Skills tested at the Helly Hansen NOOD Regatta San Diego

J/120 boats at the Helly Hansen NOOD Regatta San Diego © Paul Todd / www.outsideimages.com

Saturday was a challenging day on the water for the hundreds of sailors competing in the Helly Hansen National Offshore One Design (NOOD) Regatta in San Diego. Sailors faced shifty winds and rough seas on two racecourses set on the ocean off Coronado Island.

San Diego-native John Laun, the 2015 Helly Hansen NOOD San Diego Overall Winner, found the conditions demanding, but he and his crew aboard Caper established a comfortable lead in the J/120 class, which saw four different boats win each of four races.

Helly Hansen NOOD Regatta San Diego 2018 - photo © Paul Todd / www.outsideimages.com

"It was a great day," Laun said. "The sea state was very confused for the first couple of races in particular. There were big wind shifts and big changes in wind direction, so it was very challenging."

Those big shifts resulted in an abandoned race at the beginning of the day for the Etchells fleet. But the wind eventually shifted westerly and held steady with more reasonable oscillations, according to Lifted skipper Jim Cunningham. His crew heads into Sunday in the top spot in its class.

"The combination of the chop and the swell made the sea conditions particularly challenging," Cunningham said. "We set our boat up pretty loose, because we needed a lot of power, and just made an effort to get off the starting line cleanly. We had three good starts, focused on keeping the bow down and going straight. We didn't want to let conditions dictate the course of the boat."

Helly Hansen NOOD Regatta San Diego 2018 - photo © Paul Todd / www.outsideimages.com

The crew generally sails out of San Francisco, but Cunningham looks forward to the NOOD Regatta because the fleet is "always competitive" and has "good depth" no matter how many boats come out.

"You can't let your guard down," he said. "People are always coming at you. So if you have a bad leg, or a portion of a leg, you're right back at it."

In the Beneteau First 36.7 class, team Kraken leads by one point after three races. Skipper Thomas Shepherd of Oceanside, Calif., chose to race conservatively due to the "random" wind shifts, but found that favoring the right side of the course paid off for his crew, who placed in the top three in each race.

"In the end, it came down to our crew, who were exemplary today," Shepherd said. "I put them in some fairly sticky situations calling some last-minute changes, and they just kept making it work."

This was Shepherd's "best first day" at the Helly Hansen NOOD since first participating more than five years ago. Heading into the final day of the regatta, Shepherd plans to focus his energy on the top two or three boats.

"Now that we've established a points hierarchy, we're going to concentrate on the boats that are our biggest opposition, covering them and making sure they can't get away," he said. "They're going to give us the most trouble — so we'll have a lot of fun with that."

J/120 boats at the Helly Hansen NOOD Regatta San Diego - photo © Paul Todd / www.outsideimages.com

The Helly Hansen National Offshore One Design Regatta in San Diego continues through March 18.

For more information, visit sailingworld.com/nood-regattas.

Helly Hansen NOOD Regatta San Diego 2018 - photo © Paul Todd / www.outsideimages.com

Results after Day 2: