PORTSMOUTH FLEET 2011 - SUNDAY SERIES INVITE

The Portsmouth Fleet Open Invite to Cruising members was a grand success in many ways.  It was not perfect in all ways, but just seeing new smiling faces on the race course was enough for me.  The Sunday Series had nice weather and very bad weather - from rain, to thunder to more rain.

To push aside the negative - racing is hard enough - but to add confusion to the race made some skippers give up in some way.  Our racing boats are fast and have low Portsmouth numbers.  Cruising boats generally have higher Portsmouth numbers and therefore need more time to sail the course - RC's need to wait for them to finish - moving marks while they are sailing is not a good idea.  That aside - I feel NSC can create programs in 2011 to help sailors.  Many clubs have cruising class boats race, some have 'non-spainnaker' class starts.  It can work.  How do we fit it in at NSC?

2010 - we had the following skippers try racing:

Hall - O'Day 222 (3rd place)

Greenberg - San Juan 21 (6th place) - bought Leroy's boat to sail faster!!

Paxton - Precision 18 (7th place) - missed a few races

Cooper - O'Day 222 (9th place)

Cehlar - O'Day 192 (11 place)

Crews - Jim Thompson and Gwen Jacobs (secret weapons)

Bill Hall finished in 3rd, even points with Warren Mangan, only to have fewer 1st place finishes.  Well done.  Most cruising skippers did very well on the starting line and moved on through the marks.  Being the courses take about one hour makes the race long.  The higher Portsmouth numbers can show cruising boats can win - Bill Hall had two first place finishes.  Greenberg got real serious by buying Leroy's San Juan to try and get a faster boat and contracted Gwen Jacobs to crew and be his tactctian.

Cruising skippers can race.  For 2010 we expanded our racing program beyond the ULDB.  The Portsmouth fleet added a long distance race, a long distance race course option and open racing for cruisers.  Thanks to all that helped make this happen.