It's good to be heavy

Sometimes. Today was one of those days. If you read or heard about the Flying Scot Midwinters you probably know that a passing front blew out the last two days of the regatta. It's been about two weeks since then and, of course, the weather has been perfect. We have had the itch to sail so when we heard the SSS gang was going out Sunday, we decided to join them. How could we resist the awesome weather and beautiful sea breeze that has been running 8 to 12 most days? Wait, what's this forecast for a breezy southerly!?

As we are crossing the Sunshine Skyway and looking at solid heavy whitecaps from the south, we consider a U-turn at the south rest area. A moment or two of discussion and we decide to keep going.

We arrive at the club and it is breezy but not crazy. A few boats still want to go out while some decide to bag it. Then we hear that John Domagala was planning to singlehand and he asked if we would team up. That was an easy one, so we get his boat ready and left ours attached to the van, in travel mode. Fred Strammer wisely grabbed a third, so they were good to go. Jim Egan was unfazed knowing Richard is the best hiking crew on the planet. Ron teamed up with Chuck Tanner, another fan of breeze so they were good. Don and Ted tried it out but not having the mass was tough, so they retired.

Here is the wind shot for the day;



This was only the second time I have sailed a Scot heavy, over 500lbs heavy. Kim and I did sail once with another crew about her size so we may have been 410 ish which was nice until the breeze laid down. No lay down today though, the direction stayed steady, and it held up until we got back to the club. Sweet! We had a good time of it and won the day. Nothing like horsepower on the rail.

Much as I love Sarasota Bay, I don't think we will do more trips there during spring break. I was close to homicidal on both the trip down and the return trip home. Traffic was heavy, but worse than that is the number of usually Ontario tagged cars that are 20 below the speed limit and totally oblivious. UGH!!

BTW, Lainie Pardey took a bunch of photos of the Midwinters which are now running on the FSSA homepage.

2011 Midwinters Wrap-up, Photos

Some of you regulars may have noticed that the daily blog posts were a little light on content. My laptop has the extremely annoying, random curser thing, that makes me want to bounce it off the wall. If you are not familiar with this the curser randomly repositions itself as you type so the letters may be right where you want them or in the middle of a sentence three lines up, or anywhere else on the screen. This is not a productivity booster! I'm home now on the desktop so we are back in business.

Back to the regatta... We had a really good time aside from me obtaining the new nickname of "keg boy". Seems that a word like technician (or similar)could have been worked into it somehow w/o too much difficulty. But no!

We rented a house for the week that seemed to be the perfect fit, lots of bedrooms and bathrooms and seemingly good for about 10 people. So about two weeks ago I did a "drive by" since I was in Sarasota for a midwinter planning meeting. Uh oh...



A quick double check of the address to be sure I had the right place, not really looking to impressive from the road, now is it? Could there really be 5 bedrooms in there? I decide to snap a photo and email it to Harry since he had made the arrangements. Email reply from Harry; "Hope it's bigger than it looks". As it turns out the house was perfect, the rooms were big and there were lots of them, we actually could have had more people in on the deal but who knew?

So we did not get to race on Thursday and Friday since the breeze was "on". That kinda sucked but what can you do? Sailing sucks sometimes as you can plainly see;


On the bright side Lainie Pardey took a bunch of photos on Wednesday, so I am including a few here;











Lainie was also pin boat as well as photographer extraordinaire!! To see more of her pictures go to FSSA.com, they are on the homepage.

It seemed the 63 boat gang liked the Sarasota Sailing Squadron and Sarasota Bay aside from a little more breeze then would have been ideal. The 2012 Midwinters will be held at the Southern YC in New Orleans before returning to Sarasota again in 2013.

Keg boy out.

2011 Midwinters - Friday

The wind graph tells the story.

Racing was abandoned about 10am so the results from Wednesday are final. Congratulations to Andrew Eagan who became the 2011 Midwinter Champion. Kudos to Ron Kiss who prevailed over the 21 boat Challenger Division.

Full results

2011 Midwinters - Thursday

Waking up to heavy rain and very thankfull to be in the house and not tent camping at the club.

Racing cancelled for Thursday, here is a shot of the conditions;


Start time is being moved up to 11am on Friday.



The FSSA website has not been updated due to some technical issues. To see results go the Midwinters event website

2011 Midwinters - Wednesday

The quote of the day: From Larry Taggert when asked how he was doing at the breakfest table he replied "Pretty good, until I saw the whitecaps in the neighbors pool"

Not the last whitecaps he would see on Wednesday. It was a great day but a little more breeze than would be ideal. Here is a shot;



The championship division division sailed 3 races while the challenger div. did 2. Results are posted on the event website

The rental house is great and working out really well, plenty of room for all 10 of us. St. Armands Circle is only a 2 minute walk so visiting the Daiquiri Deck is becoming a habit.

There is a front (rain) coming through which will mean a NW wind is likely for Thursday. Some forecasts are predicting big breeze so stay tuned.

2011 Midwinters - Tuesday

It was a great day to race Flying Scots in Sarasota FL. We had a lot of sunshine, warm temps, and a fair amount of breeze. Actually, the breeziest part of the day was when we were leaving the dock. In one of those “it doesn’t usually do this” deals we had a brisk southeasterly which made leaving the dock a hassle.




We did the first race before the wind lightened up then went sea breeze. There was a little wait for the shift then we got another race in a light sea breeze.

Scores are not yet posted and possibly pending a protest or two.

Breeze on for Wednesday!

PS we think we had a 20 and 12 ish.

2011 Flying Scot Midwinters, Monday

The 2011 Midwinters is nearly upon us. Registration and measuring was open Sunday and Monday, by the end of the day Sunday we had about 35 boats checked in. There were only a few centerboards that needed some "massaging" so measurement was fairly painless.

Monday was the first day of official functions, that means meetings. The executive committee met first at 9 am then the board of governors went at 11am. Happily the govs. meeting was the shortest I have ever attended and we heard the same about the first meeting so all is good. Some of you may recall the class was losing money a couple years back but through cost cutting measures we are back in the black.

A practice race was scheduled for 2pm and about 35 boats participated. The weather was really nice, sunny and pleasent with a seabreeze pushing little whitecaps. Since nobody ever really wants to win the practice race I won't mention the winner by name. For Tuesday the split will be about 40 in the Championship and 25 in the Challenger division, so the split worked out well.

Kim and I had volunteered to handle the welcome party so we were hoping not to mess it up too badly. We served heavy horse doovers so with many of the fleet pitching in a dish or two the Kitchen was looking well stocked. We started setting out platters of chow and the frenzy was on. It seemed that by the time the next dish was set out the previous was wiped clean. Oh oh... More platters for them! After a little while we began to get the upper hand, maybe we were tiring them out. John Domagala took the stage for a few annoucements and to hand out prizes from Schurr Sail one of our sponsers. Thank you Schurr sails!

Ron Pletsch also had a tribute to our recently departed Jeff Penfield. It is a shame Jeff couldn't be with us to sail the first midwinters at the Sarasota Sailing Squadron.

The crowd thinned fairly quickly after dessert, there was a cool breeze that had a few of them looking chilly. We were happy to have the first day go well and hope for more the rest of the week.

I want to thank everyone from the Sarasota fleet for pitching in with food and labor at the Welcome Party!

The forecast for Tuesday is nice, sunny warm and a healthy sea breeze.

Florida District Championship - Tampa

Friday Evening, March 4, 2011

The beginning of the Midwinter Extravaganza!!
I worked Friday, and Dave had taken the dogs to our friends for safe-keeping during our trip. Beau called Dave within seconds of leaving the house to say that Lexi had already started her vacation by lounging in the hot tub---Have a great week, guys, thank you!!

As some people are traveling straight to Sarasota, we’re off to Davis Island YC for the last Florida State District Race/Midwinter Warm-up. Talk was to prepare for wind on Saturday. Folks were looking for extra weight, and thinking that gaining those holiday pounds wasn’t so bad after all. Jeff and Harry spoke to the gathering crowd and Leslie had done a great job organizing and registering over 30 boats!

It was decided, after the reserve was met and a fierce bidding war, I would sail with Mike and Amy from Fishing Bay!! Yay! Dave headed down to Sarasota to help out for the weekend.

Sat. March 5

It’s supposed to be windy, and it certainly started out so. It was good to be 3 up. The first 2 races went well, and we were pleased. As it became lighter, and, in Davis Island style, more shifty, it became more difficult, but I think I can speak for my team and say we were happy with the day. Hope it goes well for them Sunday, they are on their own and the weather / wind predictions are all over the road.
After racing, Leslie and Pat (Mark’s crew) met us at the dock with a drink cart – fun! Folks enjoyed oysters, beers, and sailing talk by the boats (excellent regatta planning) then snack, showers, and a nice appy/happy hour upstairs. Lest we forget to mention- prizes, prizes, prizes!! Paul had a category for everything, and everybody wins!! (Most importantly, you must be present to win…some missed out!!) Excellent showing of Hawaiian shirt genius – the Flying Scot crowd does fashion and style, too! Leslie and Paul and all those involved in the event did a great job. More fantastic stuff for the winners tomorrow. Mark headed up a round table discussion for the DI version of Top Gun, and the crew of the top 5 boats were interrogated by a tough crowd (not really). Good work, Crew!!

Members of the Washington Street House (our rental for the week) packed it up and caravanned to Sarasota. Harry picked a winner! Super house, super location! A block to St. Armand’s Circle and a few more steps to the beach! I thought I would go walking and window shopping this am, but turned west on John Ringling Blvd. instead, hearing the call of the waves, and lo and ahold (how my sister, Beth, says it, therefore, so do we) Lido Beach beckoned. I half expected to see John Wake out there, too, but the sun was too high in the sky for him. He would have been out there at dark:30.

Sunday, There was some breeze for the 10 am start but also a little left over weather from the front that came through during the night. After a short delay the race started and the breeze picked up. Robby Brown was sitting on first place after the 4 races on Saturday and he picked up where he left off with another top five finish. The breeze had built enough the most seemed to be sufficiently “warmed-up” and headed toward the club after finishing the first race. The RC had the same idea so a five race regatta was in the books. Robby enjoyed a commanding win and was followed by Marshall Pardey, John Aras. The DIYC site is down as I write this so I don’t have the results to post just yet.

We have a new Florida District Champion; Jeff and Amy Linton!!!! They did 4 of the district regattas and won two of them to assume a commanding position. The solid finish at DIYC rounded out an excellent season and secured first place. Marshall Pardey made a strong showing this year as well and came in second.

I will add to this when I have the results and post the final district standings as soon as I can. Congrats to all the sailors!!!!