By Lin Robson
For many years we have held the FD Midwinters at SPYC in downtown St. Petersburg. Due to some scheduling and other reasons we moved the regatta site this year, to a place I had not sailed out of since a teenager.
Category: FD News
2012 North American Championship
When Paul and I arrived at the SC yacht club most of the participants were already there working on their boats. The Wrenn brothers were hectically finishing rigging their recently refurbished boat. Everybody was questioning if they can make it by the first race the next day. They did, and good for them.
Lin and his crew Paul Von Grey were the only boat out on the water practicing. There was a reason for it, the weather was not exactly ideal. There was a front coming through from the North, bringing fresh breeze over the land to the SC bay resulting very shifty and gusty conditions.
2012 FD North American Championship
Santa Cruz Yacht Club has posted the Notice of Race for the 2012 Flying Dutchman North American Championship. Online registration is available on the same site. Key dates: The event will be August 2-5, 2012. After July 10 a Late Entry Fee will apply.  The organizers wants everyone to know that all entries must be paid online in order for your registration to be completed. Check the NOR for the specific schedule.
HPDO / North Americans
Every year over Columbus Day weekend in October, the American Yacht Club in Rye, NY, hosts the HPDO. HPDO is the acronym for High Performance Dinghy Open. It is a regatta that has become a big fixture in the Fall on the East Coast, with many dinghy classes in attendance. In fact several classes held their North American championships at the regatta this year. They throw a nice dinner and gathering afterward. We had the pleasure of seeing a few FD sailors from years past, it was good catching up with Guido Bertocci and others.
Totally Dinghy Roar
The Totally Dinghy roared in, then left with a whimper.
The winds were consistently 15- 17 gusting over 20 on Saturday. We saw Buzz/Gary (2) and Philippe/Simon (1) taking turns wining with the rest in tow. Bruce Mahoney and Z/Mikey fought it out in the next group, followed by Doug/Michael, Mike/Dave and JJ/Pete. The Pegasus guys (Philippe and Bruce) showed up in the second race. Slept in late – they said. Then showed up what an extensive sailing program can do for you.
CORK
Hurricane Irene had several effects on the regatta held in Kingston, Ontario this past weekend.
After racing Friday night, NED 308, the team of Willem and Maarten, had to return to Connecticut to prepare for the storm. Their home is in Darien,CT, right in the expected track area .
We did have two good days of racing, with beautiful, but on the light side breeze conditions. Saturday morning all of the weather data was pointing to a rainy and very breezy day Sunday, so the decision was made to break down and not sail the last day of the weekend. All the data I saw the next day indicated that was a good call, winds with gusts in the thirties.
Cuspidor 2011
After almost three weeks of very nice sailing wind in Cazenovia, the Saturday of the 2011 Cuspidor presented us with very little wind and no consistent direction. The wind ranged from 0 to perhaps 5 mph and swung through about 220 degrees from southeast to northeast. Sunday morning was somewhat better, but still a bit unpredictable. The races really weren’t over until they were over as the finishes of many races were very close. In the end, it was probably the experience of dealing with the lake type wind conditions that allowed Carl Boller and Jeff Barbero to pull out wins in six of the seven races to win the regatta. Chris Liberti with Katie Coupland sailed very well in the Lindsay previously owned by Peter and Barbara Wells and captured second place overall. After exchanging third and fourth places with Tom Lewis and George Saggal, Zach White and Nick Iannacone finished third largely on the strength of winning the third race on Saturday. Despite the difficult conditions the participants seemed to have a good time as we were able to get some good trapezing on a few legs of Sunday’s races and a very nice dinner outside at the Brae Loch in on Saturday evening.
Whidbey Island: Blessing & Curse
The first edition of DWI- Dinghies Whidbey Island, was a blessing and a curse… the blessing of wind, the curse of it going away.
This is the second year of dinghy racing as part of Race Week, the premier week of keelboat racing in the Pacific Northwest, and the first year of having the FD as a class. With the expected boats not showing, we still reached the minimum of 4 for a class start: Duane Elhringer and Mike Mezaros in “Henry”, their green carbon fiber machine, les frers Jones, Andrew and Josh in the “Chelan Flyer”, an old school Plastrend, Derrick Hiltz and his son Jason on the “Mexican Boat”, an early 80’s Mader,
2011 Spin Pole Regatta NOR
Here is the NOR for our regatta in Newport. It should be a great regatta and we hope you can all make it and help us to get another local event up and running. Should be great sailing and a variety of compeitition.Â
Click through for the NORÂ
2011 Spin Pole Regatta and updates
Hey everyone. We are still working on getting all of the baots up and running, We have two boats rigged, and the third is nearly ready. Rigging the fourth will take some time, and we will post plenty of information and questions here to make sure we rig her as best a classic boat can be rigged, but we hope to have her done for the Cazenovia regattas. We will add some pictures soon.
In more exciting news, I would like to remind everyone to save the date for our Spin Pole regatta in Newport, the 17 and 18th of september. Since the North Americans will be in Canada in August, and the HPDO on long island sound in October, we will work out storage for boats between events as needed. Please make the time to come down and help us get another local event on the calander. Official NOR is coming soon… Hope to see you there.