I noticed that most of the posters in the 'unwelcome' thread were posting from the Carolinas, New York, Florida, the Gulf and that the furthest west (besides me) was Texas, so maybe it's a regional thing. I wanted to bring some positivity to the sport by telling about the many areas we(cats) have been welcomed to attend races here in the West.

First, let's make a leap. By talking about regattas, we are talking about existing regattas hosted by yacht clubs where cats are welcome to race. And another leap, how about catamaran fleets that are embraced by yacht clubs as fleets under the YC's burgee. Because, really, aren't we kind of talking about the monohull vs. cat thing, sort of the establishment vs. the (perceived) rouge?

Here are a few examples of successes that we have enjoyed here on the West Coast with melting cats into existing races/ YC's:

Here in Santa Cruz, the YC had not hosted a cat regatta since 1974. Myself, as commodore of the local fleet and the vice commodore started attending race chair meetings in October of last year in order to get on their calendar for '09. At first it was questionable if it was going to work. Luckily they gave us the benefit of the doubt and we had our first catamaran start hosted by the SCYC in over 30 years. We have 2 other events this summer with Santa Cruz 50s, Santa Cruz 27s, Moore 24s, 505s, Aclass, Hobies.

At our first regatta we had almost 40 boats, so the YC made a little $$ which is a rare occurrence for most YCs.
There were a few logistical hurdles that we had to overcome. Hand launching 40 cats was a little challenging due to the fact we had to use the hoist and 2 small launch ramps. The YC was concerned with having enough chase boats (which turned out to be valid when it hit 33 knots in the afterenoon), so we had to find a few more than we immediately had on hand, but overall it was great.

After the Kick-Off Regatta worked out so well, the YC has basically rolled out the red carpet for our next 2 events this summer. Success!

Other areas of the West where we've had enormous success:

1)Lake Havasu Yacht Club hosting the Havamega. Someone else can talk about that.

2) There is something in the works to get more involved with the YC down in San Diego.

3) There are a few venues up in the PNW that have been hosting F18 events. Some PNW guys on here.

4) The Fresno YC hosting the Mile High Regatta this year.

5) The Richmond YC hosting several events where they have personally sent me an invite to extend to all cats.

6) The crowning achievement of cats being welcome at events here in the West has got to be what you guys down at the ABYC in Long Beach have been working on the past few years. They've got a lot of cat events in the 'mainstream'. Maybe one of those guys can post here.

I just received this email as a testament to the ABYC:



Anybody else have any 'welcome' stories?

J

I don't think so.... I don't think there is any mono hull versus multihull snoot in this particular thread.

Congrats on a successful regatta.
What you describe is the way of the future.... water access is priceless and Yacht Clubs have it.... Plus they like to run races. It's a win win for class and club. It's been my experience that we have more Yacht clubs asking us to compete on the bay then we can support.

On the Chesapeake, Yacht clubs run races for their members and extend reciprocity to members of other clubs that they are affiliated with.

How does it work out west?... Don't they ask you to belong to a member yacht club or at least one of the paper clubs in the regional sailing association?