A few days ago British SB3 sailor Jerry Hill, along with his crew Joe Llewellyn and Grant Rollerson pulled off a spectacular victory on Lake Garda ahead of a hundred plus fleet, to be crowned 2010 Volvo SB3 World Champions. Offshore Rules sat down with Jerry immediately on his return to the UK, to find out exactly how his World Championship win had fallen into place.

We started by asking about Jerry’s competitive sailing background. ‘I was brought up sailing in West Mersea on the east coast of England. I did kids sailing there and although I had a 420 for a while, for some reason I never got involved in the RYA Youth Squad programme. The first time I started to take it seriously was when I went to University at Bristol and I got involved in Team Racing. I was in the same generation as Ado Stead and Steve Tylecote and we had a pretty good team for a few years. After university I got into International 14 sailing. I helmed my own boat for a while and then also crewed for Jonathan Pudney a bit, with some successes. Then I got the chance to do some Ultra 30 sailing with Russell Peters. I was the ‘vang man’ on DBS for three years and learned a lot from the way Russell sailed the boat and got to meet and sail with some very good sailors. When I look back on that circuit I remember just how much fun it was. It was pretty high profile with fantastic boats and sixty or so people travelling to some great venues around the UK. There may have been exceptions but predominantly it was an amateur circuit. I don’t think a setup like that could exist today to be honest. Nowadays too many people get paid and it just wouldn’t be able to fund itself in the way it did then.’

Following the demise of the Ultra circuit and after some time spent campaigning 1720’s and B14’s, Jerry got wind that Laser was about to launch the SB3. ‘It was immediately a boat which appealed to me. I enjoyed the small keelboat side of things and this came along which was affordable and one-design and attracted dinghy sailors to come and sail with you. It was a no-brainer really and I haven’t looked back since.’

When he bought into the class so early, did he have any idea it would grow to such a size as the international fleet we see today? ‘No not really. The best we hoped for was that it would have a strong domestic presence like the 1720 had and maybe sell sixty or seventy boats. I think one of the key factors in the success of this class was the Volkswagen sponsorship which just had a massive effect and enabled us to have a couple of Cowes Weeks with a hundred or so boats and gave us a profile we could never have been able to afford otherwise. The other factor has been the interest in the boat internationally. The first two Worlds we have had were pretty much just English and Irish competitors but this year in Garda we had sixteen nations competing.’

Although Jerry had already won a couple of UK National Championships and had finished fifth and sixth in the two previous World Championships in Dublin and Cascais respectively, he says that in the weeks leading up to the event he had personally harboured doubts about his potential for victory. ‘We hadn’t been that good this year so far. Based on other years, we regarded ourselves as one of the top boats, but the results hadn’t really reflected that so much. I actually sent an email to the Joe and Grant suggesting we might need to revise our expectations downward a bit. Fortunately they both quickly came back and said that they still believed that we could win the event. Their point was that if we go there thinking that tenth is good enough then we would likely end up struggling to get in the top fifteen.’

Jerry believes that a major element in their victory was making the effort to compete at the Italian National Championship, three weeks earlier at the same venue. ‘Making the commitment to do the Italian Nationals was absolutely key to doing well at the Worlds. That event was on the Torbole side of the Lake and I hadn’t raced there for a long time since my B14 days. All I could remember from then was that it was as one track a racecourse as the Riva side. Then, we always went left and got the lift around ‘Lucky Point’. After we had done the Italian Nationals it became clear that the right could actually pay quite often. The trick of course was to work out when to go left and when to go right. Sailing there before the Worlds gave us the chance to try to work it out. We talked amongst ourselves, we spoke to the other sailors and we watched what the good local Italian guys did. It gave us the chance to experiment a bit and effectively put us a whole week ahead of many other teams because we made all our mistakes then, rather than at the main event.’

At the World Championship itself Jerry, Joe and Grant apparently had no qualms over the superstition about winning the practice race. ‘Well we put that one to bed well and truly. We were pleased to feel fast straight away and we got a chance to try out some of our theories about the left and right options on the Torbole side.’ Although much of their wind theory had come from their own personal observations, these were also confirmed by a copy of Stuart Walker’s ‘Winning Winds’ which Joe had retrieved from his bookshelf collection a week after the Italian Championship. Jerry explains ‘This is a book written in the 1970’s which describes exactly how the unique wind phenomenon works on the Torbole side of Lake Garda. We had studied it and suddenly it all made sense. This gave us the confidence to go out and depending on what we saw, decide on a clear strategy when we raced on the Torbole side.’ Jerry is now more than happy to reveal this source of vital information, however during the championship a little disinformation was spread. ‘Yes. Joe started a rumour that I was getting secret wind information from one of the local sailing club barmen. I got several people wandering up to me and quietly asking me to point out exactly which barman was the wind guru who could tell you how to go up the first beat.’

With the fleet split in two for the first day of Gold and Silver fleet qualification and despite being allocated to the perceived ‘tough’ group, Jerry and the boys clocked up a satisfying 3,5,1 score for the day. ‘Pretty happy obviously with that. We were racing on the Riva side and it behaved exactly the same as ever. Just head for the cliffs upwind and down. The only tactical decision was that the PRO, in an effort to negate the lure of the cliffs, had set considerable start line bias to the other end i.e. the pin. So the choice was either take the bias and try to get across early, or ignore the bias, start at the RC boat and then immediately tack to make sure you are one of the first ones to the cliffs. We made the decision to do the latter as there was actually lots of space up there as most people generally chose to take the bias. Our theory was that if we got away cleanly at the boat end and tacked, by the time we got to the short tacking up the cliffs, we would be in the top seven or eight. That’s pretty much how it worked out too.’

So what about strategies downwind on Garda? ‘Well on the Riva side, you don’t want to be going anywhere except back to the cliffs, so you need to have some sort of strategy for an effective gybe set at the spreader mark. Having an 18 foot skiff sailor like Grant on the boat helped, as he introduced a couple of techniques which we had never thought to try before. Like doing a partial windward hoist on starboard as you approach the spreader before gybing and completing the hoist. We had practiced it and it worked well as we were able to get quickly back towards the cliffs in the high lane. Anyone who dropped to leeward was dead and just got rolled mercilessly.’

Lying second now to consecutive double SB3 World Champion and fellow Brit, Craig Burlton, on the second day of qualifying, Jerry and his crew followed up with a 4,1,11 on the Torbole course. ‘Although the eleven was a bit disappointing, we knew we could discard one race from the qualification series, so we knew we were still very much on track. That put us in third at the end of the qualifying, as Rodion Luca had turned in a good score to get past us into second.’

Jerry says the next day’s sailing back over on the Torbole side was absolutely key. ‘It was the first day of the Gold Fleet racing and this is when you know people are going to start making their moves. The wind was at 200 degrees so we knew the right was going to pay. We started at the boat, were the first ones to tack and bang out right. Eventually the breeze went to 210, then suddenly 235, so we tacked almost on the starboard layline, with what turns out to be a hundred yard lead. I found out later that Craig had gone up the shore side and as he was trying to get back out he reckoned we were so far in front he couldn’t tell if we were an SB3 or a Flying 15.’

Having won that race comfortably they repeated the strategy in the second race of the day and bulleted that one too. By now people were beginning to cotton on to their ‘committee boat and tack strategy’, so the starboard end was beginning to get crowded on the start of race three. ‘That race was a bit of a nightmare’ Jerry recalls. ‘We were on a third Black Flag attempt and decided to hang back a little, to try to find a clear lane to get into after the gun. As it happened there was a massive raft up and we got totally locked out, still waiting thirty seconds after the gun. We actually managed to get back to about sixteenth by the top mark, but we then made a catastrophic error downwind. Because it was later in the day, the thermal was getting less stable and some of the standard rules didn’t apply anymore. What we should have done was stay with the pack, but we chose to split, got it completely wrong and were dumped down the fleet.’ Although things were far from calamitous at the end of the day, Jerry says they were now painfully aware that their discards were used up and every race would have to count for the rest of the regatta. ‘Happily for us, with five races still to go, the main contenders like Craig, Rodion and the South African Ian Ainslie had also all used up their discards, so were under similar pressure.’

At the start of day four, that pressure was now intense, with any one of seven or more teams still mathematically capable of winning the title. For Jerry the first race of the day saw then encounter either a stroke of bad or good fortune, depending how you view these things. ‘It was pretty windy, over twenty knots and we were coming down the last run with Craig and Rodion right next to us. We were on a pretty hot layline, so right on the edge of broaching, when the tiller extension comes off in my hand. The boat immediately went into a massive spin-out and flicked me over the side. Then, as I am hanging on the backstay, I see the tiller extension floating in the water and make a grab for it. We managed to reattach it and get to the finish without losing very many boats. Thankfully I had managed to retrieve it otherwise it would have been game over for that race and probably the next one too. So bad luck and good luck, wrapped into one.’ Clearly undeterred by the first race incident, Jerry and his crew then chalked up a 1,2 in the subsequent two races, which left them at the top the leaderboard at the end of the penultimate day of the championship, by four points from Craig Burlton.

So how did they deal with the pressure of leading the World Championship on the eve of the final day? ‘Well you are there to be shot at. We had a quiet meal and went to bed by ten. I did get a couple of texts from Craig claiming he was on his way to the nightclub and inviting me to join him. I of course replied that I was too busy at the local rave party, but that he should stay until the end and enjoy himself.’

With the scores still as tight as ever at the top going into the two-race final day, Jerry says that their strategy was very much to keep on doing what they had been doing up to that point. ‘To be fair, I was pretty nervous. Lots of people came up and wished me good luck but apparently half of England expected me to choke on the last day. The truth was there were still eight boats that could win it, we had used our discard and it was very much looking like it was going to be a tricky last day with the weather. We would have been delighted to get out there and have twenty-five knots pumping, but it was thunder stormy and it clearly just wasn’t going to be classic Ora conditions. All in all, a day when it would be easy to make it hard for yourself.’ Jerry added that their only concession to leading the event was to try to start near to their main contenders, so that if something strange happened with the wind, they could minimise the risk as much as possible.

Racing once again on the Torbole side, they decided that this was not a day for hitting the right. ‘We started in the middle of the line and then there was a twenty degree lefty. As we headed out on port we were actually one of the most bow forward boats but we could see Craig right up there inside us. So we were playing catch up. We got to the windward mark not too far behind him and sailed the run quite well. At the bottom of that leg, Craig got taken out by another boat and that gave us the chance to get inside him at the mark. We stayed just ahead of him for the rest of the race and so gained a couple of points on him. Meanwhile Ian Ainslie had won that race so he was now very much back into it.’

Going into the last race Jerry, Joe and Grant were six points ahead of Craig Burlton and eight points ahead of Ian Ainslie. They made it to the first mark in third, with Craig in seventh or eighth and Ian further back. ‘So we are feeling like we are in good shape at that point. Then the run went very odd. The breeze dropped to six knots and there were random patches of fifteen knots springing up here, there and everywhere. Everyone was spearing around, trying to get into pressure. We stuck to our plan to stay in the same bit of water as Craig and Ian, so we got to the bottom gates together.’ Jerry pauses, ‘Which is when all the confusion started. We start to go back up wind but at the same time we see the committee flying the Tango flag. This was in the sailing instructions and means go directly to finish, which is downwind of the leeward gate. Everyone was carrying on upwind and we are trying to read our now pulped sailing instructions. We knew the whole championship was now going to ride on getting this call right. Fortunately we then saw some of the boats lower down the fleet doing it correctly and heading for the finish. So we decide to turn around, put the kite up and do the same. We finished in ninth but the problem was we didn’t know where Craig was. We were pretty certain he had sailed upwind and we had got the tumbs up from the RC boat, but we were mightily relieved not to find him on the dock when we got in.’

A difficult end to a long and hard fought regatta, but Jerry Hill, Joe Llewellyn and Grant Rollerson had prevailed and become 2010 Volvo SB3 World Champions. So why did Jerry believe they won? ‘We were well prepared, as we have already discussed. I had a great team and they performed very well. In particular having Grant’s strength and technique on the hoists drops and gybes was a real godsend. We seemed very fast upwind and particularly in the sections which required you to short tack up the cliffs. The theory there is well known, in that it’s who dares wins. You have to be going so close to the cliffs that you feel like you could touch them. Apart from that, we employed a technique that I have used before in Cowes, which is also a place where you often have to short tack up the shore. It works by deliberately getting out of phase with the boats around you. This allows you to actually move forward through the fleet quite quickly. Otherwise you can get stuck in a group where only one boat at any one time is making a gain. To get out of phase you might have to do two short tacks, or one long tack, but however you do it, just get out of phase.’ Other than that, how does he explain the upwind speed advantage? ‘Well for sure we were up to weight. We had weighed in quite thirsty and been just a kilo under. We got the rig right all week, but that said, the settings are the ones we have been using for the last three years. Trim-wise, we were setting the jib much flatter than normal, with a lot of jib Cunningham and a lot of jib sheet. Other than that, lots of backstay and Cunningham and no vang. We had a new jib and kite and the main was the one we used in Cascais. We were convinced that the sail plan was the best we have had.’