On a bright and breezy Sunday afternoon, Alisa Finney and Shane Zwingelberg, co-owners of the Cal 25 Fahrvergnugen, were exhausted but jubilant following their second win of weekend at the Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta Series in Annapolis. Finney, who trims the boat’s mainsail, and Zwingelberg, who helms the pair’s dark-blue vintage keelboat, had endured a challenging final day of distance racing in the Cal 25 class where northwesterly winds ranged from 5 to 25 knots in gusts. After their daylong sprint around the Chesapeake Bay they finished nearly 7 minutes ahead of overall runner-up on H. Marie Harkenrider’s Arctic Tern. In winning their division they also earned the regatta’s overall trophy and its Caribbean Championship berth.

Shane Zwingelberg, Alisa Finney, Charles Rush, David Williams and Bill Hetzel, Cal 25 winners and Caribbean Challengers. Walter Cooper

“The whole weekend was just amazing,” Finney says, echoing a sentiment shared across the regatta’s 217 entries. Friday’s racing was a spectacular sea breezy day, Saturday’s winds were lighter, and Sunday’s blustery northerlies tested the boathandling chops of many teams racing for the first time this season.

“As far as the winds, we couldn’t ask for anything better—it was perfect most of the time,” Finney adds. “We did sail really well. We had a very good crew, and we’re kind of a well-oiled machine.”

The final race was especially challenging, so for the crew of Fahrvergnugen that meant a busy day on the sail controls. “It was a lot of adjustments,” Zwingelberg says. “Like all of a sudden, it was like ‘where’s the wind?’ and then, boom it’s back. We were on ear sometimes, so it was a lot of work.”

Responsibility for keeping the tender 25-footer on an even keel fell to Finney. “It was a lot of backstay on, backstay off, and Alisa was pretty much the one that had to do it all so everybody else could hike,” says Zwingelberg.

The collective pair are relatively new to Fahrvergnugen. Finney had been crewing for the previous skipper who she says, “wanted to hand it off to somebody who promised to keep racing it.”

The Cal 25, a William Lapworth design of the late 1960s, is considered to be the most popular of the Cal designs of all time, and with racing fleets still active in the Great Lakes and the Chesapeake, the competition is always stiff.

Doug Stryker’s J/105 Mayhem approaches the weather mark on the final day of the Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta Series Annapolis Walter Cooper

“It’s a good boat,” says Zwingelberg who also races far more technical Star boats. “It actually surprises me. With the breeze like today, downwind, it’s actually a lot faster than I thought it could go. It can go double digits. I didn’t think it could do that.”

Finney backs that claim up with her own numbers: “We have done that. We have done 10.5. We’ve hit that many times. We went over nine several times today and never put the spinnaker up, just because the angles were too tight and probably too risky. But we didn’t really need it. We were getting hull speed already.”

They’d won the previous day’s lighter-air race easily, on account of a proven strategy around clean starts and early separation from the fleet. “At the start of both races, it was tight with a group of us until we got to the first mark,” Zwingelberg says. “And both times, we were lucky enough to just get free to the mark and be the first one around, and then the other ones all kind of got all stuck fighting for air. That’s when we got away.”

Their win now sends them to the Helly Hansen Sailing World Caribbean Championship with Sunsail in the BVIs in late October, but before getting there they have their National Championships in September, all part of a busy calendar for the Chesapeake Cal 25 fleet, which Finney says they’re fighting to keep vibrant and bring in new blood.

Kevin Morgan’s J/70 Wild Card, class winner in Annapolis.

“We are definitely making a move to work hard on that and trying to get some young people in the fleet, boats that are out there involved. And these boats are definitely not going away, because it costs more to get rid of it than it’s worth. So many people come on and crew and they say it’s so much better than I thought it was going to be.”

While the Cal 25s were doing their hot laps around Chesapeake Bay, the regatta’s other fleets were enjoying quick laps around racecourses managed by nearly 100 race officials from Annapolis YC, Eastport YC and Severn Sailing Association. Annapolis YC had its hands full on its Division 3 circle, set just north of the iconic Thomas Point Lighthouse. Here they were managing Annapolis’ hyper-competitive J/105 fleet with 23 entries, and a pro-laden 33-boat J/70 fleet, both of which were using the Vakaros RaceSense starting system. When most everyone gets a decent start using the Vakaros system, the racecourse is congested, especially on the first leg. With a strong current running all weekend, however, missed calls on windward-mark laylines often created gaps for the front-runners to get away. Doug Stryker’s team on the J/105 Mayhem managed the often chaotic course the best, winning two of eight races and posting only one finish out of the top-five (and eighth in Race 2). It was impressive stuff for Stryker and his team who managed to win by only 5 points over the defending champions of Ray Wullf’s Patriot.

The J/88 fleet at the Annapolis Regatta was competitive from the outset. Jack McGuire’s MI2 prevailed. Walter Cooper

Kevin Mogan’s J/70 team on Wildcard—with tactician, multiple class world champion and America’s Cup helmsman Lucas Calabrese calling the shots—topped that fleet by only 3 points over the J/70 Corinthian World Champions of Alex Cutler’s Hedgehog, which were the fastest team by far in the final day’s big breeze.

Eastport YC’s Division 2 circle was plenty busy as well with multiple classes, including the five-boat J/30 fleet won by Dan Watson’s Avita, and the five-strong J/29 class racing for its East Coast Championship title. That honor went to Alan Campbell’s Nothing Artificial, which won five of eight races over three days.

David and Jackie Meiser’s One Trick Pony topped the small and insurgent Melges 24 fleet with five race wins as well. Jack McGuire’s MI2 finished the regatta 5 points ahead of Andy Graff’s Chicago-based team in the J/88 fleet.

Alan Campbell’s J/29, Nothing Artificial, won the class’s East Coast Championship. Walter Cooper

The J/80s, 21-boats deep, were contesting their East Coast Championship as well, with several out-of-town boats giving the eventual winners on J.R. Maxwell’s Scamp a true test of fleet management on the crowded racecourse. Scamp and the defending champions on Mike Beasley’s Black Sheep, runners up this year, were never far from each other, but it was Scamp that put in the better series to win by an impressive margin of 7 points.

The race officials of SSA equally had their hands full with a packed circle of J/22s, Lightnings, Viper 640s and Melges 15s. With a racecourse set in the fast-running waters near the middle of the bay, here too competitors found the Chesapeake’s swift-running outbound current a major factor. On the breezy final day of racing, Brad Julian’s J/22 Yard Sail excelled, winning the first and finishing second in the next, which ultimately put them 4 points atop Jeffrey Todd’s Hot Toddy. The 24-boat Lightning fleet opted not to take on the conditions so the first two day’s races finalized the regatta with the decorated skipper Augie Diaz and his crew Ciara Rodriguez-Horan winning overall, as well as five of seven races.

Augie Diaz, Laura Jeffers and Ciara Rodriguez-Horan, Lightning Class winners in Annapolis. Walter Cooper

The Melges 15s also did not sail the final day, cementing Annapolis’ Tim Herzog and Dave Petty as the top team.

Viper 640 sailors, however, had no reservations about racing in 20 knots and flat water, conditions that these sportboats are made for, and they were rewarded with fast reaching and hard-hiking gusty upwind sailing that suited Marek Zaleski and his teammates on Team Z. With a 2,2 to close the series Team Z earned the classes Atlantic Coast Championship, defeating Jay Rhame and Peter Beardsly’s Glory Days by 4 points. The two were tied going into the day.

Gary Jobson, Will and Marie Crump learn to tune the borrowed J/7 for their first-ever distance race. Walter Cooper

PHRF of the Chesapeake was the chose rule for this year’s Distance Race fleet, and diverse as the fleet was, the perennial champions on James Sagerholm’s J/35 Aunt Jean won again, but only after winning on the tiebreaker with Bruce Irvin’s Corby 40 Time Machine. Irvin won Saturday’s race, but Sagerholm won Sunday’s, earning the win. Gary Jobson, with Will and Marie Crump, were third overall onboard a chartered J/7. The threesome had never sailed the boat until the morning of the first race, and sailed jib and main only.

The Annapolis Harbor 20 fleet maintains a strict wind limit for its racing, and Sunday morning’s 25-knot gusts were enough to leave the fleet’s boats on their trailers. Margaret and Sophie Podlich, on Skimmer, had done enough on the first day with a 1,2,5,8 run to win the series.

Brad Julien’s J/22 Yard Sail leads the fleet into the weather mark. Walter Cooper

While the Harbor 20s stayed ashore, that opened the racecourse for regatta’s eight J/24s. With blade jibs hoisted, their racing along the shoreline was plenty exciting with puffy, shifty conditions and blistering spinnaker runs making for exciting races. KJ Wolaver and Madeline Henry’s team on SISU won all three races handily to win the series over Peter Rich’s Buxton.

The Waszp fleet of foilers were frothing ashore in the morning, and once the breeze settled in enough to launch, four capable skippers piled on more races. In the end, Ethan Thompson was “almost” unbeatable over 16 races. He finished second in two of them. Dan Draper was second overall, followed by Shane Kilberg and Halsey Carter.

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