Working on getting a write-up with pics to rick, but wanted to give a quick update with class winners and notables, and start a thread for fun facts I may have missed.

Two good 10-20 mph sunny 70 degree days gave the fleet a good early heavy air tuner. Four races Saturday and 3 Sunday, and countless bumps/nicks to heal this week.

Bobcat won the N17's, close 2nd/3rd place finishes between Chad and Chris I believe. Jonathon Farrar and Stan borrowed a N20 from Kirk and put on a clinic, while Mike Hill finished 2nd, JMac 3rd, Trey 4th. Chris Armador took the Open fleet on a Blade, the youngster Tyler Reece was scored 2nd on an old-school NF18, and Andy Humphries was placed 3rd on his Infusion.

Most interesting story of the day Sunday was the misfortune of Charlie Harp breaking his mast, robbing him of what was sure to be a solid 2nd place finish. Other notable rigging damage had Trey getting tapped on the stern at the start of the last race rendering his rudders useless dropping him a spot or two.

Most everybody got what they came for, stay tuned for more stories/pics.

Taylor my man! Getting it done old school!

wow.... no pics of this part please, NO PICS!

all joking aside, sounds like a fantastic event. I am sorry we missed!

Short vid of the F17's. Sorry there wasn't more, as we were too busy covering boats that flipped...there were a bunch of boats that went over.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cSqkg1LsLo

Sorry to hear about your knee btw!

Thanks for the video Cliff and really thanks for being out there!!

There is a new post on the F17 forum with the top 4 F17 fleet results. More to follow on that fleet over there.

Bob

Bob, I notice in the video, all the masts are black, are they carbon or painted alum. wingmasts?

And is anyone going to volunteer to send a story and pictures to Sailingworld?

Does anyone know where any pictures are posted? I want to put something up on the TVS site but I never got any pics for myself.

Thanks

Tim,
A lot of the masts were black, alum(all are black anodized) and the painted carbon. Some of the boats had the white painted carbon masts. And looking at the video angle, it's hard to say which is which because of the sun angle. I know most of the boats had black masts.

I'm going to wait a bit on pics and send in a story to SW after collecting other sailors perspectives of the racing.

Thanks for asking!

Bob

Excuse me, Mr. Macdonald, but Sunday's 2nd place was not so secured at the start of the day. Hill and Harp were tied with 12 points before races started on day 2. We were very much looking forward to a tough competition. It was very unfortunate that Charlie lost his mast. Check your facts, my friend!
Holly

Correction....the young phenom from the PCB is Taylor Reece, not Tyler. One of his homies called and told me to get it straight fool!

ah HA! Proof that Holly is Mike and Mike is Holly!

Gosh Mike, your voice got a little girlie there for a second.

Holly can benchpress Mike.

How'd the mast break?

Hit the bottom as it was turtle and put some weird force on it to snap in a weird location.

And I didn't mean to take anything away from Mike and Holly with my previous post. They had a shoot out going on with Harp, from what I heard.....unfortunately I couldn't exactly make it out which blue spin was which as I ate their rooster tails. Congrads to my friends Mike and Holly on a fine event!

All,

I talked with Bert Jr. yesterday, and he said that in retrospect he thinks the mast went because he and Charley focused first on getting the chute in, and neither one eased the downhaul (which was honked on) or the main. I don't know about it hitting the bottom - I believe the boat only turtled completely once the mast broke...

Hats off to both Bert and Charley - I was driving the safety boat that hung with them while they got squared away, and they were both calm, cool and collected (emphasis on cool) after having to spend about a half hour in the water with breaking waves securing the mast and mainsail.

2 more vids - both short...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDwMKc5Y21U
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cSqkg1LsLo

I pity the fool

Regarding downhaul during the run... I learned something new from Goodall during F18 Nationals in P'cola. I had always left the cunningham on hard in big air pretty much all the way around the course. The first day was pretty windy and Greg told me to release the downhaul as soon as we rounded the top. Thanks to JC, I've learned that mark roundings aren't really the time for chalk-talk (shutting up!), but I asked Greg about it later. He said that leaving the cunningham on downwind on a spinnaker boat actually tweaks the mast out of it's longitudinal axis, making it more likely to break - particularly for wing masts that have a thinner profile.

Charlie's had some spectacularly bad luck with boats lately. I hope he's okay and considering letting the demon boat go - must have has some bananas on it at some point. Get back into the 5.5s, Charlie (aka F18).