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Event photos are courtesy of Wilbur Keyworth
Skipper Sammy Mentel and other members of the Naval Academy Varsity Offshore Sailing team sailed Defiance to victory in PHRF class. Defiance was one of four Navy 44-footers competing in the class.
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Event photos are courtesy of Wilbur Keyworth
Sundog, a J/124 skippered by AYC member Paul Parks, was the Doublehanded division winner.
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Event photos are courtesy of Wilbur Keyworth
Zuul, an Aerodyne 38 skippered Benedict Capuco of Annapolis Yacht Club, won ORC Open 3 class.
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Event photos are courtesy of Wilbur Keyworth
Blue Skies, an Alden Skye 50-footer skippered by William Gunther, won ORC Performance Cruiser 1.
Annapolis, MD — William Gunther is a veteran offshore sailor but had never done the Annapolis to Newport Race. The Essex, Connecticut resident decided to check that iconic event off the bucket list and did so in serious style.
Gunther skippered Blue Skies to a convincing victory in ORC Performance Cruiser 1 class for the 40th biennial Annapolis to Newport Race. John Brooks served as the other watch captain aboard the Alden Skye 50-footer, which posted a corrected time of 4 days, 5 hours, 54 minutes and 59 seconds.
That was more than four hours better than class runner-up Legacy, a Beneteau First 40 skippered by Nick Carter of Lewes, Delaware.
“We’re absolutely thrilled with the result. To win our class in our first time doing this great race is very exciting,” said Gunther, who was encouraged to enter Annapolis to Newport by legendary sailmaker Butch Ulmer. “I was talking to Butch, and he suggested it would be a good race for this boat and boy was he right.”
This is Gunther’s fifth year racing Blue Skies and he’s done the Newport to Bermuda and Marblehead to Halifax races with many of the same crew members. He previously campaigned a custom-designed McCurdy & Rhodes 46-footer named Froya that logged considerable offshore mileage.
Gunther discovered that A2N is a different beast than some of the other point-to-point ocean distance races in which he’s competed. That’s because A2N is basically
three races in one — the Chesapeake Bay portion, the Cape Henry to Block Island portion and the Block Island to Newport portion.
“It was a rather eye-opening experience for me because it is a very interesting race. It’s a race that has some interesting dynamics and different elements,” Gunther said. “This particular race was very challenging because the weather forecasts were somewhat inaccurate. We had almost every condition you could imagine.”
Blue Skies trailed Legacy, the 2nd place winner, upon entering the Atlantic Ocean and Gunther said it “took us a while to reel her back in.” Ultimately, a strong performance offshore proved decisive for Blue Skies, which beat Legacy by just under three hours on elapsed time.
“We worked very hard to maximize boat speed and did a very good job of covering our competition,” Gunther said. “I thought we did a really good job of keeping the boat moving at all times regardless of the wind conditions.”
Brooks has crewed for Gunther for decades, but five members of the crew were aged 20 to 25 as the skipper is keen to introduce younger sailors to offshore competition.
Benedict Capuco and his veteran crew aboard ZUUL have competed in the last four editions of the Annapolis to Newport Race and have now posted three straight podium finishes. After finishing second in class in 2021 and third in 2023, Capuco and company took the final step.
Sean Reilly earned kudos for his work as navigator as ZUUL captured ORC Open 3 class in a close battle with Zig Zag. The Annapolis-based Aerodyne 38 finished 37 minutes ahead of the J/122 on elapsed time and stretched that advantage to just over an hour on corrected time.
“It was a somewhat trying race. We were out there a long time,” Capuco said. “We didn’t have much wind in the Bay and didn’t get out until late Sunday afternoon. Things got better out in the ocean, but we still had some light periods here and there.”
Capuco had high praise for the efforts of Reilly, who worked overtime reviewing wind and current conditions. It was Reilly who called for a course that took ZUUL as far as 32 miles east of the rhumb line and the Aerodyne 38 stayed out there until reaching the layline for Newport.
“I’ve got a fantastic navigator. Sean spent a lot of time looking at weather models and figuring out where to put us,” Capuco said. “We were convinced that going east was the right call and we stuck with that decision. It worked because we found fairly consistent breeze out there.”
ZUUL went outside of Block Island then posted some of its best speeds while blast reaching from there to the finish off Castle Hill Lighthouse. The Aerodyne 38 excels in reaching conditions and was able to extend on some of the competition, Capuco said.
“To win a race like this it’s never any one thing; it’s everything all together. We were always working the boat and trying to figure out ways to go faster,” Capuco said. “We weren’t shy about changing sails even in the middle of the night. We probably did six sail changes over the last 60 miles of the race.”
Of particular note ZUUL which not only won ORC 3 but also had the lowest corrected time among all 56 boats competing under the ORC rule.
Paul Parks was pleased to come out on top in the ORC Doublehanded division but felt bad about how it happened. Parks and George Saunders sailed Sundog to victory after Jane Says was forced to drop out of the race.
Jane Says, an XP44 skippered by Robert Dunigan, held a huge lead on the rest of the class until ensnaring a fish net on approach to Block Island. Dunigan and crew Read Beigel were forced to start the engine in order to back off and clear the netting from the keel.
“It was really sad what happened to Bob Dunigan; caught a fish trap on keel on approach to Block Island; They sailed an excellent race and were leading the entire fleet, so it’s really a shame what happened to them.”
Jane Says suffering some misfortune does not detract from the performance of Sundog, a J/124 that Parks acquired from Dunigan in the fall. This marked the first offshore race for Parks aboard his new boat and the result could not have been better.
Sundog finished more than eight hours ahead of Abientot, but wound up beating the J/35 by about a half hour on corrected time. Skipper Roger Lant and crew Michael Welin sailed brilliantly aboard Abientot, which led all the doublehanded boats around the Chesapeake Light Tower.
“I really don’t know how two guys can sail a J/35 that fast,” Parks marveled.
Sundog had its struggles negotiating the predominantly light air in the Chesapeake Bay with Parks beating himself up for being caught on the wrong side of two wind shifts. However, the J/124 got into a nice groove going downwind in the lower bay to claw into contention.
“Well, the weather forecast for the Chesapeake Bay was about as wrong as it could be. We had two nice spinnaker runs, neither of which were in the forecast,” Parks said. “We had a wonderful spinnaker run right down to the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel, which got us back into the race.”
Sundog was so becalmed shortly after passing the Chesapeake Light Tower that they took down the mainsail on two occasions. After getting going again, the J/124 ran into a header that prompted Parks to take the boat further out into the ocean and discovered more reliable breeze.
“I think that stretch was really the difference. That is when we got some separation,” said Parks, who estimates taking Sundog a couple miles east of the rhumb line.
Parks praised Saunders for “doing 80 percent” of the work on the boat and described his partner as an “excellent sailor and highly competent navigator.”
“It was long and slow, but a tactically interesting race. We had some good and bad moments,” Parks said. “We learned some things about the boat along the way. Overall, we were really pleased with how it sailed and the speed that we had.”
Parks was presented with the prestigious C. Gaither Scott Trophy for Corinthian Spirit. That award, which is presented at the discretion of the Race and Event Committee, goes to a team or individual skipper that has demonstrated the spirit of Corinthian competition as promoted by Commodore C. Gaither Scott. The award is not always handed out and is named in memory of Past Commodore Scott who also served a term as the Race Committee Chairman.
Midshipman Sammy Mentel and his fellow members of the Naval Academy Varsity Offshore Sailing team made a bold decision upon approach to Block Island and it paid dividends as Defiance took first place in PHRF class.
Defiance was one of four Navy 44-footers in the 11-boat class and was in close contact with sister ship Tenacious while sailing fairly close to shore off Long Island. Mentel the tactician huddled with navigator Samantha Farley and executive officer Maddy Nienow to discuss the make or break decision about whether to go inside or outside of Block Island.
“Early Tuesday morning I took a long look at the tides and calculated that in correlation with our boat speed then talked it over with the team,” Mentel said.
As a group, the Defiance afterguard agreed there was a 30-minute window to catch a trailing current that would propel the Pedrick-designed 44-footer in the right direction.
“It was a little gamble betting on which side was going to pay. We decided to stay inside and Tenacious tacked outside. We picked up the wind first and that made a huge difference,” Nienow said. “We determined we could catch the current by a very small window and all other boats would be shut out from going west of Block Island. Thank goodness we were right.”
That critical decision resulted in Defiance crushing the other three Navy 44s with an elapsed time of 4 days, 5 hours, 49 minutes and 32 seconds and a corrected time of 4:08:53:26.
Tenacious, which at one point was in visual contact with Defiance, wound up crossing the finish line more than five hours later with Integrity and Gallant close behind.
“Our boat speed was the most important reason we did well. I think the focus we had throughout the race was outstanding. We were constantly checking the sails and trimming to the conditions,” said Mentel, who highlighted the good work of helmsmen Michael Grube, Nolan Stanfield and Will Green — all of whom just completed their plebe year at the academy.
Eliot Merrill was another skipper who came away a winner in his Annapolis to Newport debut, leading Arcadia to class honors in ORC Open 2. Merrill, like Gunther, is a veteran of the Newport-Bermuda and Marion-Bermuda races who was finally able to work A2N into the season schedule.
Primarily beating in light wind on the Chesapeake was not a strength for the Lyman-Morse 46-footer and Merrill admitted “we did not distinguish ourselves.” The Stonington, Connecticut resident said the crew worked hard to stay in touch with the other boats in ORC 2 then try to make up ground in more favorable conditions out in the Atlantic Ocean.
“We rounded the Chesapeake Tower last in our class and had a lot of work to do,” Merrill said. “Fortunately, we were mostly reaching in the ocean and it’s a great boat for those conditions. We were able to steadily grind back the competition out in the ocean.”
Haven Ladd served as navigator aboard Arcadia and took her almost 30 miles east of the rhumb line. Like all the other boats that went east, that strategy proved successful.
“We sailed pretty far east because we believed there would be better wind out there and that was certainly the case. We did a lot of gybing to stay in better breeze and that hard work paid off. I would call it educated luck. We were looking for wind and wound up looking in the right places,” Merrill said. “We also were really active about making sail changes. We were very focused on having the right sails up for the conditions. We did an awful lot of sail changes — probably about 30 in the ocean alone.”
Merrill, who has owned Arcadia for three years, earned his first class victory in an offshore race as skipper of his own boat. That was also the case for David Esseks, the ORC Performance Cruiser 2 winner.
Esseks and his close-knit crew of family and friends sailed Twiga, a J/109 to a very convincing victory in the class — beating runner-up Bay Retriever by more than seven hours on corrected time.
Twiga led the class out of the Chesapeake, but skipper Kevin Sherwood and his crew aboard Bay Retriever were close behind. However, the J/109 left the J/99 far behind in the Atlantic Ocean and crossed the finish line almost seven hours earlier.
“We worked very, very hard to keep the boat moving whenever it got really light. We were becalmed with no steerage at least four times, including three in the last 12 hours,” Esseks said.
This was the fourth time the New York City resident has competed in A2N aboard his own boat and by far the best result. Twiga in PHRF 2 in the 2019 edition then fourth out of nine entries in PHRF in 2021.
James Esseks was aboard as navigator and watch captain for his twin brother, while Will Esseks handled the foredeck for his father. Helmsman Marc Robert and headsail trimmer Clayton Gates completed the five-man crew.
“This is a relatively small, light boat for this class; open ocean is normally not our strong point, especially upwind,” said David Esseks, who credits a 145 percent genoa as being critical to the successful offshore passage. “That 145 jib gave us the power we needed in those conditions.
The previous best finish in an offshore race for the Twiga team was a third in class for the 2023 Marblehead-to-Halifax. “We’re very, very happy about the result. The boat did a great job and we hung on tight.”
As expected, Temptation/Oakcliff captured ORC 1 class on corrected time. The Judel/Vrolijk 66-footer skippered by Arthur Santry beat the Class 40 Velocity (Martin Roesch) by just over two hours after handicaps were factored.
Zig Zag skipper Andrew Clark earned the James Allsopp Memorial Seafarer Trophy for best combined performance in the 2025 Annapolis-to-Newport Race and the 2024 Newport-to-Bermuda Race.
Clark sailed the J/122 to a runner-up result in ORC 3 class for Annapolis-Newport, posting a corrected time that was just over a minute behind first place Zuul. Zig Zag was also runner-up in St. David's Lighthouse Division 4 for Newport-Bermuda.
It was somewhat fitting that host Annapolis Yacht Club came away with the award presented for the best performance of a three-boat team. Dark Storm, Velocity and Windborn secured the Yacht Club Challenge Trophy based on their combined results.
Velocity, a Class 40 skippered by Marty Roesch, was runner-up in ORC 1 class. Dark Storm, a J/121 skippered by Ken Comerford, placed second in ORC 2. Windborn, a J/120 skippered by Richard Born, took third in ORC 3.
A special shout out to the crew on Allegiant owned by Albert and Maryline Bossart. Maryline skippered the boat with a stellar crew and are the first all women’s team to complete the Annapolis to Newport Race. Albert aka Bert, was shore support prior to and upon completion of the race.
