With just two weeks to go until the Beechers Handmade Cheese Seattle 2024 J/24 World Championship, boats and contending teams are starting to arrive in Seattle. Teams from Oregon, California, Montana, British Columbia, Florida and New York arrived in time to compete in the J/24 Western Regionals (September 14-15), which also took place in Seattle. Daniel Borrer, for example, loaded up his boat in St. Augustine Beach, FL last week, drove three thousand miles, corner to corner across the country, and arrived in Seattle just in time to win the first two races on Saturday.
In light to very light winds on Saturday, paired with some drizzling rain, the Race Committee deftly finished three races. The local Seattle team on Hair of the Dog, with Jakob Lichtenberg driving, was leading the regatta at the end of the first day with a scorecard showing two second-place finishes and a fifth-place finish. “Our team felt we played wind more than current, and we think that made the biggest difference to being on top after day one”, said Jon Anderson from Hair of the Dog. Borrer, driving Jesus Lizard, finished the day with two first-place finishes and an eight-place finish, just one point behind Lichtenberg’s Hair of the Dog team. Rounding out the first day’s top three was another local Seattle sailor, Michael Goldfarb who finished the day with a fifth-place finish and a pair of third-place finishes.
The steady building northerly breeze on Sunday was the inverse of the day before, including full sunshine by the day’s end. Borrer and his Jesus Lizard team came out swinging on day two with another first-place finish in the regatta’s fourth race. Goldfarb, who is also an accomplished Melges 24 and J/70 sailor, showed his deep experience by steadily improving and scoring a second-place finish, putting the pressure on the leaders and moving his team up to second place overall. Goldfarb took the regatta lead in race five, with a third-place finish, while the other leaders had to count seventh and ninth-place finishes in the no-throw-out regatta.
Goldfarb and his veteran team held a firm grip on the regatta lead for the final three races, posting two first-place finishes and a sixth-place finish. Ultimately, this meant that Goldfarb and his team won the regatta with a total of 25 points, well ahead of Lichtenberg’s Hair of the Dog team, who finished in second place with 41 points, and Borrer’s Jesus Lizard team, who finished in third place with 43 points.
“We ended up getting two days of glamor sailing in a very competitive fleet,” said Goldfarb, once the regatta’s finishing guns fell silent. “The Race Committee and the club did their usual fantastic job, and as for our team, we are happy, but we know we had a lot of good fortune over the weekend. Our focus now is on the Worlds, and we are looking forward to racing. Meanwhile, the best part of the J/24 Western Regionals was the people—this is truly a great Class, and it’s the people that make it so.”
Full results: https://cycseattle.theclubspot.com/regatta/I7FK01PsEv/results?class_id=hXI0Rz5ZXv
2024 J/24 Worlds website: https://www.J/24worldsseattle.org/home