Peter and Doug Morgan�s STEEL AWAY III blasting away from a windward offset mark in the Marblehead NOOD.
Tim Wilkes photo.
Damian Emery, sailing ECLIPSE, dominated at the J/105 East Coast Championship that was sailed during the first part of the biennial New York Yacht Club Race Week at Newport. Sailing in an extremely competitive 20-boat fleet, Emery beat the second place boat, KINCSEM, another UK-Halsey customer, by 14 points after six races. Emery is now the 2010 J/105 East Coast Champion, a title he also won in 2008.
After switching from a long-term relationship with another sailmaker for his main and jib, Emery had speed beyond compare, winning four of the six races. Several years ago he came to UK-Halsey for his spinnakers because his competitors with UK-Halsey chutes were so much faster downwind. Now he has completed the switch and there is obviously no stopping him.
Class 3 � J/105 (20 boats)
1. ECLIPSE, Damian Emery, Shoreham, N.Y., 1-1-4-1-3-1, 11 points
2. KINCSEM, Joerg Esdorn, Katonah, N.Y., 6-2-1-4-5-7, 25
3. SAVASANA, Brian Keane, Weston, Mass., 3-3-5-12-1-5, 29
Less than a week later, the father and son team of Peter and Doug Morgan, sailing STEEL AWAY III (pictured above), won the 22-boat J/105 class at the Marblehead NOOD regatta. This was the fifth time in six years the Morgans have taken the title. �With our new UK main and jib we definitely had speed which meant that we didn�t have to take chances. We could sail clean and conservatively in the fluky conditions,� said Doug Morgan. �Upwind and downwind we are consistently able to hold lanes and then pull away.�
Last year, the only year in the last six that STEEL AWAY III did not win the NOOD, the Morgan�s experimented with some non-UK-Halsey sails, but they came back. Now that both Damian Emery�s ECLIPSE and STEEL AWAY III have won the last two big class events, Doug says more boat owners are coming up to talk to him about his sails. �Kerry [Klingler] has been really helpful over the years answering our questions and developing the tuning guide,� said Morgan. �Our downwind speed has always been superior; our next sail will be a new spinnaker.� STEEL AWAY III won the NOOD with a four-year-old chute, which is practically ancient in an active one-design class.
Doug says they are working hard to get ready for the 2011 J/105 North Americans, which will be in Marblehead a year from now.
1 STEEL AWAY III, Peter+Doug Morgan, 1-3-(8)-2 �2, 8 points
2 ALLEGRO SIMPLICITA, Fred DeNapoli, (6)-2 -3-5-5, 15
3 CIRCE�S CUP, Kevin Colcord, 8-5-2-(13)-1, 16
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