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By Earl Mills
When I was asked if I would R/D this year's regatta in St Pete, I never had any idea of what I was getting myself in for. But I do have to say, after all was said and done, it was a great experience and I think that given the chance everyone should take the opportunity to run a regatta.
The EC-12 Saint Petersburg Regatta took place on May 1st and 2nd at Freedom Lake. Without the wonderful volunteers that we had, we may have been able to race, but we would never have had the regatta and event that we did. For that reason, before I discuss the actual race, I would like to compliment the group of volunteers. I cannot thank them enough for their help that allowed us to have the regatta that we did. I extend my gratitude to:
We also attracted quite a celebrity group of spectators and visitors to our Regatta. In attendance were:
As you see just from the list of visitors, the St. Pete GTMYC regatta has a great following. The GTMYC in St Pete has a long EC-12 history that goes back decades. In doing some checking when the Nationals were held here in 1973, I found the name of Tom Dudinsky who sailed that year. Over thirty years later, his brother Bob sailed in this year’s regatta. For more information please visit our web site at www.GTMYC.com We started on Saturday with winds out of the Southeast that held for most of the day from 6-10 mph. On Sunday we did see some gust in the 13-14 mph range, but they still were out of the Southeast. The constant wind direction allowed us to maintain the original course with only a few minor adjustments all weekend.
A six-race matrix was run to seed the skippers, resulting in their placement in the A or B fleet. Every boat sailed three races out of the six races in the seeding round. The best two out of three races sailed were counted towards their fleet assignment. The skipper’s score for the entire three races sailed was carried over towards their final score. The remaining races alternated between the A and B fleet, two races at a time. The skippers were entitled to one throw-out. Awards were given to the to the first three position in each fleet. Since this was a green chevron regatta – each of the first three positions in the A fleet were eligible for a chevron.
There were 20 races sailed on Saturday with an additional 10 on Sunday. Joe Walter posted 6 bullets on Saturday allowing him to jump into first place by end of the day with John Bottensek following in second place. Stealing a quote from the childhood fable the Tortoise and the Hare "slow and steady wins the race" by the end of the racing day on Sunday, John B. who was not slow, but steady like the tortoise, overtook Joe. John’s steady two days of sailing enabled him to do this by getting a total of not only two first places but also 9 second places giving him overall first place.
Several other skippers showed their sailing skills by obtaining first place finishes. The skippers were Ed Gelina (1), Mel Baldwin(2), Carl Burton(2), Bob Smith(1), Scott Vernon(2), John Harrington(3), Rex Theile(3), Bob Greer(1), Tim Hopkins(2), Bill Gale(3) and Bob Crane(1). We also had a tie for 5th and 6th place in the A fleet and with both skippers posting two 1st, one 2nd, we had to go with number of 3rd place finishes for the tie breaker with Mel having two over Karl’s one. There were 13 out of 22 skippers that had first place finishes, sure shows how the level of expertise is tightening up within the fleet.
With the amount of racing and the winds being up we had a number of breakdowns. Unfortunately some of the skippers were unable to make suitable repairs to continue sailing. We appreciate the valiant effort made by Scott Vernon, Bob Smith, Art Laferriere and Bob Hill who were unable to finish all their assigned races in the Regatta. We started off Sunday with our morning skippers meeting and a surprise door prize of two EC-12 boat covers that were won by John Hagman and Kent Farndell. I overheard them being called boat pajamas. We were also treated to a look at the new Master EC-12 Mold, being build by Bob Dudinsky of RMD Marine. Finally, two skippers had EC-12 hulls for sale, quite a busy morning and it wasn’t even 9 am.
We finished with a total of 30 races for a full weekend of sailing. Any protests were settled on the water. There were three incidents that require a review by Race Committee to see if a redress would be granted. The committee found each one to be justified and granted the requests.
The awards were granted to the top three in both the A and B fleet. Everyone headed home looking forward to seeing each other again in the next regatta.
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