gotta work hard to play hard!
At least you probably don't work for an organization wherein your boss uses a taped conversation you had on the phone with your mother to get you in trouble!

Sue him for "Invasion of privacy" and then go and play - on his money

doesn't work that way in the grand USAF

Ya know? You're right. If I didn't care about the job, I wouldn't have to worry about taxes!

Looks like Mr. Ernie posted the results on twinhulls.

Way to go Team Velocity!

Tad and Trey, The www.velocitysailing.com site is lookin GREAT! Tad thanks for the fine account! Hope the chin and tongue are feeling better!

Any thoughts on the format of this year's Spring Fever Regatta?

From a distance, the format of scoring the the three starts on portsmouth and then scoring by fleet made for a very competitive regatta from all points of view.

Foir example, Wick and Wick jr Smith, (N20) who are excellent sailors, could measure their regatta results against sailors of similar skill in the F18 fleet. (Congrats to them on their strong performance!)

I hope that the Spring Fever Team will look favorably upon what looks to be a very succesful format and annouce the identical structure for next years regatta as soon as possible. This would allow, the Tornado fleet, who would love to schedule this event next year as part of their domestic schedule and build the 20 foot racing fleet within the first start, to plan it in their schedule. The Tornado fleet is very small in the US and Canada but the ordinary sailors in the fleet would love an opportunity to compete against the other racers on N20's and F18's using this year's spring fever format.


I wonder if the single handed sailors would be interested in a single hander championship???

How about if the strong mid atlantic fleet from Div 11 of Hobie 17's could mix it up with their old comrades from florida who are now sailing A cats ... Throw in the Michigan Nacra F17's and Nacra 5.5 uni's sailors and the Chesapeake A cats and the North Carolina Isotopes and you have a defacto US single handed championship. I am sure that a few of the f16 uni sailors would want to go racing against this crowd as well.

Just as this year's results demonstrated that time on the water and skill will win out under the portsmouth rules... I bet that the results of a single handed champiohship would recognize the top solo sailors.

Nigel amd Mr. Ernie made a few announcements at the end of the regattta:

1. The Spring Fever will be Easter Weekend next year, they have set this in stone now so all can plan for next year. It is their 10th and they want it to be big!

2. They will be having three starts with three portsmouth groups (low, mid, high) each year just like this year. As a matter of fact, they even had three perpetual trophies made for each group which they awarded this year for the first time. The winner in each portsmouth class will get free registration the following year.

The overall portsmouth scoring is also intended to get the dead boats to show up even if they dont have a class.

3. They will continue to break out individual fleets.


The Spring Fever was awesome, and is a must attend event. I will bet there will be a 100 boats next year. Nigel, Mr Ernie, and others must put in a lot of work to make this regatta happen so try and make it if you can!

While this doesn't meet my personal wishes, the general conscensus seems to be that this was a good year with how the fleets were handled. I did hear some minor complaints about having to deal with different boats - but overall the response seems to be really good. I do hope that this helps return events like Spring Fever back to the 100 boat fleets we had a couple of years ago...it looks like a good thing.

We got the "C'mon guys we're not racing you!" when we had capsized and fallen back into the middle of the F18 fleet; just after the C mark, we got the upwind/inside position and were continuing on port tack out towards the right side of the course. I guess the guy thought were were covering him for some reason, but we were just holding our course until we wanted to tack over to starboard. I understand that you wouldn't want to get in the wind shadow of an I20, but really, its not like we were screwing the guy on purpose just because we could.

Its on my calendar for next year. It makes things a lot easier if you know the dates in advance

I guess you just have to deal with it tactically if you are the smaller boat. However, if I were the F18 in this scenario, I wouldn't have been upset at that point. However, had I slowed down or born away to tack clear only to find you tacked on top of me and left me no breathing room, I might begin to get a little frustrated.

Wow, Jake, sounds like you've been there before? What I20 would do that to you?

I think what may have had him upset is that the I20 is a footin boat and we weren't pointing as high as he would have liked. Perhaps he felt that we were trying to screw him like that.

Trey and Jake is this a little chest beating here?

FYI

waltercooperphoto.com has the pictures up from the event. 1200+ photos!

*click on print sales and put in "Spring Fever" as event name*

Several regattas ago there was one I20 (NCSUtrey) that was started with the F18 fleet. It was more coincidence than anything else but it seemed like everytime I made a tack or a gybe to attack an F18 I was having to avoid the I20 on the course (it was certainly friendly but there was some verbal jabbing coming from my boat ). At the awards ceremony I discovered that he was being scored with us and he beat us out of 2nd place - that tid-bit of information would have changed my tactics a little and I probably would have tried to cover instead of trying to avoid getting tangled up. It was (is) all in good fun and they sailed well that weekend.

Go to picture 248.