Southeast/Gulf Winter Vipering

[Chris Kelley]

The local Viper fleet in Houston (Texas, for that matter) has alot of momentum right now. 
From a racing standpoint, Houston Yacht Club is tough to beat. Two tacks and you're on the bay; very little, if any, recreation motorboat traffic; plenty of room for various courses; plenty of depth for a Viper (no 'gotcha' rocks like say...Texoma...thanks.) good winds, warm water.  Fairly spacious guest dock and empty slips. 
In Houston, the weather/water temp allows us to race nearly year round so that would be a plus when scheduling an early spring or late fall event 

The HYC facitiy itself is a really nice facility to bring friends and family... (No, I'm not a member!)
Nonracing friends/family/kids (you have nonracing friends?) can spend the day riding the ferris wheel/various resteraunts in Kemah, tour NASA (just down the road) or check our Galveston Island which is a half hour drive.

[Peter Beardsley]

I am psyched that the gulf coast fleet is growing, but speaking as a northerner on the thread who has limited vacation time and who is unsure about how easy it'd be to move the boat around to all these venues, I think option 1 works better with a couple of regattas in Miami where we can leave the mast up, fly in late, go race, put the cover back on, fly out and only figure out transport down and transport back. 

It's great that people feel very confident that they can figure out how to move boats around to all of these sites, but it'd be more helpful/reassuring if someone could put some concrete suggestions for how to do this and how much it'd cost.  I know that the following situation will not be viable for many people, including myself:

- Drive from NY to Houston in January (1.5 days), then race for 3-4 days, fly home from Houston, leave only car in Texas

- Fly back to Texas a few weeks later, drive from Houston to New Orleans for MGRW.  Assuming we fly in Thursday morning and drive, we stand at best a chance of making one practice race, doing the 3 days of racing, and flying out, leaving the car somewhere in New Orleans.  Or, driving from New Orleans to Miami immediately post racing and flying out Monday morning from Miami, exhausted. 

- Fly in for Bacardi Thursday night, rig Friday morning and race with no practice, drive from Miami to Charleston post racing, leave car in Charleston. 

- Then do Charleston a month later, pick up car, bring boat home.

Best case scenario involves me not having a car for 3+ months in NY, taking 6-8 days off of work in a 3-month time span even though we don't get in a single practice day, doing an extended round trip flight from Houston to NY, a one way flight to Miami, and a one-way flight to Charleston.  I know nobody said it was easy, but it makes the odds of doing the circuit way less likely, esp. when looking at the summer hall passes needed for Newport Sailing Week, Marblehead NOOD, NAs and hopefully one of these days again, a regatta in Kingston (CORK or a standalone event). 

Vs. driving down to Miami or paying someone for a one-way delivery down, leaving mast up, getting in a tiny bit of practice before events, taking only 3-4 days off of work, doing a couple of regattas plus Charleston and only losing the car at most for 1.5 months. 

There should definitely be a gulf coast circuit -- but I think it'll be tricky to get a bunch of boats from the northeast to come down as well unless we can work out the logistics. 

In the meantime, if there's going to be another event or two in Miami besides Bacardi Cup, I know at least 3, and maybe all 5-6 of the Larchmont boats are very interested. 

[Tim Carter]

For a Mid-Winter, Florida only series, the Etchells class runs a four regatta event called the Jaguar Cup...  I do not know if you can share the course / event with them, but it might not hurt to ask...

[Dan Tucker]

For a Mid-Winter, Florida only series, the Etchells class runs a four regatta event called the Jaguar Cup...  I do not know if you can share the course / event with them, but it might not hurt to ask...

The Etchells Jag Cup is the model for a similar Viper series. And no, they won't let us in, we've asked!
(Can't have those inexpensive, pesky, quick, little boats in the Jag!)

Coral Reef Cup out of Coral Reef YC would be one of the other Miami events. We went to that a few years ago, that would be with Etchells.

[David Oliver]

All these ideas are great, but my personal conflict is selecting vacation weeks a year in advance - as in, this September I choose when to be off for all of 2012.  Whatever is decided, I will do all the races I can and support those who will be in the front of the fleet. . .  But can we try to get it worked out by early September?

David Oliver
Touch of Grey #91

[Craig Wilusz]

Open for travelling and understand The Yankee's points. 

So if the goal is to have a large turnout for a winter series/circuit to include boats for Texas/OK, The Southeast, East Coast and the Great White North (anything north of Interstate 10).  Then a single point venue with a decent aipport and mast up storage is the way to go.    If the goal to to have a travelling ciruit to showcase the boats, then a reduced number of entrants will have to be expected, just on the matter of logisitcs and costs alone. 

I think that a sinle point venue showcases the class in the media and a travelling ciruit showcases the boats to prospective buyers/sailors.  This being said, what is the goal other than sailing and drinking, for the winter series?

If ya'll want a travelling circuit, I think we can arrange something in Fort Walton (we have not only Greyhound station, but an aiport too).  If ya'll go with a single point venue, Fdub will not schedule anything for the winter.

Craig and Deborah
#100 Ice Melted

[Craig Wilusz]

I think I should be a little more clear. 

We are open for anything.  I think rather than figuring out what regattas and where, I think the first thing to be decided is what is the over all goal.  Showcase the Class, or Showcase the Boat.  Single winter series venue showcases the class.  Where a multipoint ciruit showcases the boat.  Thta should be decedied first, in my opinion, on what we all want, and then move forward from there.

At the same time having multiple events in different parts of the country is not so much as a bad thing.  In 2011, D and I had the choice to either go to Miami or Mardi Gras.  We wanted Miami, but chose Mardi Gras to support a GYA club, support a GYA Viper owner, see some old friends I have not seen in awhile (Jones and company), and showcase the boat to the GYA.  When D and I were shopping for a sportie, we were looking at the Melges 20.  One of the negative aspects of the Melges 20 was that the nearest 1D stuff was the winter series and that was it.  No choices, either drop way to much cash to race the Melges 20 winter series and leave the boat down there, or race PHRF.  Having the choice to do one event or another is actually a pretty good selling point to a prospective buyer.
Another thought is future costs of attending events, gas, taxes, hotels, etc etc, I would think that we will see less and less "big" national single events, and more and more "medium" regional events in sailing in general.  Sure, there will still be the "giant" events but costs will slwo down regattas eventually.


Craig

[Jeff Jones]

Regatta's will be bigger (more boats in attendance) if it rolls through the gulf, at least i think.  

A regatta in Houston and New Orleans would be 20+ boats if anyone from the NE showed.   MGRW could be 30.  That would probably pull some texans down to Miami for Bacardi.

Understand the time off issue, just seems quite a shame that the class would elect to spend two extra weeks in miami where there are no vipers and pretty much no possibility of building a fleet when they could throw some support behind some venue's that would benifit from the attention.    

That said, if Marblehead thinks a miami only series will help build the Northeast fleet or you'll loose too many boat's if you elect to sail in the gulf - go to miami.  Truth is, Feb weather can be a little iffy and theres a much better chance of having perfect conditions in Miami.

Open for travelling and understand The Yankee's points. 

So if the goal is to have a large turnout for a winter series/circuit to include boats for Texas/OK, The Southeast, East Coast and the Great White North (anything north of Interstate 10).  Then a single point venue with a decent aipport and mast up storage is the way to go.    If the goal to to have a travelling ciruit to showcase the boats, then a reduced number of entrants will have to be expected, just on the matter of logisitcs and costs alone. 

I think that a sinle point venue showcases the class in the media and a travelling ciruit showcases the boats to prospective buyers/sailors.  This being said, what is the goal other than sailing and drinking, for the winter series?

If ya'll want a travelling circuit, I think we can arrange something in Fort Walton (we have not only Greyhound station, but an aiport too).  If ya'll go with a single point venue, Fdub will not schedule anything for the winter.

Craig and Deborah
#100 Ice Melted

[Drew Harper]

It seems clear that we, as a class, need to find a way to better move boats about.

Paul Yound and I have discussed the possibility of building  metal frames that can be bolted to a trailer with it's axle removed, then allow the boats to be stacked, pallet style, on a 40' flatbed. A little bit of preplanning should allow us to stack 6 boats on a trailer. We would need to shrink wrap the boats to keep the road grime off them but 40' flatbeds are everywhere as are the trucks that can easily haul them.

Even better would be dollies as the wheels just pop on and off.

Do we have any shipping companies in our midst that can coordinate some trailer moves?

If we can pull this off, it should be very easy to have a trailer show up at a location, pull the trailer/Dollie off, go race, load it back on for the next regatta.

What say yee?

[Jay Harrell]

If ya'll want a travelling circuit, I think we can arrange something in Fort Walton (we have not only Greyhound station, but an aiport too).  If ya'll go with a single point venue, Fdub will not schedule anything for the winter.

I'd be very happy with a single point venue AT Fort Walton - but I'm being selfish as it's the closest venue to me, but it's also closer to both New England and Texas than Miami is. :-)


When we talk about a travel circuit starting in Houston vs a single point in Miami, except for a few boats, I'm not sure we're even talking about the same people.  Houston is a damn long ways from New England, and Miami is a damn long ways from Texas, so maybe we should just do both.  Even a small group doing a 3 weekend series in Miami would show the class can pull off such a thing, and a travel group doing a circuit in TX/GYA at the same time would show the class has depth.  

[Tim Carter]

So we could do a "Emerald Coast" tour, Houston-New Orleans-Ft. Walton, while there is a 3 event Southern Florida gig.  Then the majority hook up @ Charleston??

[Jeff Jones]

I like the sound of that, a lot!  Ft. Walton have something we can hit in March?   I might just finish that 6-boat rig i've been working on and pile on Texas boat's for that tour.

Jay, we enjoyed reading about your Ft. Walton visit and would be jazzed to sail there (as long as debroah promises no more J.M. shots)

So we could do a "Emerald Coast" tour, Houston-New Orleans-Ft. Walton, while there is a 3 event Southern Florida gig.  Then the majority hook up @ Charleston??

[Drew Harper]

UPDATE -

Just wanted to let you all know that we have a committee working on the boat move issue. It's made up of owners from all over the USA and has the exec committee strategically involved. 10 people putting their minds together to solve a problem....that's why this class rocks !,

[Peter Beardsley]

If the boat moving situation gets reconciled in a way that makes sense/doesn't hurt boats while transporting, etc., we may be in for the entire traveling roadshow, Texas, Louisiana, Florida or otherwise.  Can't wait to hear what the possible suggestions are. 

[David Chapman]

GBR 123 wants to sail in the Gulf!

but a couple of "fly in" events in Miami sounds great.

in regards to eggshells... i reckon they would switch to a viper
if they saw us plane past them and fill the bar/pub before they get in ;)

just need to go by the 3 b program...

breeze, beer and babes...