It seems that there was a lack of communication between the race committee and the competitors at the Great Lakes Championship Regatta. This issue was recently addressed in "Sailing Scuttlebutt". The responses favored more communication between the committee and the competitors.

Unfortunately, in the Hobie class radio use is prohibited. If you turn it on you must retire.

Is this a serious problem for us?

Jack Kartz
Punta Gorda, FL

are you serious about that radio rule?

Even if I just turn on the monotone sunuvabitch to get the weather report?

Why is that rule in place? It's not like there's any BIG secret being broadcast. The monohulls get to use 'em.

C'mon, dude -

Paul is a hell of a guy, and has an amazing life story. You shouldn't make fun of his voice. As a former oppressed citizen of the socialist East Germany, Paul made pirate radio broadcasts on WWII-era equipment, describing weather and weather-related news to an underground fan base. When the wall came down, then-NOAA Director Mike Chappman made a special trip with a team of FCC officials with directional radio receiving eqipment to do what the East German Goverment had tried for years - FIND RADIO PAUL. After a two week hunt, they were successful, and he and his only surviving family member, his neice, Gretta, were brought to America, offered citizenship, and Paul is now living the American dream, financing Gretta's Columbia U education and warning us of dangerous low-pressure systems all over the country. He's tireless - NOAA officials breifly considered replacing him with more white-washed personalities (Donna and Craig... ych!), but his rich accent and unusual inflections and emphasis have become such a part of our subculture that a write-in campaign was succesful in saving his job.

So he's still at it, working impossible hours every day of the year - he's like a machine, endlessly reading local weather report after report in an effort to earn that sweet gift of freedom that he only secretly dreamed of for years under an oppressive regime... (sniff)

You tell 'em Paul!

(the following observations are for the Pensacola listening area, broadcast on a frequency of 162.5 megahertz.... for Friday, rain....)

Read more about Paul at http://www.nws.noaa.gov/nwr/newvoice.htm

I believe the radio rule is in place so that competitors can't listen in on committee chatter about wind shifts and strength. Committee would be discussing those things in an effort to keep the line square and whether marks needed to be moved. The desire is that the sailors would have to find those shifts and puffs for themselves, not by eavesdropping on committee.

There's been an article or two lately about increasing communication between sailors and committee as a way of making regattas better run.