“Race for every point” is a phrase heard often at regattas, and that was certainly the takeaway for many teams at the Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta Series in Annapolis. Three days packed with races for 240 teams in 18 classes gave every sailor an opportunity to make good on that cliché, especially the team on Andy Graff’s J/88 Exile, which won in its fleet after a stressful two-race final day. Their class win, on a tiebreaker, earned them the regatta’s overall title and a berth at the Regatta Series championship in the BVI in October. With a strong southerly on the final day, Exile was sitting on a marginally comfortable lead over John Bell’s Hiwassee, and Graff’s intent was to sail a clean race and stick to what had been working for them over the previous two days. That plan quickly unraveled in the first race. “It wasn’t how I planned on things going when I woke up this morning,” Graff says, “but we got out to the course and the breeze was like 17 knots. We expected more wind and made the poor decision to go to the small jib, and also got caught with the rig too tight and with chop the way it was today. That was really a tough spot to be in when it dropped down to 8 knots. We just couldn’t get wheels going through the chop.” Exile finished sixth in the 8-boat fleet, and Hiwassee won the race, putting them on top. Then came Hiwassee’s own drama. In the final start, Bell says, there was a miscommunication on the timing, and they found themselves OCS, clearing out to restart, and chasing down the rest of the fleet. Battling back to earn point by point, at the beginning of the second beat Bell realized their headstay had come off. They quickly attached a spare halyard to secure the rig and continued to sail the race. “We didn’t do so hot on that last race, but we needed to beat one boat in order to keep first place. When we got the one point we needed, we we’re pretty pumped.” Pumped until they later learned that another boat had been OCS as well but wasn’t scored as such. When that boat was later given an OCS, the scores shuffled once more, this time in favor of Exile—which finished fourth in the final race and was ultimately declared the winner on the tiebreaker. “It was hard,” says Exile’s tactician Kris Werner. “I was admittedly pretty dark after the first race, because it felt like we just made a really poor decision with the jib. We finished that race and regrouped. The last one was a tough one, too. It really was. We had a pretty good start; we were kind of right in that top three for most of the race. We fought till the very end. We had almost a photo finish with [Iris Vogel’s] Deviation. That point was critical.” For complete results, visit https://www.yachtscoring.com/event_results_cumulative/16896.