For the second year, the 18HTs raced in the Volkwagen Newport Regatta July 10-11. This is a HUGE multi-class event with ~20 classes ranging from Lasers to Farr40s. I have said it before, but it bears repeating: if we want to grow catsailing we need to race in existing monhull events.

Not only was it a great event that we did not have to organize ourselves, but we generated a lot of interest in the boats from dinghy and monohull sailors. And to top it all off, the Barrington (RI) Yacht Club Race Committee (who ran our races) came up to us at the end and said that they had decided they wanted to host a regatta for us next year. How cool is that! A yacht club asking if they can host catamarans.

I think that YCs and traditional regattas are more than open to catamarans -- you just gotta ask, and maybe build relationships.

On the water, there were 5 different racing areas in Narragansett Bay and Block Island Sound, each with its own race committee and mark boats, etc. On shore, there were something like 1000+ sailors, FREE BEER, a big tent, FREE BEER, a band, FREE BEER, food, and lots and lots of BS flying about the days racing. It really was a fantastic weekend.

Many thanks to Sail Newport for putting on the event, and to our Race Committee from Barrington Yacht Club for running absolutely fantastic races.

Oh, yeah -- We had 11 boats and got 8 races over 2 days. The race management was superb, with all windward-leeward (2x & 3x), and the next start as soon as the last place boat finished. The racing was close with 3 or 4 teams winning individual races (sorry don't have the scores in front of me). Bob Hodges / WF narrowly beat out Peter Johnstone / Bob Merrick -- they were tied going into the last race. Chris Brown did a great job to clinch the third place spot over Doug Kirby / Brandy Wood and Mark Murray/Charlie Barmonde.

And Bill Vining's crew Coar Hoekstra (sorry if I blew the spelling dude) won the Volkswagen Full Throttle sportsmanship award for diving overboard @ 2 minutes to a start to pick up an empty water bottle that had fallen in the water when they were passing it to the RC boat. Meanwhile, Bill circled, pulled him on board and they won the Start!!! So the cats won the Sportsmanship award as well. Nice going Coar.