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!!!
Yes, they do race Lightnings in Greece. Check out this Video from the land of Ouzo. Some good footage here. enjoy:
Assuming the weather will cooperate, we have scheduled a powerwash party for Saturday, April 10, to clean up the Bayliner before we splash her, and to clean the 16 and 19 skiffs while we are at it, all prior to the first Sunday Series race of 2010, on April 11. Please join us — wear old clothes and come prepared to scrub and polish!
John McCarthy’s famous racing seminar is sponsored by DISC and MVYC. Details here. Reserve by March 20.
Ok, I know that with the warm weather we have had over the last couple of days we have all been thinking about spring, and getting our boats wet, but this video of Ice Boating in New Hampshire is totally cool. The sound track is awesome and oh so much better than the version we were subjected to during the Super Bowl halftime this year. Enjoy:
This is some great vintage footage from the 1930’s of E scows and A scows racing. Listen to the commentary. He talks about sailing with Buddy Melges when he was a kid. This is really good stuff.
Heres a cool “Quick Release” knot that you should know:
Wow, these kids really know how to get it done. Check out these optimists in action:
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:
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: