Canadians on fire

Terry McLaughlin's Defiant dominates Farr 40 Worlds in Paradise Island

It was another good day for Terry McLaughlin's Canadian team aboard Defiant, but the evening could prove tough in the protest room.

Defiant won the first and third of three races on this second day of the Rolex Farr 40 World Championships in Nassau. The team's two victories are threatened, however, by two protests involving incidents at the start.

In race three, the Race Committee has protested Flash Gordon, Helmut Jahn's Chicago entry, for fouling on the anchor line of its committee boat. A resulting chain of protests worked backward to Defiant, the alleged source of the problem. In race one, Crocodile Rock, owned by Californians Alex Geremia and Scott Harris, protested Defiant for barging at the start.

"The fleet is very aggressive," said Crocodile Rock's tactician Robbie Haines, an Olympic Gold medallist from San Diego, Calif. "Consistency and staying out of trouble is the key here." With finish positions of 12-10-2 today, Crocodile Rock rose from ninth to third overall in the ideal 20-25 knot breezes.

Also making huge gains today was Le Renard, skippered by Steve Phillips, when it posted finishes of 2-7-10 to move up from eighth to second place overall.

"As much as everyone wanted to win today, you just have to say that a second is fine," said tactician Mark Reynolds, explaining that Le Renard was winning today's first race up until the last quarter of the last downwind leg. It was then that Defiant caught them. "I've learned from experience that in this class you just need to be in the top ten every race." Under that premise, Reynolds, a Rolex Yachtsman of the Year and three-time Olympic medallist, is satisfied with Le Renard's two worse finishes for the day. "In both those races, we were much deeper at times and much better at other times."

Today's second race was won by Breeze, the Italian entry skippered by Vincenzo Onorato, who came straight to this championship after his team Mascalzone Latino was eliminated from the Louis Vuitton Challenger series. Breeze currently is in 13th.

Sailing through Saturday on the waters off Atlantis, Paradise Island are 25 teams representing eight nations.

Pos	Boat Name	Owner	R1	R2	R3	R4	R5	R6	Tot
1	DEFIANT	Terry McLaughlin	1	4	1	9	1		16
2	LE RENARD	Steve Phillips	17	2	2	7	10		38
3	CROCODILE ROCK	Alex Geremia / Scott Harris	11	9	12	10	2		44
4	SAMBA PA TI	John Kilroy	12	5	8	8	13		46
5	NERONE	Massimo Mezzaroma / Antonio Sodo Migliori	6	1	16	3	21		47
6	BARKING MAD	Jim Richardson	13	3	3	13	15		47
7	BOTTADICULO	Giovanni Arrivabene / Raffaele Mincione	2	10	7	4	26 dnf		49
8	GROOVEDERCI	John / Deneen Demourkas	8	19 p20	17	2	4		50
9	MORNING GLORY	Hasso Plattner	26 dsq	6	5	17	3		57
10	ASSEGAI	Leo Christianakis / Chris Hunt	7	16	22	5	8		58
11	PEGASUS	Philippe Kahn	19	8	20	6	6		59
12	BAMBAKOU	John Coumantaros	10	17	6	15	11		59
13	BREEZE	Vincenzo Onorato	5	11	23	1	20		60
14	JOSS	Owen Kratz	9	20	15	12	5		61
15	KATANGA	Robin Paterson	22	23	4	11	7		67
16	NORWEGIAN STEAM	Eivind Astrup	3	22	19	14	12		70
17	VIRAGO	Stuart Townsend	4	13	21	24	16		78
18	EMOTIONAL HOOLIGAN	Marcus Blackmore	14	19	9	16	23		81
19	GONE TOO FARR	Dave Carrel	15	12	18	18	18		81
20	KOKOMO	Lang Walker	18	15	14	22	14		83
21	NITEMARE	Tom Neill	21	7	13	23	22		86
22	SLED	Takashi Okura	23	21	10	25	9		88
23	HONOUR	Alek Krstajic	24	24	11	20	17		96
24	SOLUTION	John Thomson	16	18	24	19	19		96
25	FLASH GORDON 4	Helmut Jahn	20	25	25	21	24		115