March Mainsheet Column

Hello again Albergers!

We had a great racing seminar this month. We started off with a discussion of the schedule which I will talk about more below. Then Andrew Cole led a great discussion on racing rules, and in particular changes to the RRS in the new edition. We finished off with a racing round table which included past high point champions Tim Williams, CB Currier, and Rolf 'Towney' Townshend, as well as rules wizard Andrew Cole. Mike, Pat, Rachel, and Max Meinhold hosted the after party and a good time was had by all. I'd like to recognize Richard Hazelgrove who drove all the way up from Mobjack Bay, VA to participate in the seminar. Hopefully it was a worthwhile trip for him!

Our next get-together is going to be a happy hour social at the Rusty Scupper in Baltimore's Inner Harbor (where I am living on my boat). It will be on 3/11 from 6 PM until you decide to leave. Everybody is welcome and I hope to see some of you there!

On the subject of schedule, we have worked hard to put together an action-packed year for everybody in 2009. One of my goals as racing commodore is to promote crossover between racing and cruising because I believe we are all going to maximize the amount of fun that we have enjoying each other and our boats if we have racers cruising and cruisers racing. We have tried to promote this crossover in the schedule by creating events which combine both cruising and racing. It is my hope that some of the people who have traditionally been more of exclusive racers will take the opportunity to participate in some cruising, and some of those who have traditionally been more cruising-oriented will try their hand at doing some racing.

The first opportunity for this kind of crossover is going to be the 2009 NOOD regatta which will take place in Annapolis from April 24-26. On the afternoon/evening of the 25th, we are going to have the spring rendezvous at the Bay Ridge clubhouse in Lake Ogleton. This is a location which is highly convenient to the racing area, and I am told that we can keep our boats at anchor in lake ogleton overnight on Friday and Saturday nights and that we can do touch-and-go at the dock there to pick up and drop off our crews. So bring your dinghies and make a weekend out of it. The rendezvous will be announced in this edition of the mainsheet, so I expect the details of that are going to be forthcoming. The NOOD regatta is a great opportunity to have a lot of racing in a short time, so I hope that you will all consider participating. The online registration is available as of this writing. Tim Williams is the regatta co-ordinator, so if you have any questions about the regatta, don't hesitate to contact him.

Another event that I want to take a moment to highlight is the Magothy River A30 Spring Series which will be happening out of PSA on 5/9-10. This is going to be a highly fun, low-key event which will include 3 High Point qualified races. What this means is that if you do the Spring Series and the Canadian Regatta in the fall, you will have enough races to qualify for High Point without ever leaving the Magothy River! So I hope that some of you folks who are up on the Magothy will get out and participate in these races. If last fall's international regatta at PSA is any indication, they will be a ton of fun!

Finally, I have one other thing I want to highlight. As a continuation of a tradition that Tim started, I have decided to keep an online weblog (aka 'blog') of the racing commodoreship. So I will be regularly posting stories, regatta reports, pictures, and other things to this blog. You can access the blog at http://alberg30racing.blogspot.com (note there is no 'www' in the URL). I will also send out reminder notices on the racing e-mail list. If you are not subscribed to the racing e-mail list, please do that so you can keep abreast of updated information. You can subscribe to the list on the www.alberg30.org website. Also, we will keep the most up to date schedule information, including Notice of Race, Sailing Instructions, online registration, and results on the google calendar that I have been announcing on the racing list (and which you will also find on the blog). So those are your information sources!

Get out your calendar, call your crew, clean your sails, and ready your lines, because it's going to be an awesome 2009 Alberg 30 Racing season and I am really looking forward to seeing all of you on the water! Please don't hesitate to contact me if you have questions, comments, or suggestions!