of Marblehead, Mass., who has won the class championship nine times. Bill showed the fleet his transom twice during the regatta!

As I fly back across the Atlantic the next day, I have to offer thanks to the host Stenungsund Sailing Club, the local sailors who loaned us their boats for this unique regatta, and to the Scandinavian weather gods who made the sun shine every day for a week. I’m told the weather has been lousy back in Rhode Island, where I live, so I’m hoping to bring some Swedish sunshine back with me.
—John Burnham

Local sailor, Urban Ristorp, and defending class champion, Charlie van Voorhis finished second and third in a single race on Thursday, setting up a match for the championship title on Friday, when two races are scheduled. Urban has 12 points and Charlies has 16.

Urban Ristorp, regatta leader, makes a good start in Thursday’s race. Photos by Hans Johansson

Farther down the rankings, Penny Simmons, of Bermuda, and our boat, which is from Fishers Island like Charlie’s, could move up if the leaders stumble. We have 18 and 19 points, respectively. For a look at the details of the point spread, here’s a link; then click on 2009.

Penny won Thursday’s race, coming back slowly but surely throughout the windy, shifty race to pass Rich Pearce of San Francisco, who led the race early on, then Charlie, then Urban, taking the lead late in the race. You could say we stumbled coming out of the starting gate, immediately falling into the second row and then never quite finding the speed to get back close to the leaders. Hopefully our 10th place finish will be our discard race and we can regain our earlier form.

A loose mainsail leech sometimes made the windy runs exciting.

As I write, the wind is up again, the sun is out for the sixth day in a row (this might be a record in Sweden, I’m told). Let the games begin.

—John Burnham

Three more races and two more days of racing before the prizegiving for the IOD World Championship. The weather continues to cooperate here on the West Coast of Sweden; more sun, light to moderate winds. One race is planned for Thursday and two on Friday.

I hadn’t made it to YouTube before…at least that I know of…but it happened after the IOD Championship racing on Tuesday when my co-skipper, Peter Rugg, and I did an interview with Stefan Blom of RegattaTV. Yesterday was a day off from racing, so I thought I’d share this piece, which includes some nice footage of the International One-Design sailboats in which we are competing. Stefan also caught a couple of great spinnaker sets by our bowman, Topher Sailer.

As reported in my previous blog, the International One-Design World Championships began this week in Stenungsund, Sweden. Our team had a fantastic opening day, but finished less remarkably in the second day’s three races with finishes of 6-5-5. Winds were mostly lighter and shiftier, and the rest of my crew tells me I was a bit tense, which may have effected our results.

The top sailor for the day as well as for the regatta so far is now Urban Ristorp, the Swedish representative in the fleet, who counted a 1-2-4 today, winning the first race comfortably and recovering from dismal starts in the second two races to finish very well. Also scoring well was our teammate from the Fishers Island Yacht Club in New York, Charlie van Voorhis, who scored a 4-3-2, improving with every race.

Two past champions asserted themselves in the second two races of the day. Bill Widnall, of Marblehead, Massachusetts, won the middle race of the day, and Penny Simmons, of Bermuda, won the finale, a four-lap marathon, with a come-from-behind move on the final windward leg. The results for all the races to date can be found at the regatta website.

I don’t have time to offer a longer report of the racing because this evening we enjoyed a trip out the Hake Fijord to eat dinner at a restaurant on a rocky little island called Dyron, leaving the restaurant for a walk across the island between 10:30 and 11:00. There was plenty of light! Wednesday is a spare day, so most of the fleet will be getting some extra sleep. Yet when the sun comes up between 4 and 5 a.m., it’s hard to stay in bed!

—John Burnham

Dyron, 11:00 p.m., taken after dinner on Tuesday evening

Warm summer weather arrived in Sweden just in time for the racing of the World Championship of the ISAF classic class, the International One-Design, a boat originally designed and raced in the 1930s. The 33.5′ 7100-pound boats are often too heavy and fragile to ship from one port to another, so the local fleet typically provides the boats for the top qualifiers from the other 11 fleets. In the case of Sweden, which last hosted the regatta in 2000, they borrowed 8 boats from Norway, so in effect, the two countries are co-hosting the regatta. The organizing club is the Stenungsund Sailing Club, on the west coast of Sweden, north of Gothenburg.

We had a fast ride on a Swedish-built Nimbus on Sunday night before racing began. The photo was taken at about 10 p.m., and the sun hadn’t completely disappeared below the hills to the northwest.

I am here with a crew from Fishers Island Yacht Club in New York,and although we qualified second for this event, our top qualifier, Charlie Van Voorhis, won the championship in San Francisco in 2008 and earned an automatic qualification. So it’s our good fortune to be here, too.

Martin Rygh (left), Norway’s top skipper and winner of the first race on Monday, is interviewed during the club barbecue by top local sailor Hans Johansson.

The Norwegian team, skippered by Martin Rygh, led the first lap of the practice race before prematurely heading to the finish line, but they then won the first race for real. We headed prematurely to the starting line in the first race but found a way to get back into the race part way up the first leg and eventually worked our way all the way to second behind Martin. Sweden’s top gun (and regatta organizer) Urban Ristorp, finished right behind us with our compatriot from Fishers, Charlie Van Voorhis.

Since the boats are borrowed, everyone in the fleet switches boats after each race, and every boat is laid out a little different, especially considering that some may be seven decades old. After our change into a 1946-vintage design that’s seen a lot of good work to put her in racing shape, we were scrambling to figure out where all the lines led when suddenly the race committee began the starting sequence. We just had time to get the jib up, check the wind once, and get a sight on the position of the starting line, before heading down the line toward the end where we wanted to start. Fortunately, we were lucky and the boats around us held back a little too much and we had a great start. Part way up the leg, we tacked close on the bow of Chester, Nova Scotia’s skipper, Rick Thompson, and after the second encounter, squeezed ahead and gradually pulled away.

A snapshot of the second race on Monday, with the fleet spread down the last run. It’s not often you get to take a photo like this.

I’m not sure why we were able to get ahead in that race but my co-skipper, Peter Rugg, trimming the mainsail, and his son Charlton, on the jib, had us moving well all the time, and boatspeed is something that every racing team needs to look smart. Jennifer on the halyards and Topher on the bow kept us out of trouble, too.

We’ve raced enough of these events to know that our boats may have had a something extra today and tomorrow could be another story entirely…and the chances for operator error are there at every moment. In the meantime, however, it feels good to have made a successful start of the event, which lasts until Friday and will include up to 8 races.
—John Burnham

At Stenungsund: Half a dozen of the newer fiberglass boats to the left, four of the older wooden boats to the right; weights are equalized and sometimes the older wooden boats are faster!