USACA

A-cats converged on Virginia Beach for the annual Sail-the-Bay regatta on May 22/23, including those traveling from West River Sailing Club and as far as Tennessee (always good to see you Joe!). Local Hobie Fleet 32 was gracious enough to allow us to crash their party. In return, regatta management expertise, in the form of A.J. Picillo and Brendan Drinkwater, were stong-armed into orchestrating the on-the-water festivities as co-PRO's.

Fleets included the A-cats, Open, Hobie single and double handed classes.
Several A's arrived early on Friday to get familiar with the condition, their patience was rewarded when the cloud cover burnt away leaving a sunny day with 8-10knots of breeze.

Friday night included a gathering at Tracy Oliver's house for a casual cook-out with intense ring toss competition. Some competitors chose to handicap themselves greater than others by consuming more rum and getting less sleep.

Saturday dawned early for those who indulged in Friday's late night festivities. The race committee set a square windward-leeward course at the mouth of the bay that required little movement through the day as we were blessed with 8-12 knots of steady wind allowing for some early wild thinging. It only took the first down wind run, playing the swells and current to remember how great a venue this can be for cats! A.J. , Brendan and crew did a great job and got 6 quality races in.

Tony Arends sailing his latest creation, Predator, consistently lead the fleet with some showing speed up wind and others showing speed down wind but none with a better combined pace then Tony. I think everyone showed flashes of speed and a general improvement as the rust was worked out.

With Saturday night came the regatta party hosted by Fleet 32 and held at a favorite local's haunt, Hot Tuna, and included great food and drink. A Raffle was made possible by the generosity of event sponsors ...........

With Sunday came an overcasted sky but respectable wind. Three races were finished with only one major shift. Conditions varied, ranging from early wild thing to mild thing and that difficult grey zone in between. Once again Tony set the pace. The class showed an unusual lack of aggression at the starting line until the last race when several were flagged as OCS making for an interested scrambling of the fleet.   A.J. and Brendan were prepared to keep going but relented to the sailor’s fatigued expressions.  It was hard to leave the water after two wonderful days.  We can only hope that the Chesapeake will give us more of these conditions this season.

The awards presentation included wonderful trophies in the form of framed and matted photographs of the actual winning sailor!  These were made possible by local photographer Matt Hartman (images can be seen at www.matthartman.com). http://mphartman.zenfolio.com/p770464218
Hopefully the class can build on the year’s success and entice others to make the trip.

A Class
Sail The Bay 2010
Overall
Sailed: 9, Discards: 0, To count: 9, Entries: 10, Scoring system: Appendix A

Rank	SailNo	Club	Skipper	R1	R2	R3	R4	R5	R6	R7	R8	R9	Total	Nett
1st	296	WRSC	Tony Arends	1.0	1.0	1.0	1.0	1.0	1.0	1.0	1.0	1.0	9.0	9.0
2nd	135	Hobie Fleet 32	Tracy Oliver	2.0	2.0	3.0	2.0	3.0	6.0	2.0	3.0	2.0	25.0	25.0
3rd	263	Hobie Fleet 32	Kevin Baum	8.0	3.0	2.0	3.0	2.0	3.0	6.0	2.0	6.0	35.0	35.0
4th	193	WRSC	Chris Brown	7.0	5.0	6.0	4.0	4.0	5.0	5.0	5.0	3.0	44.0	44.0
5th	293	Hobie Fleet 32	Ron Roth	5.0	7.0	4.0	5.0	5.0	2.0	3.0	4.0	11.0 OCS	46.0	46.0
6th	139	Hobie Fleet 32	Dan Berger	4.0	4.0	5.0	6.0	7.0	7.0	9.0	7.0	4.0	53.0	53.0
7th	108	WRSC	Bob Orr	3.0	6.0	7.0	7.0	8.0	9.0	4.0	8.0	7.0	59.0	59.0
8th	148	WRSC	Chris Ford	11.0 DNS	11.0 DNS	11.0 DNS	8.0	6.0	4.0	7.0	6.0	11.0 DNS	75.0	75.0
9th	235		Joe Sparks	6.0	8.0	9.0	9.0	11.0 DNS	11.0 DNS	8.0	9.0	5.0	76.0	76.0
10th	157	Hobie Fleet 32	Spencer Greer	9.0	11.0 DNF	8.0	10.0	9.0	8.0	10.0	10.0	8.0	83.0	83.0

 

Read more in the Predator Blog about Virginia Beach