Tradewinds

We has another fantastic Tradewinds Regatta this past weekend. We got in seven exciting races in two days. It takes a lot of hard work, dedication, and perserverance to put on a regatta of this magnitude. These are the people and sponsors who made it possible for you to enjoy this regatta.

Personnel

Founders Park Watersports (Chip and Barb Short) Organizing authority for the regatta

Rick White: PRO, trophy acquisition, publicity, regatta book, sailing instructions, supplied one of the chase boats, marks and ground tackle, trophy presentation, post race story author and photo editor.

Warren Green: Assistant PRO, supplied and skippered the signal boat.

Barb Short: Venue coordination, registration, scoring, door prize presentations, beach captain.

Chip Short: Chip Short: Venue coordination, registration, door prize presentation, chief hamburger cook, beach captain.

Mary Wells: T-shirt design, RC lunches

Kathy Kulkoski: registration assistant

Sue Bennett: Flag person on bow of signal boat, recorder.

Ellen Berosh: Signal boat assistant

Debra Hogan: Signal boat assistant

Eric Arborgast: Supplied and skippered one chase boat, mark setter

Nelson Eads: Chase boat driver on Eric's boat

Beth Langfeld: Chase boat, regatta photographer

John McKnight: Chase boat driver, mark setter

Sean McKnight: Chase boat first mate and regatta photographer.

Sponsors:

Founders Park Watersports
Catamaran Sailor Magazine
Catsailor.com, www.OnlineMarineStores.com
Catamaran Association of Biscayne Bay (CABB)
NAMSA Chapter # 1
Hobie Fleet 36
Zhik Sailing Gear (Mike Krantz), door prizes
Calvert Sails, supplied the free beer.


John McKnight
Commodore, Catamaran Association of Biscayne Bay (CABB)
CABB Forum: http://www.catsailor.com/forums/postlist.php?Cat=&Board=CABB

WHAT A TEAM! From my perspective it was very smooth and efficient, it makes me want to do it again next year. Things were happening on time and quickly. The team had good communication and TEAM work.

BTW, Nelson Eads has an excellent eye for mark placement.

It was a fantastical beautimous weekend!

Thank you John for listing all who made it happen. I believe the hard workers go un appreciated and unnamed, so it is great to see the entire list of all who worked for us to have a great weekend of racing.

Thanks to all of you listed above, and to the competitors who drove for endless hours to get there as well. Great to see you all again.

I would really like to find a single -alcohol friendly- location where we can all get together after the racing. It was very hard to find people after the boats were put up and everyone split for their hotels or favorite eatery Saturday night.

Perhaps if we all stayed at a single location like they do at the A cat event, we could get good rates and have one big party on Saturday night?

"Thanks to all of you listed above, and to the competitors who drove for endless hours to get there as well."

Indeed! Thanks to all.

Yes, that would be more fun. I've thought that all along since moving to FL, there's rarely a Sat. party. In the Midwest and East (NC),where I have been a fleet member, the party Sat. night was always the big deal. We'll have to work on that in this neck of the woods.

Eustis and Gulfport are two that come to mind that offer this kind of scene. I look forward to Kelly Park this year as we are planning to have the party at the race site too. I apologize if there is another location that does this as well that I have forgotten to mention.

I agree that a Sat night (or Sun night if Tradewinds is 3 day) party would get the most turnout. Even better if everyone is staying at the host hotel, as it would reduce the number of designated drivers

Maybe a BBQ somewhere there would be space for "fun" activities, like that drink/spin around baseball bat/ tag teammate...?

Or drunken midnight Wave racing by moonlight!

or a sea-kayak water-bucket fight. with stri... uh, dancers

When Dan Lawrence was CABB Commodore and we did the first one at Plantation Yacht Harbor Resort, nee Founders Park, liquor was allowed, there was a bar there and the whole bit.
We did a fish fry and only about 1/4 of the sailors stayed. They all went to their favorite restaurants. So, we just decided to let it be a freestyle doing on Saturday Night and reduced the entry fee.

After John McKnight became Commodore we had a year we made profit on the regatta and he said in that case we should give T-SHirts to Skipper and Crew (used to be just one shirt per boat as is the case with most regattas -- shirts can get expensive).

That is sort of how things have evolved.

By the way, there was lots of beer available at the picnic table by the registration area. Only catch was you had to put it in a cup so no one could see the beer cans. Founders Park management does not allow booze, but turn the other way as long as we don't flaunt it.

Lastly, the A-Cat venue is a huge tradeoff to Founders Park. The hotel there has a vast area for rigging. A big plus. However, there is a narrow rocky slot to launch. On the water part of the venue, the seas usually are quite lumpy, instead of the flat water we have on the Bay Side of the islands. Also, quite often you will get huge islands of kelp, or a million cabbage heads.
Sailing on the Bay Side of the Florida Keys is ideal in comparison.

Hmmm! Should I buy Rick's Place Motel Resort back! Government funding perhaps.
Rick

I do like the Founder's Park beach for launching and the flat water of the bay side.

I heard many Acat sailors comment how nice it was sailing on the Bay side in the flat water. I have to agree it's really great sailing there.

Next time Barak calls, I'll ask him where the "Rick's Bailout Package" is in the Senate approval process.

Is $400 billion okay, Rick? I know real estate in the keys is kind of expensive...

I like Founders, the format, etc. Don't need T-shirts.

Like brag flags and/or hats for winners.

Free beer is good, BBQ on Sat night sounds nice (especially if Harken/Zhik do the raffle stuff again - would shorten the awards ceremony AND guarantee more people hadn't left), but I guess you've had poor turnout at that... Maybe it was best that the sailors just got together themselves and figured out what to do...

I learned a good deal sailing in the lumpy stuff on the other side - the a-cat is just such a different and more sensitive sail boat that it makes learning and feeling different techniques much easier....but I do love the flat water on the backside for sure.

What is going on with Rowells? Maybe we can pool our money and create an equity membership cat sailing association? We own the land, pay the mortgage, keep any retail sails from racing. Charge the mono's triple. Time share concept? I don't know...
There is an answer in there some where.

It is in there.....MONEY.

equity % ownership.

Jake, we all know that you hav e a few mil rolling around, if the rest of us gather our nickels we can have a cat sailing mecca available at all times.....

No Doubt that Rowells would be awesome. A little known fact is there is pretty good sized beach for launching on the South end of the lot.

All joking aside, the Keys folks are really worried about losing waterfront access. Who knows.., the Tourist Development Council has moocho millions that they don't want to spend, for some reason. They still owe me $9000 from two years ago and don't intend to let go of it.
But, maybe they would finance Rowells. Right!?!?!?!
I have always thought that Blackwater Sounds was one of the best. Founders is awesome as well, but doesn't have quite the expanse of water unless you go way out there.

Thoughts on next year's courses to make Bob Curry happy.
During those years when we were designing courses to make Olympics more observable (which never happened), one of the courses was a trapezoid.
So, I am going to work on designing such a course. The Spin boats and faster boats will sail the Orange Course again to the weather mark, then reach way off the to the left side of the course where they will have their own windward-leeward course, thence back to a finish line or a leeward mark to lee of the finish line.
The slower boats, i.e., H16s and Waves will sail the normal course on the Yellow Course.
Might even keep the RC Boat at the leeward end of the courses instead of the Modified Olympic setup

All in the thinking stage. By the way, Mike Hill lost his bow in the collision with the Wave, but Dave White could have lost his life. Dave says he did see it coming a couple of seconds before the collision and veered off as best he could to allow not quite so much of a t-bone. He was sitting up and saw the N20 coming, but he usually lies down and focuses on his telltales. Had he been doing so, he would have nailed in the head.
With spinnakers up, and flying a hull, there is not much vision to leeward of you. He or anyone else flying a hull and a spinnaker are flying blind to what is below them. No way to put a window in a spin either as it would be destroyed the first time you dropped it.

Anyway, some ramblings about next year.
Rick
Rick

The course your describe sounds like a workable solution.

The course Rick describes is used quite often when you have boats of unequal performance sharing the same course circle. It requires mark boat operators who really know what they're doing. I suggest you hire some B.I.M.B.O.s


Word is that they work for cheap (= beer, but not cheap beer)

I was on the RC for the Olypics in Savannah where the Tornado and Soling were on the same circle. The Solings started first and used the course off to the left, while the Tornados used the main course.
It worked better than if they were all using the same Marks.
Rick

What about SIMBO's?

Uhhh.... I think I can help find some of these "boat operators" that would be acceptable to (almost) all.!

Is one of them pictured in your avatar? :P

As I suggested before, that would be a SIMBO (Sisterhood as opposed to Brotherhood)

I guess I'm due to tell what happened as best I know.

I had come around A mark in good shape and jibed immediately as that was the favored tack with the wind shift to go almost directly to C mark. I was getting close to the start finish line and had to figure out how to get around it efficiently. I was rolling downwind flying hull on Port. I heard someone calling starboard around me and was looking all around for which boat it was. I dodged a multicolored Hobie Wave by ducking deep less than 30 seconds before impact. I was probably doing 23-28mph at the time. At that speed on a 1.1 mile course you can be at C mark in about 2.5 minutes because the wind had shifted right. I tell you I had my head up and was looking around for boats. That's about the time I saw Dave's Wave right in front of me as if it had materialized out of thin air. I had about 2 seconds to do something and realized a move up or down was still going to impact him. I made sure I wasn't going to hit any people and braced for impact. I hit him hard with one hull and impacted with the other hull also. A classic T-boning. Dave never saw me and I never saw him before it was too late.

I race in big crowds all the time with mono's and multi's. I'm very used to dodging other boats. I'm not sure what the issue was. It wasn't that I had my head up my butt like usual though. I honestly think there was just too much traffic. When you are racing and checking 100 things at once it's hard to do it all.

I apoligized to Dave and sailed for shore with a big hole in my bow. Saw Dave on shore and looked at his boat. I couldn't find where I impacted that Hobie Wave.

I think Rick's plan to get us away from the other course is a good one. I think next year with a 3 day event they will draw a lot more boats from the North.

Is there a bigger racing area further out from Founders? With more boats and good wind a longer course would be nice. Though I can't complain about the race course much. They were doing a good job. The biggest issue was having to avoid the start/finish line. This caused us to have to jump out on trap and reach to the Pin and then we sometimes had to drop our chute to get to C mark. This makes for a silly train of boats. Another thing they could have done is pull the start mark after all the starts were finished.

If you end up doing the square race course thing please have different colored marks for the ones off to the left of the main course. When you are flying a chute it's easy to get confused to which mark you are going to if they are the same color.

A good friend of mine lives right next to Founders and has a powercat fishing boat. He is a long time racer (P19, F25C) that is retired at the moment. He said he would be happy to help next year even run a course if you want it. I can give you his contact info off line.

Would using the separate start/finish lines like they did at spring fever help with this?

Hi Rick -

Was really sorry to miss Tradewinds this year. This left coast thing has some drawbacks.

I worked on the race committee for the ISAF Youth Worlds Qualifier last weekend. It was the first time I'd ever worked on a trapezoid course - we had the Hobie 16s with spinnakers, the International 420s, and the Club 420s on our circle. The trapezoid worked very well, and we only had the Hobies and the Clubs meet up once at a gate in seven races. We used five total marks, two of which were gates. We had the primary committee boat anchored and four whalers running the marks. We were able to completely reconfigure the course for a big wind shift in eight minutes, we changed course several times, and I think we shortened at every mark for one fleet or another when the wind died or the time limit was close. It was a very busy three days for the committee, but I think the course came off well. Happy to send the SIs with a course diagram your way if you'd like. Dan DeLave was in one of the whalers and I know he posts here sometimes - he can give you the working-boat perspective as we kept him hopping.

We did have separate lines


We tried, but the spin boats were upon the start line before we could get to it. Once one boat goes by and avoids the line, the mark has to stay or it would prejudicial to the lead boats.
Rick

"I think Rick's plan to get us away from the other course is a good one."

I agree. I was almost on the receiving end of a similar incident, but was able to get out of the way in time. From the blind side view, it's impossible for you to see every eventuality, imo.

Back to Hank's recent Spring Fever course. The fleet size is pretty similar to Tradewinds but I had the real feeling that last year the traffic we had to contend with was less. Having the start at the bottom of the course and the finish at the top did require more race committee people but because the starts would happen whenever a fleet got back in the start queue instead of in sequence when EVERYONE was finished, the fleet was much more spread out and I felt like the traffic was much easier to navigate through. The starts just keep rolling all day which kept the fleets spread out and got us more races.

The start and finish lines were also outside the course which made a BIG difference in traffic by opening up many more lanes up and downwind. With the start/finish line in the middle we were restricted to two or three lanes downwind causing a lot of congestion.

Someday you'll be sailing along, minding your own business and see an I-20 (or F18, I forget which) closing on you at warp speed. No humans to be seen, just a giant spinnaker. Your mind's eye will flash the word "BEHOLD" and then, grasshopper, you will attain enlightenment.

There is another organization - the Legion of Extraordinary Signal Boat Owners (or Operators, take your pick).

Their crest has yet to be designed.

/I'll get my hat . . .

Yeah, I had one or two of these out-of-body experiences as well last weekend!

Unfortunately, this means an unequal distribution of upwind vs. downwind legs. Fine for the OD classes, but not fair to the Portsmouth ones.

You can acheive nearly the same result by having a separate finish line below the gate, but out of the way of the starting area.

That is my favorite set up! Yet another reason Spring Fever is one of those can't miss events, even the 8 hour drive doesn't seem to take that long and I take the scenic route.

OK, I have Beths Pix also up on the site, linked from the story.
Rick

Good point - but really, though, as long as you have an open spin and open non-spin you should be mostly OK right? I'll bring this up with Hank for discussion...interesting idea to have the finish line at the bottom of the course too...would be hard to keep all the legs even port/starboard but then again so is a trapezoid.

Map of Founders Park area

Does anyone have a GPS point for Founders Park. I'm trying to identify it on this map.

I thought the Park was on Plantation Key. Your map is of Upper Matecumbe Key.

Definitely PLantation Key.

24 deg. 57' 43.70"N
80deg. 34' 11.19"W

Founders Park

Ok here is Founders on the map at the bottom near where it says Cowpens Anchorage.

John M, nice job thanking all the volunteers!

As for constructive help, trapezoids are the way to go with mixed fleets. The more diverse the designed boat speeds, the more creative you need to be with placing finish lines, etc.

I have some examples of modified traps that have worked well in Newport, if anyone is interested let me know.

As John and Matt mentioned, these courses are super-resource-intensive. Three outstanding mark boats is a bare minimum for effective traps.

Mid-course S/F lines need to go the way of the dodo for all the reasons mentioned here (and others). Of course, if you're short on power boats, it's one good way to keep an eye on everyone (safety).

Mike

Get some more Sista's out there and you have an argument. Having said that, Mike Hills crew is the most impressive sailor I have witnessed, along with Gina, Cathy and Leah, I think that Chics Rock! I wish my wife was a sailor....

Holly kicks A$$, and looks FINE doin' it.

Got some lungs too.


"WHY ARE WE PIIIINCHIIIING!!!!!!!!???????"

(sorry - I just came from a week of A-cat sailing).

Yeah, Rub it in.

I was trying to be subtle guys. seriously, there is no one that I have seen that makes a personal investment of this magnitude both on and off the water. Period. Candidate,Female sailor of the year. HOLLY IS THE REAL DEAL.

That would be great, John.
Thanks
Rick

Here you go.

Thanks, John
Rick

So what is the asking price for Rowell's? I saw it was vacant when we drove back on Sunday...

Could we set up an equity membership type thing?

Could we get permits for maybe 8 lodging units up front? Or a locker/shower facility? Maybe make a cheap yacht club out of it?

If we could store boats, there'd have to be a rule that if it isn't sailed every so often, we could sell it...

'If we could store boats, there'd have to be a rule that if it isn't sailed every so often, we could sell it...'

THAT, was funny

Yes, but I think they do that at GYC... I think it's genious!

I think there will be more of that in the future. The new Comodore Lady wants more active sailors, lots more.

"One weekend a month, two weeks a year" works for the national guard...

Maybe "one weekend a month" would work at GYC? They could either sail or volunteer (cleanup, PRO, cooking, etc)...

I think that is a problem at most clubs. People just park their boats there forever and never use them, and no dry storage space is available for new members who WANT to sail.

Bingo!

Mary

Do you know of any YC's that do a good job of organizing just for fun sailing for the dinghy's and cats?

The sailing that involves racing gets organized by the racers. Often they recruit the non racers in the club to help out. The community is formed and sustains itself for years.

Junior sailing is an activity that people get involved in at a club that also builds a community but may leave their boat high and dry but it does sustain activity

The sailing that involves just sailing never seems to get organized by anyone and so the boats tend to sit and the club really becomes a marina.