Flash Gordon on fire at Rolex Farr 40 Worlds

Helmut Jahn has been racing Farr 40s for eight years but he has never shown the sort of form that he is displaying this week in Newport, Rhode Island. It seems that the past year and a half he's got serious about campaigning this toughest of keelboat classes, signing up up-and-coming sailor Mike Ivey as tactician and Ed Adams as coach.

Here's an excerpt from a piece I wrote for the event:

Flash Gordon was firing on all cylinders today while other leading lights stalled out during a tricky opening day at the Rolex Farr 40 World Championship in Newport, Rhode Island. The formula for Flash Gordon’s success includes world-renowned architect Helmut Jahn (Chicago, Ill.) steering his Flash Gordon upwind, then handing over to his son Evan downwind. An unorthodox approach, but one that did them no harm in the light south-westerly breeze that blew across Rhode Island Sound.

In the first race of the day, Flash Gordon got a nice start off the pin end of the line, in good company with leading contenders such as 2004 World Champion and winner of last week’s Pre-Worlds, Jim Richardson (Newport, R.I./Boston, Mass.) on Barking Mad. However, where Barking Mad tacked off to protect the middle of the course, Flash Gordon kept on going, rounding the first mark narrowly ahead of Vincenzo Onorato’s Mascalzone Latino (Portoferrio, Italy). Barking Mad dropped to around 10th when tactician Terry Hutchinson’s conservative strategy failed to pay off.

To read more, listen to some audio interviews and see Daniel Forster's great photos, click on this link: http://www.regattanews.com/event.asp?id=138