Howie Hamlin, the best in the west

We speak to the man who has featured so often in the top results of big dinghy events this year

This year one man has featured time and again at the front of notoriously difficult fleets. He was first at the recent 18ft Skiff International Regatta in San Francisco, following a victory at the European regatta in Italy. He was also second at the 505 World Championship, finishing with a scoreline average of third and discarding a fifth. Finally, only recently, he won the International 14 US National Championship and is now preparing to sail the boat at their World Championship this week. The man we are talking about is, of course, Howie Hamlin.

Native to the West Coast of the United States Hamlin seems to do nothing to discourage the stereotype we may have of him. In fact when we call him up he says in a lazy voice we have just caught him about to “suit up and go surfing.” ‘Rad’ one might say.

Hamlin has long been associated with the 18ft Skiff and 505 classes. As previously mentioned he was second overall at the 505 World Championship this year in Hayling Island. This result was both a source of happiness and despair for the American - obviously he was pleased to take a podium position but while he and Mike Martin took the World title in 1999, this is the sixth time he has finished second at the event and this is presumably getting a little tiresome. “We have mixed emotions about the 505 Worlds I guess.Wwe sailed really, really well. Jeff Nelson and I had never sailed together before; he had been crewing for Mike Martin for a while but never with me. He was pretty much spot on and I thought we worked well together and I do not see how we were could have done much better,” Hamlin explains.

If the 505 World Championship was a disappointment Hamlin’s season in the 18ft Skiff has done much to decrease this. Hamlin has had a fantastic year in the 18s, winning both the European and American International regattas in Lake Garda and San Francisco respectively. In addition to this he was also sixth at the JJ Giltinan at the beginning of the year - all very impressive. “I just have a really good team on the 18. Mike [Martin] and I have been sailing together for ten years and Trent Barnabus is just the best forehand in the world. He is the strongest, fastest and most agile person I think I have ever come across,” he says of their phenomenal season.

Both the 18ft Skiff and the 505 are boats Hamlin has been sailing for a considerable amount of time so in many ways it is not surprising he has done so well in the classes this year. A boat Hamlin is new to, however, is the International 14. “This is my first season of sailing an International 14. The first time I ever sailed one was my new boat, launched in June. It was the week before we went to Lake Garda for the 18ft Skiff Europeans,” he confides.

Most new International 14s are one of two different shapes, the Bieker 5 or the Morrison 12. Hamlin’s new boat is a Bieker, not so surprising given designer Paul Bieker is another US west coaster. The basic shell of the boat was taken from moulds being used by Fred Eaton From Canada and were then moved onto Larry Tuttle in Santa Cruz, who assembled all the deck fittings and did the rest of the work on them.



Hamlin’s boat is not the only one to come out of the mould at this time - there are two other sister-ships. One of these boats will be going to Trevor Bayliss who started up the programme and the other will go to budding young talent Samuel (Shark) Khan. “Trevor [Bayliss] basically started the programme and we kind of grabbed onto him, then Shark wanted to join in too, so the three of us basically built sister-ships. But he was the one who had the idea of doing it. Trevor did all the hard work so we were definitely quite lucky being able to latch onto that,” explains Hamlin. The plan is to produce more boats from this combination of builders for the North American and global markets.

Impressively for a man who has literally only sailed the boat on and off over two months Hamlin went straight out and won the US National Championship by five points. Currently he is also leading the World Championships sailed out of Altimos Bay.

We asked if this instant success was a by-product of so many years racing the 18ft Skiff, not an entirely different breed of boat. “I think the past experience in the 18 could be more hindrance than help,” he states. “The two boats are quite a bit different. On the 18 for example during the gybe I have to delay, delay and delay to make sure the forward hand is practically on the opposite wing before we go through the gybe. In the 14 it is almost exactly the opposite. I have to go as fast as I can and make sure I get to the opposite wing as quickly as possible.” Although Hamlin does take this view he notes that it is likely he notices the differences more than the similarities and he suspects many years of 18 sailing have helped in some areas.



Although still getting to grips with the new boat, Hamlin is clearly very happy with the performance of his new, smaller-than-usual, skiff. “Oh they are fantastic, I mean really, really good. They do not give you perhaps the same ultimate ride feeling that you get form the 18 but for the convenience of something you can sail much easier and with two people they are really fun,” he says. “They are really loose and lively and they surf and plane easier down waves so you can push harder downwind. A lot of sailing them well is about technique and they are really hard to sail. They’re really tippy and are really hard to do good tacks and gybes in.”

While he has found some of the boat-handling to be tricky Hamlin says he has enjoyed and embraced this new challenge. “On the 18 the third guy is always there and he is pretty much dedicated to balancing the boat. Of course on the 14 you do not have that third guy there so it makes the boat much harder to get used to in many respects.” Along with the lack of a third crewman there is also the T-foil rudder system to get used to. This is something the 18ft Skiffs do not have and adds another different dimension to the International 14.

Sailing the 14 and getting used to its quirks does have some drawbacks. As Hamlin has mentioned it requires a slightly different approach to the 18ft Skiff and his getting used to the boat in the build up to this event has been evident out on the water. “In San Fran [at the 18ft Skiff International Regatta] we put the boat in the drink because I had mostly been sailing the 14. I rushed the gybe and did not give the crew enough time to get across. All of a sudden we were swimming. So the boats are different and it takes a while to adapt to each one no matter what you are used to,” he explains.

Like the 505 and the 18ft Skiff the International 14 is not a class Hamlin intends to dedicate all of his sailing to – he will continue to campaign actively in the 18 and 505. . ”I think it is a class I would like to spend at least a bit more time in. Like I said I find it a really fun new challenge and I definitely prefer trapezing to hiking. I am still obviously very dedicated to the 505 and the 18, but the 14 fits in as a really nice boat to sail as well as these two. It is pretty much between them in terms of its performance and the way you sail it.”

When we spoke to Hamlin the International 14 World Championship was just about to begin. Following a victory at the American National Championship many people would be confident going into this event, but he said he was unsure of how he would finish up in the overall scores. “Well of course the aim is always to go out there and win, so that is what we’ll be trying to do. We will go out there and give it the best we can and then see what happens,” he said.

Part of the reason Hamlin may have been uncertain about his potential for the event is the boat’s International flavour. Before the start of the World Championship he had yet to sail against any European teams or, for that matter, any of the other nations represented. Given how competitive the class and specifically this World Championship is, with seven previous World Champions attending, this hesitancy is justified even for a man as well know in sailing circles as Hamlin. Even so he is currently leading the event after two days and seems to be getting to grips with the class well. Could this be another notch on the Hamlin bowsprit? We will have to wait and see.