Sailing World – July-August 2019

SUMMER 2019

SW

048

Q Dave Franzel looks out from

beneath his faded ball cap

at the gust coming down o

Deck Point on the southeast

side of St. Thomas, USVI.

“It likes to go left up

here,” he says, pulling on

the backstay of his IC24 as

we practice for the upcom-

ing races of the St. Thomas

International Regatta.

Below deck, empty beer

bottles roll and clink in the bilge.

Up top, Franzel’s trimmed white

beard ru‡es in the wind; the

skin on his knuckles is tan and

leathery, and his eyes are as

blue as the Caribbean waters

he now calls home. He looks as

though he’s been in the islands

for a lifetime, but the truth is

it took him 30 years of running

Boston’s premier adult sail-

ing program before he realized

St. Thomas’s climate better

suited his lifestyle.

“I’d been coming down to the

Caribbean for years,” Franzel

says. “We would teach off-

shore passage making between

Boston, Bermuda and Antigua.

Once we got down to the

Caribbean, we would run cruis-

ing and coastal passage courses

between Antigua and Grenada,

so I’ve had a long relationship

with the region. It’s a great place

to be, especially in the winter.”

Led to Water

After taking a hit from Hurricane Irma,

St. Thomas’s local racing scene is making

a comeback—and Dave Franzel

is at the center of it all

STARTING LINE

OFF THE COURSEBY MICHAEL HANSON