Jeff Willis of Huntington, NY is the Co- Founder and President of Willis Marine Center Inc. and the owner of one of the most successful racing yachts on Long Island Sound. “I started sailing in 1951 with my dad on a 37-foot Whistler that was built of wood by my uncle here in Huntington,” Jeff recalls. “The first boat I owned was a Dyer Dhow that I raced in the junior sailing program at Huntington Yacht Club. I’ve sailed Ensigns for quite a while and was the fleet champ three or four times.”Jeff ’s J/44 Challenge IV, the winningest boat in a very competitive one-design class, is his fourth boat with that name. “The first one was a C&C 33,” he says. “I purchased that boat as a wreck. It had heavy damage in the bow and the stern, and that’s why I called it Challenge. We got it in October and totally resurrected it here at the yard. We took the keel off, did all the fiberglass work in our shop, Awlgripped it and had it sailing by May. We took it to Block Island Race Week and did quite well. That was when C&C 33s were very popular, and there was a big fleet.”
“The second Challenge was a Cal 39 that we did a lot of racing with. We put a second rig in that boat. The original rig was a single spreader, and we fabricated a double spreader rig. We campaigned it quite a bit and did very well, and also cruised it. Challenge III was a Cal 39 Mark IV with a wing keel. We sailed it about four years and then I bought the J/44. I located it in Michigan in February and had it trucked to Huntington at the end of March.”
“We went full speed to get it ready to go to Bermuda – the 1994 Bermuda Race was the first raced we sailed in it. My eldest son had just graduated from college and he was on full-time adding everything we needed to comply with the Bermuda Race requirements and making it offshore-ready. We won our class, and that’s probably the highlight of my sailing career. We were also first in class and first in fleet in the Around Long Island Race that year...this J/44 has brought me nothing but good luck!”
Jeff serves as the Technical Chairman of the J/44 One-Design Class Association. “We’ve tried to keep the boats pretty much the way they were built to keep the costs under control,” he explains. “We switched to all-rope halyards years ago, and more recently we added carbon spinnaker poles and upgraded winches, and we’ve reviewed and allowed the European-style mainsheet system. The first truly one-design event we had was the Bermuda Race in ’94. When we got near Bermuda, the only boats I saw when it got light the morning before we finished were six other J/44s...we’d sailed over 550 miles and we were all together!”
“After that, the class really took off. We did a NOOD Regatta in Newport and it was blowin’ about 30 so we sailed in Narragansett Bay. We had finishes with three boats overlapped for first. It was absolutely unbelievable! Jim Bishop is the real driving force behind the class, and I think the primary reason the class has stayed so strong is the sail program. The class owns 16 sets of identical sails and we rotate them to keep the playing field level.”
Challenge IV has won the J/44 class in the American Yacht Club Spring and Fall Series several times, finished second in class in the Marblehead to Halifax Race, and won the J/44 North American Championship the last six years. “We’re the defending champ going into Manhasset Bay to try and win it seven times in a row,” says Jeff. “We’ve developed a great camaraderie and we all know one another. We have a winter meeting and a winter get-together, great parties after the racing on Jim Bishop’s Coastal Queen, and a big party in Bermuda.”
The crew of Challenge IV includes Kyle Erlandsen, Derek Neilsen, Fran Johnson, Jeremy Chelius, Jim Paul, Ken Lane, Scott Jacobitti, Rudy Ratset, and Jeff ’s sons Todd, David and Tim. “I had a crew dinner in Bermuda after the last race and it occurred to me that it was the 40th year of my involvement with the Bermuda Race,” he says. “I’ve done 17. My first was in 1968 on Robin with Ted Hood, and we won first overall. We had a full gale in the 1972 Bermuda Race, when I was on a C&C 61 called Sorcery. It was blowin’ 60-plus, and we determined that the boat was flexing quite a bit because we could see the headstay going slack. It was pretty scary. One of my good friends fell down the companionway and broke his back, and we had a significant amount of water in the boat...the cook had to wear his boots! The visibility was really poor and only three boats – Ondine, another C&C 61 and us – were able to finish at night.”
Jeff and his brother Dick founded Willis Marine Center Inc., a full service yachting facility in Huntington, in 1975. “Dick is our Vice President, my son David is our Sales Manager, and my son Todd is our Service Manager. When we started, we had Tartan, Sabre and Cal, and we’ve also sold J Boats and Seidelmann. Today, we have Beneteau and Sabre, and we’re Sabre’s oldest dealer.”
“I like the ability to get away and just enjoy the beauty of being on the water,” says Jeff, a member of Huntington Yacht Club, Lloyd Harbor Yacht Club and Storm Trysail Club. He loves introducing his grandchildren to the joys of sailing. “I have six,” he says. “Four boys and two girls. The boys – Charles, James, Hunter and Dylan – are starting to sail on Challenge.” ✦