Hi Mary -

What Mark suggests works well here in the Panhandle, but I hate to see any changes made at an event that's already working well. You and Rick always draw a great crowd for this event - I wish I were there now. "If it ain't broke" and all that.

With the advent of simple scoring programs like Sailwave, the scoring is a snap. Your limitations will be the starts and courses, because anyone you want to score together must have the same start and sail the same course. Detractors feel that is a potential problem when there are such disparate platforms on the water (e.g., Wave vs I-20). In actuality, however, it seems that 45-minute races for the first boat across the line work well and nobody bobs around too long waiting for the next start, even with a 4.3 or a Hobie 14 on the course. Then you're able to break out fleets however you need to, based on DPN, one-design, spinnaker, or whatever.

The important thing is to decide on fleets as soon as you can and before the skippers' meeting. It's not fair if the fleet doesn't know who they're racing ahead of time, even if we privately believe that most folks either don't care or already have their competition picked out.

Hope Tradewinds comes off this year as well as it has in the past - looking forward to some stories.

John