MARBLEHEAD — There is a Marblehead Junior Race Week curse, according to Pleon Yacht Club Commodore Chloe Brown, and it held to form this week.
“There’s always one day where it’s the biggest storm of the summer,” said Brown, 18, who will enter Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, N.Y., this fall.
“Then there’s a day where there’s good wind. And there’s a day of light wind.
“Today (Wednesday) was the light wind,” she said. “We kind of expect it to happen. But everyone adapted really well.”
Junior Race Week, albeit a truncated one, wrapped up Wednesday amid postcard-perfect weather on the high seas — a stark contrast to the way conditions were Monday, when race officials decided to keep the boats ashore.
“Monday’s conditions were just too rough,” said Rick Myers, one of the many adult volunteers who help the race run smoothly. “It wasn’t so much the rain, but the wind and waves. It was just a little bit too windy for our kids. It was generally considered a good decision to take the day off and, truth be told, nobody complained about it.”
Nevertheless, the weather did throw a pretty good curve into the proceedings. The conditions were bad enough to force the Monday-night dinner inside the small clubhouse, where “it got very crowded,” said Brown. It also forced the race organizers to double up on races so that the sailors could come close to the requisite number of races in the regatta.
Junior Race Week serves as a prelude to the regular regatta, which begins today, with the Corinthian Yacht Club as the host facility. These days, Race Week consists of the Helly Hansen National Offshore One-Design (NOOD) Regatta, a series of races throughout the country.
Race Week in Marblehead is nearly 150 years old, and originally it was structured so that the junior sailors raced in the morning and the adults in the afternoon.
“At some point, 40 or 50 years ago, it started evolving,” said Myers. “The regatta has been shortened a little bit, and taken the form it takes now,” which has the juniors racing Monday through Wednesday and the adults Thursday through Sunday.
Brown said volunteers and staff working on Junior Race Week have been working since last August.
“They worked practically year-round,” she said. “There are a lot of people who do a lot of work to make this happen.
“It’s really a community effort,” she said. “It’s amazing that we pull it off. The objective is to encourage youth sailing above anything else — any club, any class. The goal is to get kids excited about sailing, and to develop a love of sailing.”
Pleon produced three winners in the junior race. Pleon’s Max Dressel and Jack Weissenburger finished first and second, respectively, in the Opti Green Even fleet. Pleon also took the first two spots in the Opti Champ fleet, as Pearse Dowd and Dylan Balunas finished atop the other 57 entries. Pleon’s Frankie Doyle topped Sail Maine’s George Holt in the Laser Radial fleet.
Other winners included Niantic Bay YC’s Kristen Healy and Eli Gleason, who topped Pleon’s Philip Jeffries and Megan Yorsz in the 420 Champ fleet. Sam Barrett and Luke Monnich of Hingham YC won the 420 Green fleet. Finally, Kollegewidgwok YC’s Oliver Lardner topped Hingham YC’s Libby Rogers and Pleon’s Billy Cashel in the Opti Green Odd fleet.
