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Got Game?
AK We stayed there a while and I got my first sail boat, a Dyer 7' 11" but it had a Dyer 10' sail! Pushing it from the start, I guess. After FTL we cruised the Bahamas while being home-schooled by my mother. We finally got to St. Thomas and I started 5th grade there. Soon enough I was hanging at the St. Thomas yacht club and there was one other kid learning how to race. There was no junior program so we basically just went out and bashed each other's heads in. At this point the virgin islands had many very talented sailors, Chris Rosenberg and the Holmberg brothers. There was also a few that were a bit younger such as Morgan Avery. These guys would always make sure we were going in the right direction. During this time, peter Holmberg was gearing up for his silver medal in the Korea 88 Olympics. That was my first chance to see how a successful program is run. We sailed Cape Code Mercuries and did some double handed Laser racing against the big boys for a few years finally got some Int'l 420's and we were off. All during this time I sailed big boats such as J29's. Finally Peter Holmberg asked me to sail on his 29 as mainsheet and eyes out. We dominated everything and I caught the bug. Sailing would die out in the summers there so I looked for ways to get off the island. My sophomore summer I moved to Milford, Connecticut to work on the floor at North Sails. Got a chance to check in with the rest of the kids my age and see how I was. If I recall correctly I think I finished top 10 at a big Long Island Jr. race week. The next summer I came to Newport, RI. I had heard all about the place and it seemed to be the place to be if you were into sailing as much as I was. I again worked on the floor for the loft that Dan Neri and Ken Read owned. Dan had been a St. Thomian and let me stay in his attic for the summer. This continued for a few years working at the sail loft and being a mate on a big IMS 50's. I ended up staying a winter in Newport and going to high school on my own. I was fortunate to have a mom that trusted a 18 year old living in his own apartment in high school. Then I went to St. Mary's college of Maryland. Spent five years there with some great memories and meet my two of my best friends, Matt Lindblad and Mark Ivey (who just won ISAF team race worlds). College was lots of fun, we all lived together three of the four years and dominated college sailing our last few years. After college moved back to Newport and did clinics for US Sailing junior regattas and worked for the cruising division of North Sails. Then came a point were the phone started ringing too much so I left North and started pro sailing. I was hired by Nelson Stephenson to manage his Mumm 30 program and started sailing those along with some big boats such as Blue Yankee and Carrera.
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So a couple of winters ago I coached Stars for the Olympic trials and made enough money to get a crapper boat and fix it up. J24's are a bit mystical so I sought the advise from the guys above on what was important. They each came back with certain points: max lead in keel, stiff deck etc. Ken read mentioned that 1980-1982 was a good vintage for some reason. I assembled a list of the boats with the key points and found one that I could afford. Man it was a shitter too. Layers and layers of bottom paint, gelcoat pealing off the keel and worse, a baby blue deck! The king of J24 preparation/setup Karl Anderson let me bring my boat to his shop and do the work myself on the bottom. It was great to have a 5x j24 world champion right there anytime we had a question. So we sailed the Thursday night series again with the help of double j24 world champ Brad Read who was only a 100 yards away. Brad helped with rig and sail advise. We were solid in the Newport fleet. So, we tested the national waters this winter in Florida for the Midwinters. We finished second a third of a point behind Max Skelly who was very fast and keep his nose cleaner that I did. We collected not one but two Z flag penalties. However, it was good to know we were up to pace nationally. In the beginning of this summer we decided to have a go at the worlds in England. We weren't sure how we were going to pay for it, but we were going to go. For the worlds, I kept my core crew of Scott "Chuck" Norris and Chad Atkins from the Newport series. Added north sails one-design employee and ex hot college sailor, Brian "The Missile" Bissell and finished it off with Irish boat owner Tim Rippey. We afforded Tim's two year old Italian J24 by trading him a set of North sails and he got to sail on the boat. We were there for three weeks. A few days to have Chad fair the keel to our shape, do the UK nationals and then the worlds. We missed the first day of the UK regatta to get the keel dry, but after that sailed a good regatta and were defiantly one of the fastest boats if not the fastest. Chad worked for Karl Anderson at his shop and knows his J24 keels I guess quite well. During measurement (4 days) we constantly put the rig up and down over twenty times to get it absolutely perfect. One of our mentors here in RI is PJ Schaffer who won the worlds the year before with Jens on Salsa and he passed on his mantra: "always bring the weapon." It was good confidence to also know that we were as fast as we were during the UK regatta but still increased the performance of the boat a lot during the measurement process. I think we got in people's head when we only had the keel sanded to 32o for the UK regatta. As for the worlds, just everything fell in to place plus and had the luck of the Irish with Tim onboard. The key point in the regatta was Thursday. It was blowing snot 25-30kts with the small jibs (except the Aussies, they were crazy with the big genoa but pulled it off). There were basically five teams with a shot - us, Max Skelly, Italians, Aussies and the Brazilians. That day Max broke his rudder while leading the morning race. Then the Italians got in a huge collision with the Aussies and took both boats out. We port tacked the fleet in the PM race too. There was just something going on...we weren't asking questions. So the final day we had a five pt jump on the Brazilians and were able to focus on them. It was obviously lots fun winning the worlds. We spent all of our money doing it. We each came home with less than a couple of hundred dollars total. But we won the J24 worlds.
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AK 03-Oct-2005 |
We'll
bet you've not heard of Anthony Kotoun. He's based in Newport , RI and
just won the J-24 worlds in England. His team returned home on the Saturday
night after the Worlds, and went up to Marblehead on Monday to win the
J-24 North Americans. That's fairly impressive. He's a young up and coming
star and we enjoyed hearing who he is. You will too. Photo credits 
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