Lake Champlain Sportboat Regatta

Jason Hyerstay · October 15, 2013, 09:44:35 PM

Our sportboat fleet here at Lake Champlain Yacht Club was a success this summer. We had six boats out for most Wednesday Nights, and for our five race Monday Night Series. Yours truly won the Wednesday Night Series over a J/70 by one point on the last race of the series, the same night Oracle won! :) That J/70 won the Monday Sportboat Series. It was validating to see that mixed fleet racing can work.

We had a blast battling the J/70s, but we would like to host a weekend Viper regatta next summer, and if it works, maybe invite VX Ones and J/70s the following year. Mark E. on #42 Mojito spoke to a bunch of folks at HPDO about the idea, and got a good response, suggesting we could get about 12 boats to come up, which would be a nice target for our first year.

The time has come to think about dates that would work for class members and our club.

Any thoughts or suggestions?

Thanks,

jason

Fletcher · October 16, 2013, 10:27:49 AM

Sounds Fun! I'd be interested in heading to VT.

When does your club open/close? When is the best sailing up there?

Cole Constantineau · October 16, 2013, 10:29:52 AM

It was great meeting Mark and Micum down at the HPDO! The regatta itself was an absolute blast; I hope they had fun! I'm sorry we missed you in Rye, but congratulations on winning the Wednesday night series!

I mentioned to them that the Marblehead fleet has been talking this summer about possibly bringing the boats up to the lake to race with you guys. Kay mentioned that Vermont may be the perfect place to have a camping regatta--get some space (maybe in the boatyard?) and pitch some tents, who knows. I know I've always wanted to sail on Lake Champlain, and it sounded like Barry could be game as well. We may be able to get a couple more Marblehead boats, we'll see.. Also, I know there are a few Canadian boats that are up for making the trip.

Either way, I'm totally up for a one design regatta in VT; June, August, or September would probably work best for me.

Do you guys race handicapped with the J/70's and Vx's? or do ya'll just start together? Seems that could be interesting. Not sure if it would be very fair for the J/70's but I've personally never sailed with a VXone...I bet we match up with them decently. Either way, I really like one design racing, as long as I have enough Vipers to race against, I'm happy :)

Cheers,

Cole

Cole Constantineau · October 16, 2013, 10:30:38 AM

Nice..Fletcher's in, so am I :p

Joe Healey · October 16, 2013, 12:18:22 PM

I would love to sail in Champlain again. We had a major JY15 regatta there years ago. I forget the name of the club but it was on the south eastern part of the lake. Nice place. I'm in if it happens.

Jason Hyerstay · October 16, 2013, 12:37:08 PM

My current idea for the format to include the local pair of J/70s and the lone VX would be to have us all start together, but the Vipers scored separately for the regatta results. Then the local boats would have the regatta as two extra days of racing in our summer long sportboat series, excluding the results of the traveling boats.

If things worked out in year one, then we could see about inviting J/70s and VX Ones and doing different courses or starts.

Up here the Viper rates 102, the VX 108, and the J/70 117. The J/70 - Viper spread is reasonably fair. We've had corrected results where we were only one second apart. Upwind, it is a pretty even battle, but we are faster downwind as the wind speed builds. The J/70s had the best luck on some of our very short courses that we tried on our Monday Night Sportboat Series. We didn't always have time to get the finishing distance we needed to correct ahead.

I am much more happy racing against J/70s than J/29s, where we just get ever so slowly waterlined upwind. With the 70s, we have actual tacking duels and covering, and all that stuff. In fact, in the final Wed Night race, we had a ten or twelve tack positioning battle before the start. I bumped something on our clock and screwed up our timing, so we ended up early, and had to dive back to restart. We chased them down the whole upwind leg, got them to tack out of phase, and caught their tail at the top mark. We hoisted first on the way to the offset, got an overlap and rounded the offset first, and left them behind!

On Lake Champlain, the wind is mostly northerly or southerly and is on average strongest in the spring or fall, although this year didn't really fit that trend. The club opens in early May and closes in mid October. I am enquiring about the camping option now. Parking has been an issue, but if we picked a weekend with no other racing, it might work. If not, we can work to find another spot. There is a huge field a quarter of a mile away where they do a civil war reenactment every summer, so they might be up to host. I will check back about this!

Our regatta chair told me that our calendar for next year will be almost the same as our calendar this year, which is here:

http://lcyc.info/events (list)
http://lcyc.info/calendar (grid)

Many of the listed events are cruising events, or regattas at other clubs (which the sportboats don't usually travel to), so those days would be open for us.

The days we would want to avoid would be our regular weekend races:

Tea Kettle
Odziozo
Double-Handed
Regatta for Lake Champlain
Lady Skipper
Ladies Cup
Schuyler Island
Commodore Macdonough
Hot-Ruddered Bum
Schulyer Island

I think I'm going to need to lay out a calendar and suggest the weeks that are open...

Jason Hyerstay · October 16, 2013, 12:45:37 PM

Quote from: Joe Healey on October 16, 2013, 12:18:22 PM
I would love to sail in Champlain again. We had a major JY15 regatta there years ago. I forget the name of the club but it was on the south eastern part of the lake. Nice place. I'm in if it happens.

I think we hosted that one. I was in college at the time in Colorado. Was the club a single-story building with stairs down to the docks?

We are one of those clubs that is only boating. No tennis, no pool, no bar, no restaurant. We do have a nice kitchen, a big fireplace, some outdoor grills and a kegarator filled with Switchback! :)

Peter Beardsley · October 16, 2013, 01:46:57 PM

Jason, if you can get 8-10 Vipers to commit, why wouldn't you just run it as a separate Viper start without any other sportboats and call it something like VT State Viper Champs?

Joe Healey · October 16, 2013, 02:20:14 PM

Jason,

Yes that sounds like the club. Some people camped on the property.

I agree with Peter. It would be hard to drum up interest with for a handycap regatta with other sport boats. I am sure you can get at least 10 Vipers to show up which is plenty for our own start.

Jason Hyerstay · October 16, 2013, 02:25:03 PM

If you guys think that is better, that is probably what I will do! There are only two local J/70s and one VX One, so I wasn't sure if it would be a hassle to include them. I want to get in as many races as possible, so I was thinking of a way to have just one start, but separate Viper scoring. If we went with just Vipers, I would probably have the whole regatta be Viper-only rather than a second start for three boats. We could come back to the question of multiple courses or multiple starts if we invite other classes in future years.

Thanks,

jason

Joe Healey · October 16, 2013, 02:50:50 PM

There is no reason not to have a multy class regatta with individual starts if the J70 and VX can get some other boats. It just makes the party better, we can play nice. The timing of the regatta has to be right to get the maximum number of boats.

Peter Beardsley · October 16, 2013, 06:10:46 PM

And by "timing has to be right", I would avoid the following dates right off the bat:

- Late May/first week of June: very crowded with 3 double weekends in the northeast in a row in 2013.

- The entire month of July -- very crowded northeast Viper calendar already

- Late August through mid September -- there will be a few northeast boats at minimum who are going to Long Beach in 2014 (NAs are first week of September 2014)

Best support for a new regatta to be added would be second or third weekend in August or third or fourth weekend in June.

Jason Hyerstay · October 16, 2013, 09:52:05 PM

The club is still working on the preliminary calendar for next year, but the Regatta Chair was able to give me to potential weekends to suggest to you guys:

June 14-15

August 9-10

I might favor August over June because our lawn is often quite saturated in June.

Dave Dougall · October 17, 2013, 03:09:58 AM

Jason...count #28 in. I am PRO for J/22 open and J/24 Changing of Colors last wknd of September and 1st wknd of October. Other than that, I can do it to it.
Dave D

Cole Constantineau · October 17, 2013, 08:21:37 AM

The August date looks good for me personally... I definitely second the suggestion that we have our own start, but open up the line to other sports boats. I'd be less enthusiastic about a handicap regatta--

Overall pretty excited to see this happen..would be a lot of fun!