AARON COLE'S REPORT FROM THE 2017 J111 WORLDS, SAN FRANCISCO
This was the 4th ever J111 worlds and the 3rd I have done with Rod Warren's team 'Joust racing'. We had a pretty interesting journey to get here this year, as there were no charter boats in the Bay Area and shipping Joust out from Australia was not an option we had.
Gerard Sheridan
Lucky for us, fellow SYC yacht club member and great NS client Phil Simpfendorfer decided to add to the growing J111 fleet at SYC and purchased 'Aeolus' from the San Francisco fleet and allowed us to use the boat in the regatta, before packing her up for freighting home to Melbourne
We really gave it a good shot this year and employed a coach and allowed for 4 practice days to familiarize with with the local bay sea breeze and the tides that sailing on the bay is famous for.
This definitely came in very handy in the passage race that led us outside the Golden Gate Bridge and around Alcatraz island. We took our own new 3Di RAW mainsail, A2 Gennaker and used the boats 3Di jibs from Seadon at NS San Francisco due to some small differences in the USA fleet having a higher furling drum height, meaning our RAW jibs would not sheet perfectly. Again thanks to Phil!
Gerard Sheridan
We definitely had legs around the track in the weeks 'breeze on' conditions but just a few slight mistakes in a very close fleet meant that just 2 points would separate 1st 2nd and us in 3rd place!
We won 4 of 9 races just to show the tightness of the fleet and how consistency always pays!
Congratulations to Peter Wagner's Skeleton Key for sailing very consistently and being this years J111 world champion!
Thanks again to Rod and the crew for giving it all we had and getting the best result to date for Joust racing!
