Simmons in seventh heaven

Make text smaller Make text larger

Penny Simmons helped himself to an early birthday gift after clinching a seventh IOD World title yesterday.

The Bermudian skipper, who turns 74 later this month, won the 2012 IOD World Championship on home surf by a comfortable margin over nearest rival Elliott Wislar (Long Island Fleet) to deny the latter a third straight world title.

Simmons and crew Steven King, Matthew Cairney, D’Arcey Betschart and Steve Mohr were the top team during the regatta that was reduced from a nine to six-race series because of high winds.

The local team had five top three showings, including three bullets, and placed no lower than eighth to finish 7.8 points clear of Wislar after discarding their worst score (eighth) of the regatta.

Ian McNeice (Nantucket Fleet) finished third after being granted redress for race four which saw the American retire with a broken tiller.

Rick Thompson (Chester, Nova Scotia), the only other local skipper in this year’s IOD Worlds, finished ninth in the 13-boat fleet.

Simmons clinched the world title without having to sail yesterday after high winds, that peaked at nearly 30 knots, forced the race committee to cancel the seventh and final race.

“The wind came up pretty hard so the race committee did the right thing and cancelled the race,” the Hall of Fame sailor said. “There’s always a few people who might be unhappy but it’s like any other sport . . . you have to take it on the day.

“We really didn’t sail much together before the regatta, but we all did our individual jobs and it worked out well. The guys did a great job.”

Simmons scored his third bullet of the regatta in race six, sailing in the boat (Peppercorn) owned by his late brother-in-law, Jordy Walker.

“Who knows, he (Walker) might have been hanging around,” Simmons smiled. “It all went pretty well for us and each of the boats we had we can’t complain.”

Simmons now trails Bill Widnall (Marblehead Fleet) for the most IOD World titles by two and when asked did he think he can overall his rival he replied: “Bill has stalled for a number of years now, so it’s a real possibility.

“My wife (Sacha) insists we have to keep going a few more years, but she doesn’t have the aches and pains I have sometimes.”

King, who has now won five IOD World titles with the larger than life Simmons, said: “The plan was just to stay clean even if we didn’t have the front line row start. We just wanted to stay clean and sail our race and let everybody else do what they wanted to do.

“Penny got into his game plan and we all did the jobs we know how to do. And even though we haven’t been out together in quite awhile we really gelled together.”

Betschart, who has sailed with Simmons since 2000, added: “We just worked really well as a team and anticipated each other’s moves.

“It wasn’t a lot of trying to figure what we were going to do next. We all move similar so we worked well.”

Despite being denied a hat-trick of IOD World titles, a feat only achieved so far by Bermuda’s Peter Bromby, Wislar took matters all in stride.

“This is one of the greatest regattas that we have participated in,” he said. “The Bermudian host team and race committee were very generous.

“The races were run fabulous and the conditions were like nowhere else . . . heavy wind and really tight racing. The boats and teams were very well matched so you can’t ask for more in a regatta.”

Make text smaller Make text larger

Take Our Poll