Honey Badger Wins The Day

After a struggle to set the line square to the shifting wind, the fleet got off two more races at the 2014 J/24 World Championship hosted by Sail Newport.

Travis Odenbach’s Honey Badger (USA) was the form boat of the day recording a third and a first to sit ninth overall.

Will Welles’ Cougar (USA) held the lead with a four, four respectively for a total score of 16 points. Mauricio Santa Cruz’s Bruschetta (BRA) maintained second place with a one, seven; and Greg Griffin’s Team Tarheel (USA) moved into third place with an eleven, eight. John Mollicone’s Team Helly Hanson (USA) had a strong day and moved into fourth place.

Teams battled in a two to four foot chop on the ocean course in wind speeds starting at 10 to 12 and building to 14 to 16 knots out of the east and southeast. The first race of the day was won by Santa Cruz, followed by Mollicone and then Travis Odenbach’s Honey Badger (USA). Odenbach won Wednesday’s second race, trailed by Alejo Rigoni Gonzalez on Luca vive (ARG) and Mike Ingham’s Nautalytics (USA).

Hosted by Sail Newport, racing continues for the 71 teams from 13 nations (Argentina, Barbados, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay and the United States) through Friday. Photos are available on the J/24 Class Facebook page, and complete results at http://www.yachtscoring.com/emenu.cfm?eID=982.