So You Want to be a Sailboat Racer
Tight competition in CYC Seattle’s 2025 PNW One Design Regatta on Shilshole Bay
You have sailed a bunch, read the books about racing and the rules, sailed with some smart and fun people, and now you are wondering what is next in your progression as a sailboat racer. The answer is simple: travel.
Here is a list of the major J/70 events of the next few years:
2025 J/70 Mixed Plus World Championship, June 26-29, Circolo Vela Trobole, Italy
2025 J/70 Canadian Championship, June 27-29, Cork Kingston, Ontario, Canada
2025 J/70 European Championship, August 23-30, Royal Swedish Yacht Club, Sandhamn, Sweden
2025 J/70 Corinthian World Championship, September 22-28, Marblehead, MA
2025 J/70 South American Championship, October 2-5, Buenos Aires, Argentina
2025 J/70 World Championship, October 24- November 1, Buenos Aires, Argentina
2025 J/70 North American Championship, December 1-7, Tampa, FL
2026 J/70 Corinthian World Championship, May 23-30, Marseilles, France
2026 J/70 North Americans (or maybe US Nationals), TBD
2026 J/70 European Championship, July 21-26, Barcelona, Spain
2026 J/70 World Championship, August 28-September 5, Cascais, Portugal
2026 J/70 North American Championship, October 27-November 1, Annapolis, MD
2027 J/70 World Championship, October 23-30, Annapolis, MD
If you are not already going to Garda, Cork, or Sweden -- there isn't time to make it happen. But any of the rest are achievable. Just pick one and put your mind to it. You will not regret it.
Now that you have an away regatta in your plan, what next? If you are making the investment to travel to an away regatta, you are going to want to sharpen up your skills as much as possible as fast as possible.
Your team can practice basic maneuvers, tacks, gybes, sets, and take downs alone right here at home. These capabilities are important, but just a start when accumulating the skills and experience needed to perform well at a major event. You can do boatspeed testing with just one additional team, also in your own backyard. But everything else requires a race. Starts, holding your lane, getting clean air, shifting gears, fleet positioning, mark roundings, finding the best pressure on the course, and understanding the shift patterns can only be learned while in a race. So enter every race you can.
Large and highly competitive events present another level of learning all together. Getting your boat to measure in, learning to sail with all required equipment, having to sail with a full crew on light wind days, understanding on the water judging, and dealing with aggressive competitors, are skills that are specific to important regattas. So enter every important regatta you can.
Managing large fleet dynamics is a skill acquired only through experience. What if it takes more than five minutes to sail from one end of the line to another? How do you work back through a fleet after suffering a bad start? How do you start in a fleet of over 50 boats? What happens when the line is so long it affects how much time you are going to spend on one tack or the other? What happens when a fleet is so deep with talent that the top 10 boats arrive at the weather mark at the same time? The only way to learn this stuff is to enter every large fleet event that you can.
Finally, traveling to an away regatta is a skill in itself. How many days ahead should you arrive? How do you divide your attention between seeing the sights and competing? How do you overcome missing parts and pieces? What do you do about things breaking?
Anyone who has traveled to big regattas will tell you they are richer for the experience. They learned about sailboat racing. They went to a part of the world they may not have seen otherwise. They met interesting people that made their experience deeper and more rewarding. And they learned about themselves. Everyone who travels to a regatta wants to travel to another regatta.
Oh yeah, and one more thing. If you have any interest at all becoming a better sailor, when a big event comes to your town -- don't miss it.
Hey, I left one of the most important regattas off of the above list:
2025 J/70 Mixed Plus US Nationals, June 13-15, CYC Seattle — Registrations are still open. If you have any chance of making it happen — don’t miss it.