Stone Wins J/105 NAs

With a solid score line that featured a run of four straight bullets, San Francisco’s Bruce Stone and his crew on Power Play won the J/105 North Americans last weekend. Sailed on Western Long Island Sound and hosted by the American YC in Rye, New York, Thursday through Sunday, the 11-race, no-throwout regatta drew 29 boats and came down to the final race — one that almost ended badly for Stone’s team.

"Sunday was light and fluky which made for difficult starts for the last two races," he said. "In the final race we cut a little too closely to another boat and had to do a  720. We watched most of the fleet go by while we did our turns, and had to fight our way back from about 20th."

Up ahead, the eventual runner-up, James Rathbun’s Toronto-based Hey Jude, had more than enough boats between them to win the regatta, but Stone — who was racing a borrowed boat — and his team of East Coasters: Nicole Breault, Stuart Johnstone, Mark Lindquist and Dave Marshall, plus Bay Area bowman Bob Dearborn — clawed their way back to fourth to take the title. His win marks four straight wins in the regatta by St. Francis YC sailors, and five in seven years at four different venues. We’ll have more on Stone, his bi-coastal program — on the Bay, his Arbitrage is a fixture at top of J/105 Fleet One — and the effort his team put into preparing for the regatta in the December issue of Latitude 38.