Hi All,
We are just back from an exciting week of racing in Newport where the class held its 2010 North American Championship during the first three days. Gut Feeling followed up on their win in 2008 and is now the only J109 to have won more than one North American title (which also means Ted Herlihy now has more than one Rolex!) Caminos was second and Gossip was third. Congratulations to all three competitors on a well sailed regatta.
The second half of the week featured theUS-IRC National Championship. The J109’s really showed their competitiveness under this measurement rule sweeping the podium in Class 5 with Storm 1st, Rush 2nd and Nordly’s 3rd. While class racing is generally close, this competition was even closer with Storm and Rush posting identical point totals and having to go to the 5th tie breaker to determine first and second (same number of 1sts, 2nds, 3rds and 4ths with the winner determined by who had the best finish in the last race). Nordly’s showed tremendous progress coming up the learning curve by winning the last two races to capture third in a very competitive fleet.
Looking to the future we have some important events on the horizon. The first will be the J109 East Coast Championship run in conjunction with the Larchmont NOOD on September 11-12th at Larchmont Yacht Club. Butch Ulmer of UK-Halsey, who will be the PRO for this event has spoken with Larchmont Yacht Club and offered the J109 Class the opportunity to race on Friday, September 10th as well so we can have a 3 day event. We need to respond quickly if we would like to take them up on this kind offer. If you are planning to attend, please let me know as soon as possible if you would like to sail two days or three days for our East Coast Championship. I received some feedback at the NAs that three days is not a long enough regatta for a North American Championship. We generally hold 4-day events but were limited by NYYC’s schedule at Race Week. I personally would like to see a 3-day regatta for this year’s East Coasts but will go with whatever the majority of participants would like to do. Again, please let me know ASAP so I can respond to Butch Ulmer and Larchmont Yacht Club.
The following weekend, September 18-19th, the Storm Trysail Club is running the very first US-IRC Championship of Long Island Sound at Riverside Yacht Club. For those of you who would like to race against a variety of boats under a competitive rating rule I would strongly urge you to consider participating in this event. Stay tuned for further details on this event. The NOR will be posted shortly.
Of course after that we have American Yacht Club’s Fall Series 9/25-26 and 10/2-3 with the Storm Trysail Intercollegiate Regatta the following weekend on 10/9-10. I am hoping we can get a one design start for AYC Fall but if we can’t then entrants can race in the IRC 35 Class. We currently have 5-6 owners signed up to participate in the Intercollegiate Regatta and could use 4-5 more. The regatta is being expanded to 45 boats from 40 last year and we are again hoping that the J109 Class will be among the regatta’s largest. Please consider joining us at this event as we help transition the current generation of college dinghy sailors to a lifetime of participation in big boat sailing. One obvious benefit is expanding your potential crew list. Just last week my regular bowman could not make the first half of the event and I recruited a young sailor who had sailed aboard my boat at the Intercollegiate regatta several years ago. This is a very worthy cause and I hope you will support it. If you’d like to know more, please contact me or Adam Loory at UK-Halsey (adam@ukhalsey.com )
I look forward to seeing you on the water this fall.
Best regards,
Rick
