Tag Archives: Sailboat racing

Albacore Mid-Winters!!

The Albacore Mid-winter Championship was held this past week, March 19-21, in Sarasota Florida. 19 boats came to compete, with 5 teams of our own to carry the banner for PRSA: Chris Gorton/Mathew Edwards, Khin Thein/Thant Thein, Mike Heinsdorf/Matt Rhodes, Peter Duncan/Stephen Duncan, Rolf Zeisler/Daphne Byron, and Barney Harris/Lee Mullins all made the trip. Barney was the overall winner of the event with 8 points in 8 races. There was one throwout. Chris Gorton was 4th, Khin Thein was 6th, Peter Duncan 8th, Mike Heinsdorf 11th, and Rolf came in 15th. Great job guys! And special congratulations to PRSA’s very own Champ – Barney Harris!! See all the scores after the break:

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Capital City Regatta This Weekend!!!

This Saturday and Sunday March 27/28 our annual Capital City Regatta will be held on the river. So far the weather report is looking good. Registration will start at 10am, skippers meeting at 11am and first gun 12p. After racing we’ll have a BBQ dinner. Sunday after racing will be awards and leftovers.

More information is on our Web site:

http://www.potomacriversailing.org/lasers/regattas/capital_city/index.php

Hope you can make it out!!!

Dogzilla brings home the bacon!!

Well it was certainly a better race on Sunday than the first one. BMW/Oracle (AKA Dogzilla) won the start by 24 seconds, but then the two boats split tacks. Allinghi went right and B/O went left. The Swiss guessed right and a huge right shift helped them to an early lead. That lead extended to about 6oo meters, and they held on to that almost all the way to the Windward mark. B/O hung on though, and helped by a late left shift caught up at the port side layline. The two boats crossed at the layline with Allinghi in front by a couple of boat lengths. However they had to overstand the mark a bit, and then had a really slow sloppy tack which let Dogzilla squeak out in front. B/O rounded the mark 28 seconds in front of Allinghi and turned on the afterburners. They took off like a rocket and never looked back. B/O won the race by almost 6 minutes to bring the Auld Cup back to America where it belongs.

One interesting side bar: Prior to the race, Bertarelli (Allinghi’s owner) decided he did not like the conditions and ordered his RC crew to refuse to start the race. At his instruction they “went on strike”. The ISAF PRO was ready for this kind of Shenanigans and pressed one observer and a rent-a-cop into service to help him raise flags and get the race going. The PRO counted down the time manually as the Bertarelli paid RC team looked on. POOR SHOW on the Swiss! Find the full story here:

Scuttlebutt #59 Bennett Rises Above Tiff

Here is a video clip of the winners:

2010 Americas’ Cup Regatta is Over!

BMW Oracle Racing (BMO) won in two straight races — one on Wednesday, one yesterday (Sunday), in light-to-moderate winds, sailing far ahead of Alinghi in both races.   Race 2 was an equilateral triangle, 13 NM on a side, with marks rounded to starboard. Here is a link to more information, where you can see streaming video replays of the racing.   Race 2 reruns start every three hours today — at 0700; 1000; 1300; 1600; and 1900 ET.  Here is the link for the video feed.  Note the video rerun feeds are somewhat off the above schedule — at 0730 this morning for example we saw the A/P flag come down, which would be about 10 minutes before the start.   You can see BMO achieving 33 kts on the reach leg.  See boats round the gybe mark at 2:15 after the start.

Americas Cup Race #1 Aftermath

Team Allinghi is licking their wounds tonight after getting absolutely thrashed by BMW/Oracle in the first race. I was able to watch today and both boats were incredibly fast – sometimes topping out at over 26 knots of boat speed in just 8 knots of wind! It seemed to me, however, that B/O’s Wing mainsail is a technological game changer like we have not seen since the winged keel of 1983, and the race almost as lopsided as the catamaran vs. the 90′ keelboat Cup races of 1988. The B/O boat has speed and pointing ability to spare. The commentators kept saying that once the boats came around the windward mark and turned down wind that Allinghi would catch up by being able to sail deeper and faster due to its lighter weight, but it sure did not turn out that way. If anything B/O was even faster, leaving Allinghi far astern and beating them by about 2 miles and almost 15 minutes! Allinghi had better find some mojo if they hope to compete with the Americans in the next race. Here is a video short from team Allinghi talking about the days racing. Enjoy: