BRIAN JANNEY: A MONTH IN THE LIFE OF A NORTH SAILS EXPERT
BRIAN JANNEY: A MONTH IN THE LIFE OF A NORTH SAILS EXPERT
Here, There and Everywhere
Most offshore sailors consider it a successful summer if they fit in one major distance race—especially if they make it onto the podium. In July, Brian Janney, North Sails San Diego, managed to cram three major victories into one month—and all without losing his sense of humor. First, the sought-after trimmer and North Sails expert helped Pyewacket 70win line honors in the Pacific Cup. Only a few days later, he was onboard Bill McKinley’s Denali3 when they won their class in the Bayview-Mackinac Race. Less than a week after that, Janney helped Denali3 win her class in the Chicago-Mackinac Race.“It all started with a week of training in San Francisco before the Pacific Cup,” Janney explains, shortly after returning home from his 30-day offshore trifecta. “I've been working with Pyewacket for a long time, and we did Transpac in five and a half days last year.” They also set a 24 hour record. “And Pac Cup is a shorter race than Transpac, mileage-wise...”
Pacific Cup Line Honors
Predicting their finish time in the Pac Cup became crucial when Bill McKinley asked Janney if he could make it to the Great Lakes in time for the two races to Mackinac. “I knew it was going to be tight, with only a two or three day window for travel. But I said yes. I was hoping I could maybe get 24-48 hours in Hawaii—maybe even get my feet wet. Turns out that was wishful thinking.” Instead, thanks to a “weird weather system in the Pacific,” Pyewacket’s line honors victory took a full six days shutting the door on any R&R in Hawaii. “The Denali3 team said they were watching the tracker like crazy.” he laughs.Only a few hours after the finish in Hawaii, Janney jumped a redeye back to San Diego. “I guess I was really tired, because I fell asleep before takeoff and didn’t wake up until we were actually landing. ” But he gathered his bags and headed home, where he had just enough time to repack. “I had to take all the Pyewacket gear out, put the Denali3 gear in, go back to the airport, fly all day to Detroit.” After an hour’s drive to Port Huron, he fell into a hotel bed at 2am. “And then we started the Port Huron to Mac race at 1pm that same day. My body didn't know what timezone it was in!”
Bayview-Mac: Class Victory
The Denali3 crew was obviously happy—and a little surprised— that he made it in time, Janney continues, adding that he felt a little bad about his lack of preparation. “I was one of the watch captains and helped with tactics, but I didn't have time to wrap my head around the weather and make a solid plan. Fortunately it was a light air race, so nothing too crazy. We never actually saw the wind speed drop to zero, but we sure did get close a couple times.”The 280 mile race took the Ker 46+ 48 hours to complete. “We were definitely the small boat, in the same class with all the TP52s and Great Lakes 70s. When we won, the owner was pretty happy.” But they had barely tied up to the Mackinac dock before it was time to head offshore once again. “I said I’d help deliver the boat down to Chicago” in time for the next weekend’s race, Janney explains, because there wasn’t enough time to fly back to San Diego. “And as soon as we got to the island, the boat captain says, ‘Hey, there's weather coming in. If we don't leave right now, we're gonna get our teeth kicked in’. So we didn’t even get a shower or a proper meal, just took off. By that point, I was pretty much eight days straight on a boat. And it's another two days down to Chicago.”
Chicago Mac: Storm watch
Janney did finally get two nights sleep in a Chicago hotel room, before starting the Chicago-Mackinac Race. “The boat captain for Denali3 does a really nice job, and the boat was totally sorted out,” so he focused on weather homework. “It was a pretty bad forecast,”he admits, “and it actually came true. Chris Bedford predicted hours of thunderstorms overnight, and he was very honest with us; the models had a hard time resolving how much wind there was going to be, or from what direction.” Based on what they knew, the team decided to head north as fast as they could after the start—even though the heading to Mackinac was northeast. “We basically went up the west coast of Lake Michigan.”Despite this plan, they couldn’t escape the bad weather that night. “The storm ended up being about 200 miles north to south, and Lake Michigan is 300 miles long, so it pretty much covered the entire race area. We got hit pretty hard. I saw the wind speed hit 38, and it may have been higher; there was so much rain and the drops hurt, making it hard to look at the instruments.” For more than two hours of constant thunderstorm cells, Denali’s navigator watched the radar and counted down to each one for the team. “There really wasn't an opportunity to dodge them,” Janney says. ”We had talked prerace about taking all our sails down - covered every scenario, just in case - because we knew it could be anything.” But they were able to keep up a reefed main and J4, while focusing on safety and trying to minimize the chance of damage. Less than a week after their previous win to Mackinac, they again saved their time on the bigger boats in their class and also finished second in their division. This time, Janney was able to stay a few days and enjoy the island and several nice crew dinners, before flying home for a well-deserved rest.
Inventory Refinements
Though he’s still trying to recover from jetlag and numerous freeze-dried meals, Janney’s really excited about the refinements they made to each boat’s race-winning sail inventory. Pyewacket has a triple-headsail setup, and on last year’s Transpac they’d discovered that the Helix A3 increased VMG by about seven percent compared to the A2, because it was flatter and more forgiving to steer to in ocean waves. This year, they rigged an aft outrigger near the steering wheel and used that to pole out a big masthead genoa they call the MH0, short for Mast Head Zero. An even flatter sail than the A3, it turned out to be another six percent faster. “There’s a negative hit on the rating for the outrigger, but we got credit for being non-spinnaker. I think if we were to do another Transpac, we would keep this setup.” Pyewacket only had one other new sail for the race, an offshore spinnaker staysail. “Putting that sail up allowed us to use our genoa staysail as the third sail,” Janney says, adding, “On these bigger boats, sails last a long time.”Denali3 has a new Helix J1 this year that was perfect for the light-air Bayview-Mac. “Bill keeps his inventory quite fresh,” Janney says, with many new Helix sails. “Using a Helix upwind sail helps it cover a higher wind range. We left the J2 on the dock.”For the heavier air Chicago-Mac, before and after the big storm, Denali3 carried what Janney calls an A2 plus. “We've learned that for offshore sprit boats, an A4 is too big and round and it gets hard to drive. The A2 plus is flatter in the head with a straighter luff curve, which makes the sail more twisty. When you're planing in bigger breeze, you can steer the boat and the kite doesn't want to collapse. It’s definitely a more forgiving sail, and we make it out of heavier cloth so it will carry up the wind range.”
No trouble
Back home again, Janney is settling back into “normal” life and already looking forward to some local racing—and this year’s Big Boat Series. He’s also been enjoying the compliments he’s received from both clients and fellow offshore experts. “I got a text message from Ken Read saying ‘nice work!’,” he says, before adding with a laugh, “So I don’t think I’m in too much trouble, even though I was away so long.”
Ellie Driver first competed in the Rolex Fastnet course in 2019, 18 years old and fresh from a 420 campaign – a multiday offshore race was a very different concept. She knew she could drive a boat around a race course fast, but could she drive her Sunfast 3300 fast in one of the world’s most famous offshore races for four-plus days non-stop?
Since her first Rolex Fastnet, Ellie has chalked up an impressive victory list, including;
⭐ Women’s EUROSAF Double-Handed Offshore European Champion (2023)
⭐ Vice Mixed Double-Handed World Sailing Offshore World Champion (2023)
⭐ Yachts & Yachting ‘Sailor of the Year’ (2022)
⭐ Youngest Skipper to Compete in the SEVENSTAR Round Britain and Ireland Race (2022)
⭐ Second Place in Défi Paprec (2024)
Ellie Driver
Ellie raced the Rolex Fastnet again in 2023 double-handed with her father, an 8 times race veteran at that point. Ellie will admit that in her first Rolex Fastnet, “she sailed the course”—soaking up all the hard-won knowledge her father had to give her. In 2023, they were back, and this time, Ellie said she “raced the course, even with the full-on weather”, finishing 10th Double Handed Boat and Ellie the 2nd Female Skipper and the 2nd Youth Skipper overall.
The 2023 Rolex Fastnet start was brutal, with the fleet setting off from the Solent into a south-westerly gale. And conditions didn’t improve greatly, with Ellie and her father experiencing “sailing through three squalls and a shutdown—it was 4 days of misery”. But Ellie and Jim didn’t retire, and that experience informs her five top tips to teams competing in this year’s 2025 Rolex Fastnet Race: “aside from a catastrophic boat failure, boats need to retire because either the boat or the crew is not ready to tackle the conditions.
ELLIE’S FIVE TOP TIPS
Don’t delay any maintenance job on your boat; start now. Get all the servicing done. Work bow to stern, replacing anything that is showing signs of wear. Do this now, and then do it again in the month prior to the race. I’m constantly checking my boat over, ensuring nothing avoidable will fail during the race.
Plan your spares; based on your inspections over these 4 months, if one area shows deterioration quicker than expected, carry those spares.
It is just as important to build personal fitness as well as maintaining your boat. The stronger you are, the less likely you are to injure yourself and the more energy you’ll have throughout the race. Crucially, it means that you’ll also approach every task with 100% of your strength – making manoeuvres faster – minimizing chances of damage to the boat, lost or torn sails, and fewer personal injuries as tasks in dicey conditions are completed faster. Get swimming, get running, get to the gym – prioritize the fitness of the whole crew in this build-up phase.
Pre-race watch planning: absolutely vital when racing double-handed but also essential with larger crews with varying capabilities. 7-days out from the race, start looking at the course, look at the weather fronts coming through, and align your watch plan to these. Start planning when it will be calmer so the crew can rest, when it will be all hands on deck, and when you’ll need the more experienced drivers on the helm. Keep reviewing the plan alongside the weather updates up until the race start.
My last tip: sing! Despite the best planning, there will be moments when you’re exhausted but need to keep pushing – it’s at these moments my Dad and I sing to keep us awake and morale up. ABBA tunes are a boat favorite!
Following Ellie’s advice to ensure crews who are entered into this year’s Rolex Fastnet Race are adequately prepared, we caught up with Steve Coles, Royal Ocean Racing Club Race Manager.
Steve Coles, Royal Ocean Racing Club Race Manager.
We asked him what the boats with their race places confirmed should be prioritising over the next four months, and he advised:
APRIL
Make sure that the boat details on your entry are correct; you can start to add crew to your crew locker on www.sailracehq.com. Your crew will need an account to fill in all of their details. Add your t-shirt size!
Submit your mileage proposal. At least 50% of the boat’s crew (but not less than 2), including the person in charge, must have completed 300 nautical miles of RORC offshore racing on the boat entered into the race. The qualifying miles must be completed within 12 months prior to the start of the Rolex Fastnet Race.
We will accept mileage qualification proposals from races other than RORC races, but typically, they should be at least 150 miles and include one night at sea. Races can be combined to get to the 300-mile requirement.
The RFR is a Category 2 race; you must complete your checklist on the entry portal and complete the Category 3 checklist before the system will let you complete Category 2. Boats may be inspected for OSR compliance before the race starts.
MAY
Check whether you need a plan review - A monohull with a series date after 2009 of less than 24 m (78’-9”) LH shall have been designed, built, and maintained in accordance with the requirements of ISO 12215 Category A and have a World Sailing/ISAF building plan review certificate issued from an organization recognized by World Sailing.
Order your tracker; trackers are mandatory for the RFR and all RORC races. A subsidy is available upon application to racing@rorc.org.
JUNE
If you have completed your mileage qualification, please let RORC know now
Training—the days are getting longer; use the long daylight days as perfect training days
JULY
Submit the final crew onto the race portal.
All non-UK boats will need to complete the C1331 form before arriving, which can be done online here: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/submit-a-pleasure-craft-report#submit-your-report-online.
Ensure the rating is applied for; the deadline is the 4th of July.
Read through Sailing Instructions!
Order your Customised Team Gear for the 2025 Rolex Fastnet Race Today
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Most offshore sailors consider it a successful summer if they fit in one major distance race—especially if they make it onto the podium. In July, Brian Janney, North Sails San Diego, managed to cram three major victories into one month—and all without losing his sense of humor. First, the sought-after trimmer and North Sails expert helped Pyewacket 70 win line honors in the Pacific Cup. Only a few days later, he was onboard Bill McKinley’s Denali3 when they won their class in the Bayview-Mackinac Race. Less than a week after that, Janney helped Denali3 win her class in the Chicago-Mackinac Race.
“It all started with a week of training in San Francisco before the Pacific Cup,” Janney explains, shortly after returning home from his 30-day offshore trifecta. “I've been working with Pyewacket for a long time, and we did Transpac in five and a half days last year.” They also set a 24 hour record. “And Pac Cup is a shorter race than Transpac, mileage-wise...”
