boats and boaters: on the water
Race Week draws fleet of out-of-towners
By Will Haynie
WADE SPEES
The Post and Courier
The crew of the Melges 24 "Yoga" hikes out during a Race Week competition in Charleston Harbor.
A new sailing tradition is taking shape on the East Coast, and it draws more and more boats to Charleston every April.
More than 140 boats competed in Charleston Race Week 2008, a three-day regatta for racing sailboats 22-70 feet in length. More than 70 percent of the vessels participating in the April 18-20 event were from out of state.
Travis Weisleder, who came from Virginia with his Melges 24, CarLoan.com, won the hotly contested 27-boat division. Weisleder entered the final day tied with Californian Kristen Lane, who finished a disappointing 16th to drop to second overall. Weisleder and his professional crew of Melges aces (Scott Nixon, Justin Chambers and Skip Dieball) won four of the six races in the class. Charleston’s John Lucas finished fourth in the final race to capture third overall.
Weisleder also won the Charleston Race Week Cup for having the best performance in a one-design class.
Crew member Nixon was an assistant sailing coach at the College of Charleston in the 1990s, so the harbor isn’t exactly strange water to him.
“We were testing new sails in this regatta,” Nixon said. “They felt really fast, and we had a good week.”
Nixon expected the final day’s wind to build as a sea breeze, so he picked the left side of the harbor course once racing began after a windless delay. “It built and started shifting left, we caught it and that was it. We won that race by our biggest margin in the regatta,” he said.
The second-largest class this year was the J/24s, with 15 boats competing. Bash, sailed by Ron Medlin of Goldsboro, N.C., won four of the six races completed in the class and took first overall. Two Charleston boats took second and third place. Chris Hamilton sailed Short Bus to second overall after a string of consistent top three finishes followed by a fifth in the last race, while Ryan Hamm sailed Squid to a 2-1-2.5 (tie) finish to place third, two points behind Hamilton.
The J/80 Rumor, owned by John Storck, Jr. of New York, won its one design class. Aboard Rumor was Charleston product Russ O’Reilly, who started in Charleston’s junior sailing program and is now sailing with the legendary Gary Jobson, who thinks O’Reilly is headed for big things.
Jobson wrote in Sailing World: “My tactician was 20-year-old Russ O’Reilly. … I watched him win the college nationals (for the College of Charleston) the past two years and signed him up. … Let me state, this young man is one of the best new talents on the waterfront. This is a guy you will be reading about in future years.”
Scott Nixon puts this event up there with the best. “With sun, sea breeze, sand, and totally dynamic conditions that change every leg of every race, this is just an awesome event and an awesome venue,” he said. “Even though it’s three days as opposed to five, this was every bit as good as Key West Race Week. … No, it was even better.”
For more news and final results from 2008 Charleston Race Week, please visit www.charlestonraceweek.com.
Manard Takes Helm at C of C
The Post and Courier
Alice Manard left the corporate world to become the College of Charleston's new director of sailing.
For the first time in thirty years, the national powerhouse College of Charleston Sailing team has a new coach. New Orleans native Alice Manard, a chemical engineer, business school graduate and a veteran of an Olympic sailing campaign, continues to settle in as director of sailing at the College of Charleston’s renowned program.
George Wood retired after 30 years at the helm of a program he built from scratch into one of the most respected and formidable forces in collegiate sailing, with more national championships than any college sports program in the Carolinas. Stepping out of the business world and back into sailing, Alice Manard seems comfortable following the legendary coach.
“I decided I wanted my life back,” Manard explained when asked her why she chunked her job as a consultant working in New York and California. “This position requires a good mix of business skills and involves something I enjoy every day: sailing.
“I’m not at someone’s beck and call call the way I was as a consultant.
As director of sailing, Manard is responsible for more than just the sailing team. She also raises money for and promotes the college’s Sailing Association, which includes a community sailing program. Members of the public can take group sailing lessons through the program and pay $400 per year to access the school’s fleet of sailboats. The sailing program also has a healthy endowment, boosted by sailor/philanthropist Edgar Cato’s gifts.
To do all this effectively, Manard needs much more than a chase boat and whistle.
“I work closely with Ward Cromwell, the head coach, and Nick Ewenson, the assistant coach, and get out on the water and coach when I can,” she said.
In 2000, Manard was part of an Olympic campaign in the women’s 470 class, coming in second and just missing the games in Sydney. “That was a real disappointment,” she said.
Giving up New York and San Francisco wasn’t too hard for Alice.
“I was not all that familiar with Charleston until I came here to interview for the job,” she said. “But after I got here and saw it, it was easy.”
One thing that hasn’t changed in Cougar sailing is the winning tradition. On April 12, the College of Charleston sailing team won 11 races, while losing only two, to win the South Atlantic Intercollegiate Sailing Association (SAISA) Team Race Championship held at the J. Stewart Walker Sailing Center.
This good showing qualified the team for the ICSA Team Race National Championship, to be held May 30 – June 1 in Newport, R.I. The women’s sailing team also recently won 16 of 24 races to win the SAISA Spring Women’s Championship and qualify for the ICSA Women’s National Championship to be held May 26-28, also in Newport.
Will Haynie lives in Charleston and has been sailing local waters since childhood. An active racer in CORA, Haynie has written more than 500 newspaper columns covering sailing, along with one book.
Blessing of the fleet
Photo by Mic Smith
The Rev. Steve Wood with St. Andrew's Church blesses a shrimp boat as it passes Alhamra Hall.
The annual Blessing of the Fleet in Mount Pleasant is a Lowcountry rite of spring. Huge crowds on land and a colorful flotilla of shrimp boats and recreational vessels converge at Alhambra Hall in a lively mish-mash of solemn prayer and playful partying.
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