AC
I am 38 years old – I grew up sailing in CT, sailed at Navy, was a 3x all-American, 2x single-handed champion and did 2 Finn campaigns, the last of which I missed most of the trials as I was in the hospital with food poisoning….. I then took 8 years off sailing to go to business school, get established in business and enjoy starting my family. I bought a J105 3 years ago to get my family out on the water and teach my kids what it’s all about. I have slowly gotten back into the flow of it all from there. Most recently I was doing tactics for my great friend, Steve Phillips on F40 Le Renard until I had too many business commitments to be able to stay on the boat through the World’s, as planned….This was a role for which I was much maligned by some on this site…….

You are considered to be one of the better amateur sailors. What is your real job?

AC
I am a stock fund manager – to avoid dealing with lawyers I will not say where…Google can clear that up.

How long have you been sailing the J/22? Tell us a bit about your set up – sails, rig, crew, training, etc.

AC
I started sailing the J22 about 3 weeks before the Worlds. Actually, the first time I sailed one, I fell overboard during my first tack, into the 43 degree bay water….It provided much humor to those training out there, including my trimmer Max Skelley. Max (Ullman/Skelley Sails) designed sails and trimmed jib and chute. Max and I shared tactics going upwind and I did the tactics going downwind, all the while getting great information on current, wind and boatspeed from Paul Murphy, the only human who can smell current line while sitting down below. We sailed for 2 days before the NOOD, used the NOOD for sail testing and boat handling practice. We then practiced more boat handling and did more sail testing for the 2 days before the Worlds. We were still learning a lot about the boat during the Worlds, but got great help along the way from local studs Dave van Cleef, Todd Hiller and Pete “Braaaaahh” McChesney. I was pleasantly surprised by how welcoming the class regulars were to us – this would never have been the case for a newcomer in my old Finn days…. We started with the North rig setup, but threw all other established J22 protocol out the window. By Worlds we had a completely different setup, the most obvious thing being big up trav and twisty open main. We basically looked like a mini J105 by the time we were done.

Every big regatta has at least One Scary Moment. What was yours?

AC
The RC abandoning the first race 8 with us rounding the leeward mark top5 and the NEDs in the 30s. At that point it seemed the gods were against us. Fortunately there was enough wind and time limit remaining for the RC to keep the R flag up.

What were the three biggest factors to winning the Worlds?

The title came down to you and John den Engelsman. Take us through that last race.

AC
We needed to finish in the top-10 and put 8 boats between us in the last race. As the World champs had only finished out of the single digits once, we knew we had to become interactive but also do the pre-race prep needed to finish well in a pretty deep field. We lost track of them by 5 minutes but were relieved to see them coming after us on stbd. We dialed up, stopped short, they carried past us, a minute later we were tailing the on a broad port tack reach. We tacked back for the line when we figured we had enough time to get to our desired bottom third of the line with enough time to find a hole with speed. They were unable to get down the line and were forced into ducking the fleet on port. With 10 boats to the left of us we took the first decent left shift enough to cross the whole right and consolidate. Pressure came in from the left and we wound up rounding in the high twenties. The NEDs rounded well back and dropped out at some point on the first run. From there, all the focus was on staying in pressure to the point of sailing bad VMGs in order to get every last bit out of the few puffs out there. We had good boatspeed in light air all week and we were able string breeze together enough to fight back to 8th by the finish.

You have Ullman/Skelley sails. Did you do much sail development, and what was sailmaker’s involvement?

AC
The plan was always to give Max a chance to make sails, but to go with what we felt gave us the best chance for success. From our tuning and NOOD experience, we found the Ullmans fast in anything over 7 kts, but hadn't had enough light air tuning to feel comfortable with the jib, fearing it was too flat. With only a couple of hours of light air, we were uncomfortable committing to the Ullman jib and measured in the North, a proven light air entity. Of course, the day after measurement we were able to get a solid look at the second generation Ullman jib and found it plenty quick in light and lumpy, if we used an inch of windward sheeting.

New sail development was part of our plan from the outset: 1, in the hopes that with a fresh approach, we could find something special, and 2, for fun. We got both. Ullmans have always been known for their great chutes, and they were plenty fast, the main was plenty powerful and we were high, fast and seemed to have more gears per rig setting than others. The North jib was industry standard, and was quite forgiving and easy to steer. If these were Ullman's first prototypes, I'm psyched to see what comes next!

On a scale of 1-10, how do you rate the 22 as an OD class?

AC
Trick question? 10? The class was much fun, competition excellent.

What else do you sail besides the 22?

AC
Well I still have the 105, and I do a little racing in 100 year old wooden boats in Maine…but really I like going wherever the best competition is.

What’s next for you?

AC
I am going to make new door sills for our house. We put new floors in but the guys who came to make the door sills did a really crappy job. And I want to do more match racing. I used to really enjoy team racing, and got a taste recently in the Farr40s. It is the only time in sailing where pounding your competition is socially acceptable.

AC
This site is great – it amplifies the actual sailing and allows the recreational sailor, of which I count myself one, a voice. Keep up the good work!!

Thanks Alec!

AC
Thanks to you as well.