The post-Worlds party is always rowdy. On the Hyannis (Massachusetts) Yacht Club patio, following seven days of world-class high-performance dinghy racing on Nantucket Sound, the 505 fraternity – 200 plus sailors (almost all male), each with an implicit vow to reach his way through life – celebrates the class's forty-third world championship in typical form: fast and fun. The party din smothers the sound of the band; a sailor streaks naked waving an American flag; and a mischievous group prepares to toss the winners in the water.
As the first American 505 world champions in 16 years, the winners, Nick Trotman (Manchester, Massachusetts) and Mike Mills (Newport, Rhode Island), are busy. Off in a corner, Trotman talks into a Cape Cod reporter's tape recorder. The reporter asks the question the duo has been working to solve for six years: "How do you win a world championship?" With a knowing grin, the 27-year-old Trotman responds, "Speed kills."

Besides speed, 505ers seek fun and serious competition. There's a lighter-side joke about 505 sailing: "We were having so much fun reaching, when we got to the mark we just kept on going." There's a competitive side, too. "Overbearing in victory, surely in defeat," an old regatta T-shirt reads. The legends – Paul Elvstrom's conquests in the 1950s, Swede Krister Bergstrom's four-year run (1987-89 and 1991) at the Worlds, and, more recently, British dominance, including four of the last five world champions – inspire the top teams to find that extra gear of speed.

Most will agree that jumps in speed can't be found alone. "You're only as good as your group," says Florida sailmaker Ethan Bixby. For years the top Brits have capitalized on 60-boat regattas, group tuning, and short travel for racing. Although the craze for newer high-performance dinghies in England has reduced the size of their fleet, the core group, including world champions Ian Barker (1993) and Mark Upton-Brown (1997) and 23 other teams that sailed in Hyannis, is still very active. Motivated by a home venue and a rising group of college-trained sailors – Trotman, Mills, local Tyler Moore, Bristol Rhode Island's Mike Zani and his three-time North American champion crew, Peter Alarie – American 505 sailors teamed up to (heaven forfend they call it training) "blast around." The American effort, on the weekends and at regattas, was raised a notch on both coasts.

With an American winning every race in the pre-Worlds North American Championship in Hyannis, also won by Trotman and Mills, hard work appeared to pay off. Of course, it helps that several sailors who were racing 505s in the American-dominated early 1980s, and even before that, are still at it. Bixby and adventure sailor Cam Lewis, sailing the same Lindsay 505 with which they won the 1981 Worlds, finished seventh; perennial top-fiver Howard Hamlin, from Long Beach, California, and crew Mike Martin led the West Coast contingent; and scores of 505 "lifers" such as Neil Fowler and Dave Dyson, with 40 years of 505 experience between them, serve as mentors to the younger sailors but are capable of scoring a top-three race.

Race 4 is telling. Trotman and Upton-Brown, tied in the series, round the first mark twelfth and fourteenth, respectively. Both setting up high on the reach – centerboard height adjusted critically, mainsail flat and twisted, trapeze crew surfing the rail and working the spinnaker – they start marching by one boat at a time. At the gybe mark, Trotman is eighth, the Brits tenth. By the leeward mark, another clump of boats gone, they've both picked up two more spots, looking to strike the top three. On the third (of four) beat, Trotman in fourth sails left of the pack, while Upton-Brown heads far right. ("You've got to know how to work the corners," Hamlin says.) The Yanks lead out of the left corner in a favorable shift; they'll win the race. The Brits fade on the back side of the shift, and, with three races to go, only Barker can stop the Americans winning the series.

After the race Mills explains the need for speed on a Worlds course (14 miles, 9 legs). "It's a very long race, but the clock is ticking. You've got to pass boats early and often."
 

The POWERED-UP AND ENDLESSLY tweakable 505 was ahead of its time when it was designed by John Westell in 1954. It is narrow on the waterline, but its flaring sides give it stability. The mast/sail combination is powerful, and teams typically have a 200-pound crew on the wire. (Bill Masterman, a 6 foot, 8 ^1/2-inch Brit, is the ideal for which every skipper searches.) However, adjustable rig controls, – mast rake, shroud tension, a deck-mounted mast ram, and movable jib leads – allow smaller crews and skipper to depower and compete against the bigger teams.

And 505 sailors like to tweak. Skippers often take a little-of-this, little-of-that approach to tuning. With experience, shifting gears is automatic, but class newcomers are uncertain about tuning the 505. "At times we're well-tuned, competing in the top ten," says 1996 college sailor of the year Tim Wadlow. "Suddenly we're off a little and back in the sixties. And once you're mid-fleet, you have to fight to stay there." In the parking lot, the sailors exchange their settings of ram, rake and vang, noting, under the class's no-secrets policy, what worked and didn't.
 

Barker, a full-time sailor in England, discovered a racing element he didn't expect to find at the Worlds. "Americans tune their boats for height. Europeans don't; we foot and sail fast. So in a fleet that is one-third American, we found we had to change the way we sail upwind just to keep lanes." By using gate starts, in which each boat starts on starboard tack ducking the port-tack "pathfinder" boat, the 104-boat fleet starts evenly. So being able to "hang in the initial drag race," Trotman explains, is critical for a good finish.

The tweaking doesn't stop off the water. Although the 505 is strictly one-design, there is room for development in sails, hulls, and foils. Many players, for example, arrived in Hyannis with lightweight Kevlar mainsails. Ullman sailmaker Jay Glaser, who has been designing 505 sails for 24 years, worked with Hamlin on his latest Kevlar sails. Foils are even more open for development; the centerboard rule specifies only that it must fit in the trunk. Baltimore lawyer and 505 lifer Macy Nelson worked with Waterat's Larry Tuttle on a radical set of foils. His centerboard and rudder are both high-aspect shapes, as much as 5 inches deeper than the average blades, designed to generate more lift. The gains from such experiments are not easy to quantify, but half the fun is trying.
 

Since the popular hulls – Rondar, Waterat, Kyrwood, Lindsay, Parker – have similar shapes, 505ers usually select boats based on material and cost. Most boats are foam-cored with Kevlar, carbonfiber, or S-glass in the outer and inner skins. Speed differences in the hulls?" At the end of the day the good guys win with any boat," says Ali Meller, a computer analyst and class fireplug from Gaithersburg, Maryland. Trotman, sailing a two-year old Rondar, practiced mainly with Newporter Tim Collins, who won race 2 in a Kyrwood, and Zani, who sails a 1981 Lindsay, known as the "Dump Truck."

Around the dinghy park, Mark Lindsay-made 505s stand out from the rest. His Kevlar-skinned performer redefined 505 construction in the late 1970s and instantly rendered the time's polyester-resin boats obsolete. Lindsay wooden decks are high maintenance compared to today's glass. And the popular launcher tube has replaced the spinnaker-bag system. But the bulletproof hulls, which the Brits joke should be on display in the Greenwich Museum, are still up to speed. "That's why we stopped building them," says Mark Lindsay. "They don't go away."

As a class, the 505 has the key elements of a lasting one-design – a good used-boat market, strong leadership, and a cliquish group of sailors. A lot of factors – the Internet (www.sailing.org/int505), Meller's persistent recruiting and marketing, non-Olympic class status – account for the class's strengths and recent growth. But success comes largely from being a boat that is fun to sail and ever-fascinating for a lot of people. Ask any 505 sailors – a 45-year old land broker, an ex-Olympian, a former Whitbread sailor, 76-year old Marcel Buffet, a past collegiate all-American – and they'll all agree: "The boat just feels right."

The 40-something lifers, most with 20 years of 505 tales and high speed yawps, may not be as fit (or have as much time to train) as the younger guys, but they're satisfied with a boat that's a blast to sail. "When you're on the water, the 505 seems like the only boat on earth," says former Lindsay boatbuilder, Dave Dyson. Besides, Tom Kivney adds, "with 31 years of experience, I think I'm getting better." French legend Buffet's passion for the 505, which has brought him to 38 world championships, is an inspiration to all sailors.

Skippers range in size and are relatively easy to come by; 505 crews are the class stars. (Under class rules, skipper and crew trophies, are the same size.) Several crews, such Martin, Alarie, and Lewis, own boats. And if you're planning to attend the Worlds, having a good crew is crucial.

Two-time North American champ Macy Nelson lost his crew early in the summer, a big blow to a well-prepared program. Then Nelson lucked into another good crew, Finn sailor Geoff Ewenson, just before Hyannis. "Having a good crew makes all the difference," says Nelson. "I've sailed with Alarie and Mills – they just make things easy." The 43-year-old veteran's regatta trials got worse when he blew out his back just before the event. During the pre-Worlds, walking was difficult, hiking impossible. But with the help of steroids, an anti inflammatory, and "a painkiller cocktail," Nelson was determined to race in the Worlds. "It's been a rough year, but my week's getting better. I think I'm ready for some heavy air.

It's Wednesday, Race 5, and the big breeze everyone has anticipated since Sunday has arrived. Postponement. Like big-wave surfers who travel long distances for epic surf, 505 sailors pace the dinghy park awaiting their chance in the men-from-boys conditions. Big crews smile. Small crews are surly. Race officer Dave Penfield, the 1979 world champion, is pacing, too. He knows the meaning of a heavy-air race at the Worlds. It's a test: Whose gear will hold up? Who's in shape? Who's the fastest?

Still postponed, the stories begin. "Remember the Worlds in South Africa, 1979...Remember the 170-odd boats in England's 'race of the year'...In the beginning, Howard was a surfer..I beat Paul Elvstrom by one point in 1983..Remember getting arrested at our first 505 regatta." The stories, recycled from last year's Worlds, get taller as the week goes on.

Postponement ends as the winds drop to a less-than-25 knot average. At the gate start, the players are scattered throughout the fleet, ready to duck and burst into clear air. Trotman and Mills climb to windward in their mid-fleet lane; Barker, a few boats down, pokes ahead with the Yanks. At the windward mark, they're both clear ahead of the fleet. Wtih 12 miles to go, it's a two-boat race. Trotman's lead expands, then Barker takes advantage of their too-loose cover and sneaks by. Another win for the Americans would have all but sealed the deal, but the Brits won't go easy.

Who's the fastest? Well, the Brits, first and third at the finish of race 5, still rule in heavy air. But the Americans ("super-Yanks," according to Masterman) have arrived. Trotman and Mills hold on to win after the 1-1-2 cushion; Hamlin and Martin rally for second, the 45-year-old skipper's ninth top-five finish at the Worlds; and Zani and Alarie are fourth, a few points back from Barker.
So what's next? "The thing about the 505," says Nelson, "is there's always another Worlds."