Tack and Cross the Fleet
Frederic and Janet Laffitte, Andy and Jamie Mack and Keith Hammer in Cascais at the J/70 European Corinthian Championships, April 2025
In 2019, the Seattle team on Keith Whittemore's Furio joked in the car on the way to Coral Reef Yacht Club before the final day of the J/24 World Championships in Miami: All we need to do is start at the pin and tack and cross the fleet. Yeah right, no one would ever be able to tack and cross the entire fleet on the last day of the J24 Worlds!
To win a highly contested yacht race, a thousand things have to go right. Boatspeed and good tactical decisions are essential. But neither matters if the boat doesn’t reach the starting line with crew and equipment fully prepared. Getting the right crew chemistry, polishing the bottom, tuning the rig, organizing the spares — are all vital. And for each of those decisions, there’s no clear formula, no assurance that the right decision was made.
Most everyone has heard of entropy, but ask them to define it and you'll likely get the blank look of someone who just forgot their next-door neighbor’s name. Let’s say it has something to do with systems gradually falling apart. It’s not exactly everything going wrong at once — it’s more like how something that worked perfectly yesterday is off a bit today, and will probably be worse tomorrow.
Entropy is the cost of time and energy not spent. And time and energy are finite. Which means they must be spent carefully — and, perhaps more importantly, not spent on things that don’t matter.
Like that guy spinning plates on the Ed Sullivan Show, energy has to be constantly added just to keep the system from collapsing. And in sailboat racing, the plates multiply: equipment, logistics, communication, weather, psychology. Spend too much effort on one and another starts to wobble. Add travel, new conditions, or unfamiliar boats, and you’re juggling with your eyes closed. All the while, entropy is working against success.
And there’s no reliable hierarchy. A broken halyard or a hole in the boat will obviously stop the show — but what about the batten tool that didn’t get put away in its place? Or the ball bearings on the cockpit floor? At six minutes before the start, should we be discussing wind shifts or rig tension or which end of the line is favored?
Most of the thousand variables are shades of gray. But at some point, between two and five minutes after the start, they crystallize into one black-or-white decision:
Can we tack and cross?
In Race 9 of the 2019 Worlds, Furio answered yes — and they did. They tacked, crossed the fleet, won the race, and secured one of the toughest world championship titles in our sport.
That was only possible because of every unseen choice, every wise investment of energy, and very little wasted energy.
At home, in your own boat, with familiar gear in its usual place, the hurdles feel manageable. But take the show on the road and the entropy multiplies. Add a different time zone, unfamiliar gear, a foreign language, and a crew member feeling off after dinner — and suddenly keeping the plates spinning feels like an Olympic sport.
Seattle has a long history of sailors traveling the world to compete at the top levels. This year is no exception when next month four Seattle teams head to Lake Garda, Italy for the 2025 J/70 Mixed Plus World Championship. Over fifty boats are expected, in this new mixed gender division. Our teams have recently been climbing in the J/70 class results. Andrew and Mallory Loe recently posted a sixth place at the 2025 J/70 Corinthian Europeans in Cascais, Portugal. Keith and Brian were sidelined by a bit of bad luck and missed the final two races. 'Lift Ticket' and 'War Canoe' were also there representing the Pacific Northwest.
Before our teams fly to Italy however, they will battle it out at home. The 2025 J/70 US Nationals — also Mixed Plus — will be hosted at CYC Seattle June 13-15th. Fifteen boats are already registered, including the teams heading to Europe. And tonight 25 or more J/70s will test their decision making as they do every summer Wednesday night on Lake Washington. Seattle is shaping up to be one of the strongest J/70 fleets in the country — and getting better at managing entropy.
From Shilshole Bay to Lake Garda, from Wednesdays to world championships, the yacht racing game is the same. Prepare everything, spin the plates, hold entropy at bay. And when the moment comes...
make the call to tack and cross.
This is the first in a series of three articles about the J/70 universe based on my conversations with Mike Goldfarb, Keith Whittemore and Fredric Laffitte. Thank you all for taking the time to talk with me and I hope I do your ideas justice. Mike inspired the idea about the many decisions that lead to one binary choice. The next installment will dig into the J/70 Class and how it is handling its successes.
Seattle Results from the 2025 J/70 European Corinthian Championships, April 1-8, 2025
Andrew and Mallory Loe, Giancarlo Nucci, Lee Sackett and AnaLucia Clarkson
Dime: 6th, 15, 35, 31, 6, 12, 3, 4, 8
Frederic and Janet Laffitte, Andy and Jamie Mack and Keith Hammer
Lift Ticket: 24th, 45, 29, 36, 20, 23, 7, 25, 16
Mike Goldfarb and Ben and Jen Glass and Jay Renehan
War Canoe: 28th, 20, 48, 9, 44, 27, 23, 19, 27
Keith Whittemore and Brian Thomas, Tanit Cabau, Rd Burley
Furio: 42nd, 44, 9, 40, 34, 17, 40, DNC, DNC