Charleston Race Week at Patriots Points Gets Off to A Rousing Start

Strong sea breeze enables organizers to get off multiple starts for all classes

Charleston/Mt. Pleasant, SC (2026 April 17) - by Bill Wagner. Patience was the name of the game on Friday as organizers of Charleston Race Week at Patriots Point sent the full fleet out on the water.

This year’s 30th anniversary regatta got underway on Thursday with the two classes competing in the ORC Sportboat North American Championships conducting a distance race. Those teams transitioned to windward-leeward racing on Friday and were joined by boats in 12 other classes as Charleston Race Week 2026 truly set sail.

Principal race officers on the three harbor courses had to wait for conditions to stabilize as a northwesterly wind was battling with the sea breeze. Circle 1 and 2 postponed for a while in the morning, while Circle 3 started a race that was abandoned.

Most of the classes completed one light air race before the sea breeze stabilized and provided strong, stable south-southwesterly winds that reached double digits.

“We were really excited to get going once the sea breeze filled in and brought really nice pressure,” said Luca Hynnek, skipper of ORC B entry Maggie. “It wound up being a really fun, exciting day on the water.”

ORC A and B both completed two races on a relatively short course as the Sportboat North American Championships reached the midway mark of its four-day event. Black Sheep, a J/80 skippered by Annapolis resident Mike Beasley, continued to set the pace in ORC B — winning both buoy races on Friday after topping the fleet in the distance race.

Maggie, a Farr 30 making its third appearance at Charleston Race Week, showed it was capable of contending by posting results of second and fourth on Friday. The Wisconsin entry trails Black Sheep by five points and leads Rattle-N-Rum by one point.

“We really crushed it today in terms of making decisions and everyone settled into their roles on the boat,” Hynnek said. “We learned lessons as the day went along and made adjustments.”

Hynnek hails from Bayfield, Wisconsin and races out of a satellite of Wayzata Yacht Club in Minnesota. He’s accustomed to handicap racing among boats with a wide range of ratings and said the ORC B spread here in Charleston has been tactically challenging.

“We spent time making sure we know how we want to shape the sails and I thought we had the right tune today,” Hynnek said. “We experimented with more headstay tension, which was advantageous today with the flat water and wind out of the south.”

There is only one point separating the top two boats in ORC 1 with Warrior Won and Tequila Mockingbird matching each other with results of first and second on Friday. A victory in Thursday’s distance race has the latter Cape 31 atop the overall standings, but the tight battle figures to continue over the weekend.

Warrior Won has a lower ORC rating and thus owes its sister ship time when handicaps are calculated. Skipper Joost-Olan Sheehan was pleased with his team’s performance on Friday.

“I think the boat and crew are really dialed in and we did a tremendous job of switching gears when the wind came up,” the Larchmont Yacht Club member said. “A lot of work and preparation have gone into this regatta and hopefully we’re peaking.”

Sheehan said the Warrior Won program learned a lot from competing at the Southernmost Regatta in Key West and has spent considerable time training in Charleston to improve.

“We have an incredible group of guys and the program as a whole is on an upward trajectory in terms of energy and focus level,” he said. “We’ve got to find a way to maintain the momentum going forward.”

North Sails professional Zeke Horowitz is calling tactics on Warrior Won and said strong starts and solid boathandling were key on Friday. There were times when the Cape 31 was hitting 20 knots of speed while planing downwind and simply maintaining control was paramount.

“It was very crowded short-course racing, so you’re just trying not to crash,” he said.

J/70 and Melges 24 — the two largest classes at Charleston Race Week with 31 and 24 entries, respectively — are loaded with talented teams featuring notable professionals.

Texas skipper Bruno Pasquinelli has done quite well in this regatta over the years, capturing consecutive J/70 championships in 2021-22 to go along with multiple other podium placements. The Dallas resident is off to another strong start after steering Stampede to a superb 1-5-2 score line in three races.

Competition is typically tight with just nine points separating the first and sixth place boats. Wicked, an Annapolis entry skippered by Arthur “Jib” Edwards, holds second place in the overall standings — three points astern of Stampede.

This marks the fifth time Edwards has competed in J/70 class at CRW and Friday marked by far his best performance as Wicked posted results of third, second and sixth.

“We were able to get clean lanes coming off the starting line and had good boat speed,” Edwards said. “We didn’t make any big mistakes or take any risks; just kept it conservative and stayed in phase.”

Danish professional Joachim Aschenbrenner, a veteran of the World Match Racing Tour, is calling tactics for Edwards. North Sails-Chesapeake pro Jeff Hayden and Canadian Drew Mitchell round out the Wicked team, which has benefitted from training against skipper Paul Green and the Progress program.

“Paul has really helped me up my game,” Edwards said. “It’s fun to be beating Progress early on, but we need to keep our heads down and not look at the results. We have to keep working and try our best to stay consistent.”

Reigning Rolex Yachtswoman of the Year Laura Grondin steered Dark Energy to second place in three races to take a narrow one-point lead in Melges 24 class. Tactician Lucas Calabrese put his skipper in good position in the light air race to open the day as well as when the wind piped up to 10-15 knots.

“We got in two great races in the afternoon when it was really cranking and we were planing,” Grondin said. “It was very puffy and shifty, which is challenging. I thought we did a good job of handling the up and down modes that we saw and mostly made good choices when gambling on the tide.”

Six of the nine boats racing in the PHRF Inshore class are J/7 daysailers and the relatively new design showed the flag well coming out of the gate. Skipper Henry Brauer got the gun in two races and took second in the other to pace the J/7 entries that are first through sixth in the standings.

Brauer is the current president of US Sailing and a former Tufts classmate of Bob Johnstone — founder of J/Boats and a National Sailing Hall of Fame inductee. Johnstone is also skippering one of the J/7 entries, which are sailing without spinnakers at CRW.

“Bob is trying to build the fleet down here in Charleston and I’m trying to help him with that effort,” Brauer said. “It’s a fun boat to sail and easy to handle. We were faster than the PHRF boats that were using spinnakers, which shows that these boats perform quite nicely.”

Veteran PRO Bruce Bingman gave the ORC Offshore class an action packed day with two windward-leeward races in medium breeze off Rattlesnake Shoals. A southerly that built to 10 knots allowed for a third race that sent the fleet of four boats around a turning mark to a finish inside Charleston Harbor. Skipper Matthew Schaedler of Toledo, Ohio led the J/122 Blitzkrieg to a strong 2-1-1 score line to take the early lead.

There are four classes doing pursuit racing under the PHRF rating system and there were double winners in each on Friday. Chance (Multihull, Corsair 750, Ben Walker), Quickdraw (Spinnaker A, J/111, Martin Zonnenberg), Dutch Wind (Spinnaker B, Hunter 40.5, Ed Thompson) and Callisto (Main & Jib, Hallberg Rassy 44, Deric Hetzel) all swept both races.

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