A Good Class to be a Part of

We do the sport a disservice by our infatuation of chasing the latest shiny new object, forgetting how the best part of sailing is sharing common interests with people, and the more people the better.

The J/24 Class has been doing this now for 40 years, with 63 teams from Argentina, Canada, Germany, Great Britain, Ireland, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Peru and the USA celebrating this success at the 2017 World Championship.

Rossi Milev

Rossi Milev sailed his first J/24 Worlds in 2000, and while he didn’t win, he really enjoyed the class and the boat, so like a lot of J/24 sailors, he kept coming back for more. This year, 17 years later, his efforts were rewarded by winning the title at his home yacht club in Port Credit, Ontario.

Rossi worked hard to get this regatta to his home yacht club – Port Credit Yacht Club – as he knew they would do a great job running a World Championship for the J/24 Class. Once they won the bid for hosting the event, Rossi set his sights on taking home the trophy.

But a 46th in the first race was not the start that Rossi had hoped for. “Halfway through the beat we had committed to the left, which was normal, but it didn’t pay off at all.” While disappointed, a team therapy session calmed their nerves. “Everybody can have a 46th place. This is the World’s. It’s going to come down to the last leg of the last race.”

That premonition proved true. “Winning the J/24 Worlds is as hard as winning the Worlds in any other class. It may actually be harder, because the boats are all even. There are a lot of great sailors in the class who had deep results. Up until the last race it was still not determined who would win.”

Rossi’s team sailed the 2016 North Americans (minus 1 crew member) as well as many local races, so they knew each other; they just hadn’t been sailing the J/24 together leading up to the Worlds. Rossi only sailed one J/24 event a couple weeks before the Worlds at his home club, with a different team. “Everyone has families, work, growing businesses. We all kind of parted ways for a while.”

For the Worlds, although they hadn’t been sailing much together, they were able to pick up where they left off. “Each day our communication got better,” noted Rossi, and were where they wanted to be by the end of the week.

As to what keeps him coming back to the J/24 Class, “It’s affordable and the sailors are very good. We wouldn’t have as many youth and women’s teams out there if it was expensive like a lot of other more high-performance classes.

“The J/24 is a great boat to learn from and race, and the events are a lot of fun. There is a reason why nothing has replaced it. How many young people have learned how to sail on a J/24? A lot of them. Because it is fun. It’s a good Class to be a part of.”

Rossi (left) with crew Gayle Gray (mast), Mark Goodyear (trim), Jon Messenger (tactics) and Jeremy Edwards (bow).

Source: North Sails, Scuttlebutt