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.

Hunt brings up some great points here.

Beach cats are not traditionally involved in yacht club racing and this is probably just something that has evolved over time, however it might be time to start building those bridges.

The 6.0 class does a regatta in Hyannis Ma. But, other than that, I dont know of many regattas that are a mix of dighy, mono and cats.

The HT class went to a number of yc regattas this year and each time it was a great time and good racing.

The Newport regatta is one of the most fun times, and the most well run regatta that I have ever been to. The monohull and dighy crowd is very interested in our type of boat (cats in general) and most do not have experience with cats. They are impressed with the speed and manuverability of cats. We are obviously much faster than the monohulls, but the monohull crowd doesnt realize that cats can point, or that we can start and stop on a dime and that we dont crash consistantly like skiff's.

I think that if all the cat classes made the effort to do one yc regatta a year, it would pay huge dividents in the growth of cat sailing.

Bill Vining
HT Class.

Hi Bill,
Let me tell you where we multihull sailors have come from. I went to Yachting Magazines last OOAK regatta in 1980. It was held at the Southern YC out from New Orleans on Lake Pontchartrain. We were told this is the oldest YC in the US.
We drove to this fine facility a couple of days early to accomodate sail measurement etc. Upon arrival we asked where to go; where to put our boats, etc? Nobody knew. After standing around the YC for a couple of hours, we were finally told to go down the road a couple of miles to a park on the lake. That was where the multihulls were to set up. We drove down the road and could not find the park. We came upon a state trooper and asked, "where was the park"? The trooper responded, "follow me". As it turned out, we had passed the park. The trooper stopped in front of a field about three feet deep in johnson grass and briars. We parked on the side of the road in the weeds. The weeds and brush were so tall you couldn't see the lake from the road. We picked our way through the weeds, getting scratched up along the way, and finally came to the shore of the lake. There was a short piece of beach there for maybe 10 boats. The beach was cluttered with cans and bottles and rags and drift wood and boards with nails etc. We cleared the beach and made it useable. We carried our boats from the trailers at the road to the beach one hull at a time over our heads. Pretty soon we had a path beaten down. After being there a few hours we began to notice that there was no bathroom and no drinking water. Someone went back down to the YC and pointed this out and a couple of days later, two portable toilets showed up. They were never emptied and by the third day they were totally unuseable, overflowing, gross, repulsive. For any multihull group gatherings in the evening, it was "go to town and do your own thing".
The monohull people were welcomed with open arms at the Southern YC. They had use of the total club facilities which included dining room and snack bar, steam room and hot showers with marble floors etc. The Southern YC is a beautiful facility.
The sailing was OK. The first day was drifting. The second day was 10 knots and the third day was 20knots. The Pacific Multihull Association handicapped the boats. The SC20TR won every heat boat for boat. The standard SC20 sailed by Henery Bosset won the regatta on corrected time and the SC20TR finished second. The California rock stars sailing Hobies, Prindles and Nacras all went home with long faces grumbling about that "computer designed" Supercat.
So Bill, it is nice to see that times have changed and multihulls are welcome at some YCs. We've come a long way, baby.
Good Luck and Good Sailing,
Bill

We tagged on to this monohull event 2 yrs ago with 16 mostly local cats. The monohulls enjoyed watching us zipping around the course, and invited us back. We had 32 cats there last year, 84 boats total. This year they made me the Regatta Chair, and have challenged me to break 100 boats by bringing the cats "en masse".
We doubled our numbers by spreading the word, and with Outback cooking a gigantic steak, it wasnt hard to entice those who came the first year to come back again. It is now a Hobie div 9 points regatta(and yes its open to all cats!) and will be bigger and better this year.
We will again have our own RC and race course , and for the F18's and I20's it will be a warmup for Performance Race week which starts the following monday in Tybee Island(about 3hrs away, caravan planning to head out sunday afternoon).
So if you want to sail in a big time event, have Outback cook you a big steak, sail off a very nice beach with a great campsite overlooking the water(Lake Murray), then this regatta is for you.

My personal challenge is for the I20 class to come up and sail before PRW, and I have commitments from the F18 class, so they will be racing for their own bragging rights.

Its great in these days of falling participation to have a regatta that is actually growing, and to top it off, the monohullers are seeing the cats as the future of racing.

David Mosley
www.teamseacats.com

More info will be posted soon at
www.columbiasailingclub.org

Dave-

Sounds like a great regatta - Steaks from Outback are surely a huge draw. Glad you guys have hooked up with the rest of the sailing crwod on the lake.

Bill-

Lets hope that SYC does a better job this year with the ICCT -- I am sure they will from talking with them about it. It may hale that this is Johnny Lovells club. Sounds like we really have come a long way.

Mmmmmm....steak.

This weekend the Pacific Coast Championships for A-cats was held at the High Sierra Regatta put on by the Fresno Yacht Club at Huntington Lake. (I think Pete Melvin annihilated everyone downwind on the A2 and Ken Marshack made a great showing on his new AHPC Flyer.) Lots of interest seen by dinghy and mono sailors in these high tech gems. I had a couple teen 29er sailors tell me they were going to get a boat like mine next (F16). The A-cats had there own start with about 10-11 boats on the line. I sailed in the open multihull class, and they started us with the skiffs, which was actually a lot of fun. It was nice to demonstrate boat-to-boat that modern cats can point as well as (or nearly so) as skiffs and are as fast or faster up AND downwind. Only the International canoe seemed to point higher. Only the biggest skiffs (with huge mast head spinnakers) could match downwind. Jockeying at the start with the skiffs was fun also.

Only downside was that there were only three races. In general, the Fresno Yacht Club has welcomed multihulls with open arms. It's nice to see old prejudices falling away.