When you run across a 45-foot boat whose owner works the pit, you’ve left the ordinary behind. In this case, Andrzej and Gosia Rojek’s Better Than… also left the fleet behind while distinguishing itself as a family-and-friends boat of the Swan 45s. Not far, far behind. Rojek’s Better Than took first place from Craig Speck’s Vim on the tie-breaker but, that was enough. Both boats hail from Newport, Rhode Island. So what’s the hardest thing about working a pit, from an owner’s perspective? “I din’t know about that,” Rojek says, “but I do know it’s the place where everything happens. Except for the helmsman, everybody else on the boat gets at least a moment off; the pit needs to be constantly awake.” In 1999 Rojek and company won PHRF boat of the week in a chartered J/29. They’re not newbabies. But choosing a Swan 45 was about “avoiding the issues of PHRF” while hitting on a genuine racer and cruiser. Family friend Ryan Malloy, a financial analyst, helmed at Key West. The plan, Rojek explains, is that “my son Marcin will become the helmsman. Right now he is driving the Wednesday-night races.” Marcin also sails dinghies at George Washington University. The closest thing to a rock star aboard is tactician Chris zaleski of Z Sails, a partner in a deliberately independent home-town loft in Stamford, Connecticut, that made the sail for Better Than… There’s a skipper, Jan Glinski, who also runs the bow and has a daughter, Kaja, who sails for Tufts and occasionally teams with Marcin in dinghies. It was in a boat-naming session between the rojeks, Jan Glinski, and Kaja Glinski that one name after another was tossed out, Andrzej recalls. “We’d get on a roll where most of us were thinking a name was pretty good, and then someone would say that a different name was better than that one. Then Kaja said,’That’s it!’ Better Than…” Standing in the tent at the wrap-up party, Rojek said that the Key West was a year and a half of preparation, good sails, good crew, and a little luck. Craig speck, standing beside him, added, “There’s always the luck. They had some; we had some. That’s why we do this. It’s never predictable, so it’s never boring.”
The Key to Key Westby Kimball Livingston for Sail Magazine April 2005
