One peak scaled, Cherry Hill sailor finally reaches another

CHERRY HILL Nineteen thousand feet above sea level was far from the wet and wind where John MacCausland likes to play.

But the champion sailboat racer from Cherry Hill had always wanted to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, just as he had set his sights for decades on another goal: the world championship in the Star class of sailboats.

He had won 19 East Coast championships and six North American championships since he began racing Stars as a teenager. He even crewed on the America's Cup winner, Stars and Stripes, in 1987. But in 14 tries over 32 years, "Johnny Mac" had never reached what was for him the summit of sail racing: the Star World Championship.

Now he was 52, huffing and puffing his way in May up the side of Africa's tallest mountain. It was not until his group reached Stella Point, 1,000 feet from snowcapped Uhuru Peak, that they all knew they'd make it.

And when he got home he christened his newest Star boat Stella, or "star."

The name would prove auspicious, as Sunday's jubilant celebration at the Cooper River Yacht Club testified.

"I want everybody to raise their glass to John for winning the 2013 Star World Championship," commodore Rob Seidelmann shouted over the din. "This has been a lifetime quest."

Champagne and tears flowed as MacCausland thanked his friends for their support. "You made me the sailor I am," he told the crowd, and with his voice choking thanked his 80-year-old father, John "Big Mac" MacCausland, who started him racing small Lasers on the Cooper River when he was 11.

Three weeks earlier MacCausland had hitched Stella's custom-made trailer to the back of his van, and two-and-a-half days later - "I was kind of wound up," he admits - arrived at San Diego Yacht Club, site of the 2013 international Star Worlds regatta.

Built today with fiberglass hulls and aluminum masts, Stars' hard, sleek lines belie the fact that these fiberglass 22-footers, first launched in 1911, are the oldest Olympic-class design still in competition. The trophy goes back to 1923.

"They have a huge history," he explained Saturday, and racing them demands grueling athleticism. Their two-person crews must "hike" over the sides on windward tacks to keep the boat balanced, their upper torsos just above - and often in - the water as the outstretched helmsman heaves on the tiller.

Over six days MacCausland and his racing partner, Phil Trinter of Virginia, had battled 65 competitors from 10 nations, including New Zealand, France, Britain, Australia, and Brazil, around the marks of an 11-mile, windward-leeward course in the open Pacific.

Each race lasted about two-and-a-half hours, mostly in stiff breezes. They took second place the first day, 11th the next, then second place the next three days, and retired from the last race - an accepted practice - because the wind had died and they were in the middle of the pack.

By then they had the points to guarantee at least second place overall, and anxiously watched the French boat, the only other in contention.

But the French finished 16th in that last race, and when the final gun boomed Sept. 6 off Point Loma, MacCausland and Trinter had won the regatta.

Minutes later former America's Cup champion Dennis Connor, with whom he'd raced Stars & Stripes, was pumping his hand, champagne was flowing, and by day's end the commodore of San Diego Yacht Club was presenting them the grand, silver, Edwardian-era Star Worlds trophy that will forever bear their names.

Complete with its own padded carrying case, the size of a steamer trunk, the three-foot trophy - which he brought to Sunday's Cooper River gala - is his to keep, as skipper, for a year. It will likely spend most of that time outside his office at Moorehouse-MacCausland Sailing, his boat and sail-repair loft in Lumberton.

"It's been a very good year," he said. "First Kilimanjaro. Now this."

His victory drew well-wishers from yacht clubs across the region.

"I'm so proud to race against him," said Uwe Mewes, a member of Riverton Yacht Club, where MacCausland and Seidelmann - his business partner - race most Wednesday evenings.

"I had to come to this," said Bill McLaughlin of West Chester and a member of Marsh Creek Sailing Club in Downingtown.

"I've always thought that winning the Star Worlds was the greatest accomplishment in racing - more than the America's Cup or the Olympics," he said, "because you're up against 60, 70 other boats. It's a fleet full of champions, the best sailors in the world."

MacCausland's father, also a Star racer, said he was "still in shock" Sunday as he stroked the trophy that will soon bear the family name.

"He was a lot of years chasing this."