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OK, since there doesn’t seem to be any other info, here is my quick synopsis of the week:
Hurricane Alex definitely screwed with the weather. This was the first June Atlantic hurricane in 15 years and even though it was well south, it generated a bunch of storms across the entire gulf coast.
Monday: Storms all day, no sailing.
Tuesday: Good first race; squall came through 2nd race so race was abandoned; two more races afterwards to complete the qualifying- long day on the water!
Wednesday: Postpone due to storms; get all the boats in the water just in time for another storm to pop up; no sailing.
Thursday: Get one race started. Major wind shifts during the race and the race committee shortened at the second windward mark. The race was later dropped because the sailing instructions specified that a course could not be shortened to less than 4 legs. Started another race in dying breeze; race was abandoned when the time limit expired. Eventually some wind came back in and we actually got off a race that counted. Another long day on the water!
Friday: One good race in the morning with the breeze dying just as the challenger fleet was finishing. Started another race in the dying breeze, but abandoned when the wind completely shut down. Waited for a couple hours for the seabreeze to kick in; at that point a bunch of boats gave up and packed up early. A light northerly filled in first, so another race was started but then the seabreeze filled in from the south during the starting sequence for the challenger fleet. The race was abandonded and the race committee did an amazingly fast job of setting up a new course a getting a race off before the 3pm deadline to make it an official regatta.Overall BWYC did an excellent job hosting the regatta under some very difficult conditions. I have never spent so much time on the water to complete so few races, but that’s part of sailing. The competition was excellent; this was probably some of the deepest talent I have seen at NACs.
As an FSSA member, one thing that really disturbed me about the regatta was that first it seemed like there was an effort to scare people off from the regatta, then the association gave Lake Norman Yacht Club an award for offering to host the regatta instead of BWYC, but never even thanked BWYC and never mentioned that Ponchatrain had already volunteered to host in the unlikely event that the oil caused a problem. I think the association owes BWYC and its members a sincere apology for this lack of class and appreciation.
We use the low point system for our series. It works well for us. In the past I sailed in a fleet that used Cox-Sprague. It worked well with a smaller fleet where many times there would only be three boats out but other times there would be up to about ten. The advantage of Cox-Sprague is that it rewards you for beating more people- a first place out of 10 boats is more points than a first place out of 3 boats. This can keep someone for being rewarded for only showing up when there aren’t as many others boats there. The disadvantage is that it is a little more confusing, and, unless you carry a scoresheet and calculator with you, you won’t know how you did until the race is scored.
I use Sailwave for scoring larger regattas, especially if there is a Portsmouth fleet. It works well, but can have a few quirks that take a little getting used to. I tried one or two other free scoring programs in the past, but ended up being happiest with Sailwave. Someone else scores our fleet series; he just uses Excel. (That’s an advantage of the low-point system- it is very straightforward!)
