Tampa Fleet Race - August 2010

Shortly after the first start

Our light summer schedule continued Saturday August 14, which was also a DIYC work day. It was our turn to do RC, Kim and I brought out friend Wayne who is thinking about getting a trailerable sailboat. Hmmm, let’s see, what kind of boat comes to mind? Anyway, Leslie and Paul had their powerboat in the water already from the club workday so they offered to be mark boat. Cool, this was going to be like the real thing.

Fleet Captain Andy wisely bumped our starting time back to 3 pm during the summer months to give the sea-breeze some time to find the club. That worked perfectly, early on what breeze there was came mostly from the south but around 2pm it went west and began to fill. By race time it was pretty settled in from 300 degrees and maybe about 6 knots. Perfect.

We had a light turn out of racers since a few “regulars” couldn’t make it and two more were on powerboats. Summer racing in Tampa can be a little iffy, and always HOT so this is understandable. Todays victims; 38-Andy and Drew, 2262-Matt and Dawn, 504- Al and Andy, 3901-Keith and Andreas, 4925-Dave and Ed.


Andy and Al fighting it out

Race 1 - We thought the boat end was a little too favored even after letting out all of our fairly short anchor line. Not wanting to delay we started anyway and to our surprise the whole fleet was late and in the middle of the line. Cool. The left side looked better than the right and it played out that way, Dave and Ed, 4925 scored the first bullet.
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A familiar site, Dave in the lead

Race 2 – The start was much better, 504, 38 and 2262 were a little OCS but everyone was even including 4925 at the leeward end so we let them go. Dave and Ed sailed another good race and another bullet.

Al about to cross the finish line

Race 3 – We are amazed the breeze is still at 300 and is up to 10 or 11, nice! 38 was OCS and promptly re-started, half way through the race they were within striking distance of Al, who led and Dave who was hot on Al’s heels. When Al’s chute refused to come down at the leeward mark Dave had the lead and another bullet.>

Get that ________chute down!



Now look what you did

Race 4 – Wind still 300! I guess boredom on the mark boat was getting too much for Paul who hopped aboard 3901 for this last race. This was really a cool thing though since Keith and Andreas are new to Scotting and Paul has mucho racing experience. Andy and Drew headed in to the club so race 4 had 4 boats. A clean start and Al grabbed the lead early like he did in race 3. Dave’s string of bullets was on the line, with no spinnaker snafus Al was able to hold him off and win the race.

Here are the results;
Boat # Race 1 Race2 Race3 Race4 Total
4925, 1 1 1 2= 5
504, 3 3 2 1= 9
38, 2 2 3 6= 13
2262, 4 4 4 3= 15
3901, 5 5 5 4= 19


Matt and Dawn charging up wind


Though the forecast was for a high of 95 it never seemed that hot to us, maybe the shade of the bimini had something to do with it. So for a change we have an RC boat and a mark boat to deal with all the shifts you always get at DI and…. You guessed it we never changed the course once. Go figure. Next fleet race is September 11, don’t miss it.

I said Starboard God --------!