BRIAN JANNEY: A MONTH IN THE LIFE OF A NORTH SAILS EXPERT

Here, There and Everywhere

Most offshore sailors consider it a successful summer if they fit in one major distance race—especially if they make it onto the podium. In July, Brian Janney, North Sails San Diego, managed to cram three major victories into one month—and all without losing his sense of humor. First, the sought-after trimmer and North Sails expert helped Pyewacket 70 win line honors in the Pacific Cup. Only a few days later, he was onboard Bill McKinley’s Denali3 when they won their class in the Bayview-Mackinac Race. Less than a week after that, Janney helped Denali3 win her class in the Chicago-Mackinac Race. “It all started with a week of training in San Francisco before the Pacific Cup,” Janney explains, shortly after returning home from his 30-day offshore trifecta. “I've been working with Pyewacket for a long time, and we did Transpac in five and a half days last year.” They also set a 24 hour record. “And Pac Cup is a shorter race than Transpac, mileage-wise...”

Pacific Cup Line Honors

Predicting their finish time in the Pac Cup became crucial when Bill McKinley asked Janney if he could make it to the Great Lakes in time for the two races to Mackinac. “I knew it was going to be tight, with only a two or three day window for travel. But I said yes. I was hoping I could maybe get 24-48 hours in Hawaii—maybe even get my feet wet. Turns out that was wishful thinking.” Instead, thanks to a “weird weather system in the Pacific,” Pyewacket’s line honors victory took a full six days shutting the door on any R&R in Hawaii. “The Denali3 team said they were watching the tracker like crazy.” he laughs. Only a few hours after the finish in Hawaii, Janney jumped a redeye back to San Diego. “I guess I was really tired, because I fell asleep before takeoff and didn’t wake up until we were actually landing. ” But he gathered his bags and headed home, where he had just enough time to repack. “I had to take all the Pyewacket gear out, put the Denali3 gear in, go back to the airport, fly all day to Detroit.” After an hour’s drive to Port Huron, he fell into a hotel bed at 2am. “And then we started the Port Huron to Mac race at 1pm that same day. My body didn't know what timezone it was in!”

Bayview-Mac: Class Victory

The Denali3 crew was obviously happy—and a little surprised— that he made it in time, Janney continues, adding that he felt a little bad about his lack of preparation. “I was one of the watch captains and helped with tactics, but I didn't have time to wrap my head around the weather and make a solid plan. Fortunately it was a light air race, so nothing too crazy. We never actually saw the wind speed drop to zero, but we sure did get close a couple times.” The 280 mile race took the Ker 46+ 48 hours to complete. “We were definitely the small boat, in the same class with all the TP52s and Great Lakes 70s. When we won, the owner was pretty happy.” But they had barely tied up to the Mackinac dock before it was time to head offshore once again. “I said I’d help deliver the boat down to Chicago” in time for the next weekend’s race, Janney explains, because there wasn’t enough time to fly back to San Diego. “And as soon as we got to the island, the boat captain says, ‘Hey, there's weather coming in. If we don't leave right now, we're gonna get our teeth kicked in’. So we didn’t even get a shower or a proper meal, just took off. By that point, I was pretty much eight days straight on a boat. And it's another two days down to Chicago.”

Chicago Mac: Storm watch

Janney did finally get two nights sleep in a Chicago hotel room, before starting the Chicago-Mackinac Race. “The boat captain for Denali3 does a really nice job, and the boat was totally sorted out,” so he focused on weather homework. “It was a pretty bad forecast,”he admits, “and it actually came true. Chris Bedford predicted hours of thunderstorms overnight, and he was very honest with us; the models had a hard time resolving how much wind there was going to be, or from what direction.” Based on what they knew, the team decided to head north as fast as they could after the start—even though the heading to Mackinac was northeast. “We basically went up the west coast of Lake Michigan.” Despite this plan, they couldn’t escape the bad weather that night. “The storm ended up being about 200 miles north to south, and Lake Michigan is 300 miles long, so it pretty much covered the entire race area. We got hit pretty hard. I saw the wind speed hit 38, and it may have been higher; there was so much rain and the drops hurt, making it hard to look at the instruments.” For more than two hours of constant thunderstorm cells, Denali’s navigator watched the radar and counted down to each one for the team. “There really wasn't an opportunity to dodge them,” Janney says. ”We had talked prerace about taking all our sails down - covered every scenario, just in case - because we knew it could be anything.” But they were able to keep up a reefed main and J4, while focusing on safety and trying to minimize the chance of damage. Less than a week after their previous win to Mackinac, they again saved their time on the bigger boats in their class and also finished second in their division. This time, Janney was able to stay a few days and enjoy the island and several nice crew dinners, before flying home for a well-deserved rest.

Inventory Refinements

Though he’s still trying to recover from jetlag and numerous freeze-dried meals, Janney’s really excited about the refinements they made to each boat’s race-winning sail inventory. Pyewacket has a triple-headsail setup, and on last year’s Transpac they’d discovered that the Helix A3 increased VMG by about seven percent compared to the A2, because it was flatter and more forgiving to steer to in ocean waves. This year, they rigged an aft outrigger near the steering wheel and used that to pole out a big masthead genoa they call the MH0, short for Mast Head Zero. An even flatter sail than the A3, it turned out to be another six percent faster. “There’s a negative hit on the rating for the outrigger, but we got credit for being non-spinnaker. I think if we were to do another Transpac, we would keep this setup.” Pyewacket only had one other new sail for the race, an offshore spinnaker staysail. “Putting that sail up allowed us to use our genoa staysail as the third sail,” Janney says, adding, “On these bigger boats, sails last a long time.” Denali3 has a new Helix J1 this year that was perfect for the light-air Bayview-Mac. “Bill keeps his inventory quite fresh,” Janney says, with many new Helix sails. “Using a Helix upwind sail helps it cover a higher wind range. We left the J2 on the dock.” For the heavier air Chicago-Mac, before and after the big storm, Denali3 carried what Janney calls an A2 plus. “We've learned that for offshore sprit boats, an A4 is too big and round and it gets hard to drive. The A2 plus is flatter in the head with a straighter luff curve, which makes the sail more twisty. When you're planing in bigger breeze, you can steer the boat and the kite doesn't want to collapse. It’s definitely a more forgiving sail, and we make it out of heavier cloth so it will carry up the wind range.”

No trouble

Back home again, Janney is settling back into “normal” life and already looking forward to some local racing—and this year’s Big Boat Series. He’s also been enjoying the compliments he’s received from both clients and fellow offshore experts. “I got a text message from Ken Read saying ‘nice work!’,” he says, before adding with a laugh, “So I don’t think I’m in too much trouble, even though I was away so long.”