The best teams in sailboat racing excel across a range of conditions, and for competitors at the 2022 Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta Series Chicago, that’s exactly what was required over three days of challenging Lake Michigan conditions, where the breeze eventually blew from all points and all strengths. For the final day, host Chicago Yacht Club served up a great one for the nearly 180 teams—12 knots of wind and steep waves. John Kalanik’s team on the J/111 Pura Vida was dinged with a race disqualification earlier in the series (after a minor incident with a boat in a different fleet), which required his teammates to work that much harder to earn a class win, which they did with two wins on the final day and emerged atop a tiebreaker with Tom Dickson’s Warlock. “We knew the boats we had to beat so we just focused on boatspeed,” says Kalanik of the final day. “Our team is phenomenal and has been sailing together for three or four years so everyone knows their jobs and our boat handling was executed perfectly. The key was to keep sailing fast.” Still, they had their hands full with the tactical side of the series and it wasn’t easy keeping Warlock behind them. “We focused on them on the first leg only, and once we got ahead, it was just staying between them and the finish. Our guys were really good at calling the puffs and shifts because they were oscillating all day. We had great starts, and just focused on body placement and making sure the boat was always going fast in the heavy chop.” For comprehensive results from YachtScoring.com, visit https://yachtscoring.com/event_results_cumulative.cfm?eID=14803.