A shining star in the Finn constellation, Zach Railey, who won Silver for the U.S. at the Olympics this summer, was kind enough to take the time to talk to us before racing on Saturday in the Finn Nationals, hosted by St. Francis YC on the Cityfront. Zach went into Saturday in second place, behind Dan Slater on NZL 1, Pegasus 01.

Zach thought the breeze on Saturday would be challenging for him, as his weight is still down 25 pounds from what he lost for the summer Olympics in Qingdao, where the winds were so light. Indeed, although he is quite tall, he appears to be more slender than is ideal for a Finn sailor. The Finn is the ‘heavyweight dinghy’ of the Olympic sailing classes.

“I lost about 35-40 pounds for the Olympics just to get ready for it. A lot of the guys dropped weight though. It was across the board.” 

NCS: The last day you guys had a lot of wind...

“We set up for the windy conditions - a lot flatter sail than I usually sailed with to compensate for the weight loss. It was a great trip. I’m glad to be home. This is the first U.S. event I’ve been able to do since the trials last October. We spent so much time internationally, training over there. It’s nice to come home and especially here at the St. Francis. It’s one of the best places to sail in the world.”

Although not from the Bay Area, Zach is a member of St. Francis YC.

“I live in Clearwater, FL, just outside Tampa, born and raised there. It’s where I started sailing. I was really honored to be asked to come over here. It’s a prestigious club with a lot of history, and I was honored to become part of that and hopefully I represented everybody well over there. I hope to do it again in 2012. London should be great. It’ll be a little windier than China, so I’m not going to have to worry about the weight thing. I’ll have to put the weight back on, so that’ll be nice - I won’t have to worry about what I’m eating.”

After finishing up with school next week Zach says, “I’ll be getting ready for the Miami OCR Regatta at the end of January, That’s the major qualifier for the 2009 team - the next big step. One of the hardest things about this sport is that you have to re-qualify every year. This is a nice laid-back regatta, and it’s nice to have those every once in a while.”

The Sailing Instructions said the start on Saturday would be at 1000 hours, so we wondered why everyone was hanging around so casually, not even launching their boats yet. One sailor explained that the race organizers paid attention to the weather forecast, which didn’t call for the fog to come in and the wind to come up the way it did. (They’d had to postpone the start on Friday until noon due to lack of wind, and only got in two out of three races.) So the first start on Saturday was rescheduled for 1130. And look what happens, the fog comes in, the wind comes up, plenty of it at 1000. But at 1000 the fog was dense enough that a dinghy sailor could get lost in it, and by 1130 the sun had come out.

The wind stayed in the teens for three races on Saturday. Just as the Finns came in, the wind built, capsizing one, who turtled and had a time of it to get back on his feet, while his comrades stood by and helped as much as they could. We caught up with Zach again after the Finns got back.

NCS: You were pretty far back in the second race, then back in front of the fleet in the third race. What happened?

Zach: “The second race today I got stuck on the pin end of the race committee, and I had to take my rudder off to get unstuck. I started about five minutes behind everybody. I thought the current was going to push me in, and I just got a little too close and got hung up on the boat. So I’ll use that for my throw-out race. I got 2 and 2 in the other races, so that was fine. I’m pretty happy. Once I get the weight back on I’ll be able to go a little faster upwind.”

NCS: Do you need to be heavy or light for Miami?

Zach: “I’m going to be about 20 or so pounds heavier than I am right now. I’m at about 195 pounds, which is way too light when the breeze picks up like it did.”

Zach ended the regatta in third place. Although this was the ‘Finn Nationals’, the top two finishers were from other countries: Dan Slater sailed NZL 1, and Richard Clarke sailed CAN 303, both under the banner of Pegasus Racing (Philippe Kahn himself finished 26th out of 33 boats). Darrell Peck and Andy Casey rounded out the top five.

Local Finn sailor Forrest Gay commented on the difficulty Saturday of sailing amidst so many other fleets, all of them bigger boats than the Finns. “There were a lot of different kinds of boats out there. We had 33 boats that were all the same, so it was important that the other boats play by the rules. A couple of times the big woodies were in the way, and if they tack on you, you lose 5 or 6 boats. That's hard on you.” For more on the multiple events taking place on the same race area, see our next story, Crowded Cityfront.

Despite the crowds of other racers, Forrest said, “I had a much better day than on Friday, It was getting better and better as the wind picked up. I passed a lot of boats and made my way up to sixth in the last race.” Forrest finished the regatta in tenth place.

For complete results of the Finn Nationals, see the St. Francis YC site at www.stfyc.com. For more on the Finn racing, see www.nafinnclass.org.