JWA:  Congratulations on a great win at the J/80 North American Championship held during the 25th Block Island Race Week.  You had an impressively consistent week of racing, what do you think were the keys to your success last week?

We have had a long-standing focus on boatspeed and boathandling which we have seen improve dramatically in the last 24 months, but only recently as we started to establish more consistent participation from a tactician did we see the whole picture start to round out on the score sheet. You can look at boatspeed as your ‘offense’ and your boathandling as ‘defense’ while the tactics play out as having the right coaching. We put the whole package together for this event. Another team I would look to with that analogy would be Courageous where Aaron seems to have put together the right performance as a coach.

 JWA:  Racing on R80 is a “family affair.”  How important to your team’s racing success is that crew dynamic?  Does racing with friends and family make racing better or more challenging?

I’m a big believer in family racing. It’s how I grew up, and it is how most people are introduced to the sport. Our family relationship is more intense than most because my wife Marie and brother-in-law Thomas also work with me. I would attribute our family success in work to our ability to sail together. The dynamics are different for sure. Tony Rey gave us some of the best advice ever by saying families have this great non-verbal chemistry that can work, but it unravels fast if they can’t commit to ‘telling the truth’ about performance and errors. That means we have had to work hard at taking awkward discussions of performance and moving on with determination and not layering baggage on top of the communication process. In the end, it is rewarding winning any event with your best friends.

JWA: As a fellow competitor, I was really impressed with your ability to keep the boat moving quickly in the lumpy conditions.  I think our Thursday Night Racing clients would be very interested in hearing about how you set up the boat to keep going fast in the conditions that we experienced?

 We have evolved through a number of different rig configurations in the last 3 years, and I think we are finally landing on the right dynamics now in going full circle. That rig set-up is seriously important to generating the right feel in a boat that is notoriously neutral, but I would say that I do tend to perform better in lump than most drivers across many boats and here are the 3 reasons.

 JWA: Your team has a lot of experience racing.  Given that there are a variety of leadership and communications styles on race boats I am curious how you would describe the “work flow” onboard?  How are speed decisions, strategic decisions and tactical decisions made on the race course?

 Good question. As a family we have been trapped the last year in several events. I personally have most experience in fleet racing while Thomas and Marie are match racers by background, and that has left us in a ‘committee decision’ mode with me tied up on the helm where you can’t see everything. IN certain circumstances that has worked ok and it is how we won the 2011 NOOD event with a lot of talent in the fleet, but that was in our backyard and we just stayed out of trouble. The more intense the competitive scenario the more authoritarian the leadership dynamic gets with communication directed out of the tactician role. In our team, Marie has a spectacular eye for the wind and my ear is tuned to hear her voice for that input, and Thomas is talking about the boats over my shoulder in terms of speed, point and general fleet activity while I handle the activity under the boom.

JWA:  The old axiom reads that the race is often won before the start.  How long have you been preparing for this specific event, what sort of pre-event preparations do you think were important.

We consider ourselves eternal students in the sport, and this event is the beginning of a preparation cycle in many ways, but our actual preparation started over the winter as we were evaluating rig, sails, team and the right practice regimen moving into the event.

 JWA:  In an act of gratuitous self promotion, I have to ask…  How did you time working with J World Annapolis contribute to your success at the 2013 J/80 North American Championship?

J/World afforded me the opportunity to learn from some really great sailors back in the early 90’s most importantly the tireless J/World Annapolis owner Jahn Tihansky whose work ethic I still see as second to none, but it also offered me the opportunity to constantly reinforce my knowledge across a wide variety of activities along with refining my personal communication style that has become critical in my teambuilding in business and prior success as a tactician.

 JWA: What does the future hold for R/80?  Will we continue you to see you on Thursday Night’s?  Will you be making a run at repeating your title next year in Annapolis?  Can we expect to see you on the line for the J/80 World Championships in 2014?

 I think you will see us ramping up our participation in Annapolis events and continuing to see if we can encourage others to enjoy the J/80 class. The boat is an incredible sailing machine that is perfectly suited to the Annapolis conditions.