After sweeping the VX One class in his boat Far Side in 2023 to finish with a massive 25-point lead over second place, John Porter is back in town ready to do it again. Porter (Savannah, GA) grew up sailing in the Charleston area with a bunch of buddies on Sunfish. "We were ten-year-old kids racing around with our moms freaking out! " Porter laughed.
Porter, who competed in three U.S. Olympic trials and is a two-time U.S. National, North American Champion and a four-time U.S. Sailing Team member heading into the 1996 Olympic Games, is still very much racing around, having enjoyed solid midwinter racing this past season on the VX One in Florida taking a lot of seconds.
"We have been figuring some stuff out," he said. "We felt really fast coming into the North Americans last year, but the NAs (sailed in Cleveland, OH) ended up with more chop and less wind than I had ever sailed in. It was a condition we weren't quite set up for, so we didn't have a good showing there, but we learned a lot and what we were doing wrong. We applied it and fixed the weak spots over the winter. I've been really happy with our speed, we're still a little rusty on tactics having just got back into racing in the last 2-3 years but we're in the hunt and as long as I am in the hunt I'm having fun!"
Porter took a hiatus from racing while raising a family, having sold his Melges 24 in 2001 when his son Collin was just one. A dedicated dad, Porter spent the best part of the past twenty years making sure his two boys (his second son is Nathan), learned how to shoot, sail, fish, hunt, play golf, like any other Georgia low country boy, Porter smiled. Collin took to sailing; Nathan took to shooting. Collin won the Cressy Trophy Regatta (a high school national championship) in the Laser in his senior year, while Nathan won national championship titles in the skeet.
"When you're a dad you're going to focus on getting them going and once our boys got off to college it was an opportunity for me to re explore my one design roots," Porter said. "I spent a number of years sailing the same events as Collin in the Laser, but I had already done the single-handed boats. I had been sailing sport boats in the late 90s after the Olympic trials and I wanted to get back to that. I looked at the J70 and the Melges 24, but the VX One was a great fit. We've been really enjoying sailing in the class, the people are great, the boat is probably the fastest on the water without being on a trapeze. It's just a fast controllable fun boat and fun class."
Porter added, "We have a simple rule in the class – you can't pay anyone to sail with you. It keeps everybody at grass roots and having fun. It's an easy boat – in five minutes I can take any sailor who has sailed before, throw them in the front of the boat and show them what they need to do to go around the track. It's hard to say that you can do that in almost any other boat."
In general, Porter sails the VX One the two-up, noting that as a "bigger guy", at 210-215 lb., he'll usually sail with another bigger person from 170-200 lb., for a total combined weight of around 400 to 420 lb.
"I think that is a really competitive weight for us. When we sail at that weight, for sure at 8-14 knots we are one of the boats to beat in terms of speed. I can still sail in the wrong direction but speed-wise we are great," he laughed.
Last year Porter sailed CRW with David Himmel, his Finn 1992 Olympic Trials training partner and as Porter noted, the conditions suited the pair well as they swept the field. This week he's excited to race with his son Collin, now 24.
"Charleston is a fantastic place to sail; we love Charleston and look forward to this week. It's been fun mixing it up among the fleet and we probably have ten or twelve at the top of the class…what's interesting is that you have a lot of people who go sail pro boats but then they come back to the VX just to have fun. I like to say that we get to sail with the pros, but we leave our wallet at home. My Canadian buddy Trevor (owner VX One Bro Safari) is really good, they were challenging us on the last day at CRW last year and I don't expect him to back off the gas pedal this year!"
