Tuesday, March 10, 2009

NOOD Entry Fee Reduced!

Albergers,

NOOD registration URL is at the bottom of this post, but I am replicating it here AT THE TOP so you can find it easy:

https://www.regattanetwork.com/clubmgmt/applet_registration_form.php?regatta_id=2055

Please go ahead and register if you plan on doing the event. Now, on with the post...reproduced from list e-mails.

In follow-up to Andrew's earlier e-mail (on the racing list only)
about the NOOD entry fee I want to fill you in on what has been
happening on this subject behind the scenes over the past couple of
weeks. Andrew Cole has been working through CBYRA and together with
the other Cruising One Design fleets (which include the Cal 25's,
Catalina 27's, Ohlson 30's, J/35's, J/105's, and some others) to raise
the issue of how expensive it has become to register for the NOOD.
This was brought on by the initially proposed entry fee of $214 for
boats of 30 ft length. The general consensus was that the fee has
gotten too high and people started working to push back on the regatta
organizer to reduce the fee.

In the end, it is too late for us to really have success for a
reduction in the actual base fee for this year. Do not fret, we will
continue to work for reduction over time. However, for this year, we
did succeed in getting the organizer to allow us to register without
paying for a party ticket. This will result in a net savings of $48
off the cost of entry and affords registrants the option of choosing
whether or not to purchase a party ticket at the time of registration.
The new entry price without a party ticket will be $166, which gets
you 3 days of racing and a shot at winning the Maple Leaf Trophy.
While not a complete steal, I do think it is a very good deal. Entry
to the awards presentation is free, so you do not need to purchase a
ticket in order to attend the awards.

I know that some of you want to attend the party, and you are welcome
to do that, but for those among us who will not be attending the
party, this is almost a 25% reduction in the price of admission, and I
am hopeful that some of you who may not have considered competing
because of the price will think about reconsidering that position.

As you know we are going to be having the Spring Rendezvous in Lake
Ogleton to coincide with the NOOD regatta this year. So there will be
our very own regatta party to attend in the form of the rendezvous. I
for one plan on going to the rendezvous after racing on saturday and I
hope that the rest of you will consider joining us for that party as
well. It should be a great chance to socialize with other Albergers
and swap stories about the day's racing.

I want to highlight the extra work that Andrew Cole has taken on by
volunteering for the position of CBYRA Cruising One Design chairman.
This is a position that, near as I can tell, has not been staffed in a
meaningful way for several years. Honestly, before Andrew volunteered
for it, I had never heard of it. Andrew has taken on a lot by
volunteering for this position, and he is doing a great job of
interfacing with all of the Cruising One Design fleets and
representing our interests very nicely. He has organized several
meetings and taken the initiative to raise the issue of NOOD price as
well as some other issues at the CBYRA, AYC, and Sailing World levels.
I for one really appreciate his hard work on this. I feel like this is
the first time since I have been a member of CBYRA for the past 7
years that I could really see a function of the organization which was
relevant to my objectives for sailing and racing. So I want to make
sure you all know that we owe Andrew some thanks for doing the leg
work to make this happen.

We will be happy to discuss this at the happy hour on Wednesday. Both
Andrew and I will be there. I hope to see you there. In the meantime,
registration for the NOOD regatta is open and you can get there by
going to:

https://www.regattanetwork.com/clubmgmt/applet_registration_form.php?regatta_id=2055

Please if you plan on doing the event, go ahead and register so we can
be assured of forming a fleet (we need at least 7 boats).

Monday, March 9, 2009

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!

Saturday, February 14, 2009

February Mainsheet Column

Welcome to the 2009 season fellow Albergers! This year's racing column will be written in the plural because we have 2 racing commodores this year - J Bergquist and Andrew Cole. We hope to see you out on the race course this season, and we hope that some of you who haven't raced in a while will consider coming out and doing a race or two this season. Before we go any further, let's take the opportunity to thank Tim Williams, our Racing Commodore during the past 2 seasons, for a job extremely well done. We have seen a continuous growth in racing attendance and enthusiasm for racing under Tim's leadership and the new co-racing-commodores have some big shoes to fill.

Now on to what you all want to hear about, the announcement of the 2008 awards. As will probably come as no surprise to most of you, Tim Williams and his crew on Lingin #244 made off with most of the hardware in the process of putting a good old fashioned thumpin on the rest of us by winning every regatta they entered. Together with Lanny Helms they took the trophy at the Canadian friendship team race, but the rest of the season was a veritable LinGin tour de force. A good deal of fun was had at Tim's expense during the annual dinner with many references to his 'project list' for the boat, but the rest of us should all be in awe at how consistently they always manage to find a way to win. And win they did!

Other awards of note include TC Williams who won the Gerhard trophy for 2nd place overall in the High Point scoring and Jonathan Adams who won the 'most improved skipper' award for his continuously improved performance through the course of the season. There were many new faces out on the race course this year, and that was a great thing to see. There were a number of people who *almost* qualified for high point but didn't quite make it. It would be really great to see a couple more high point qualifiers this season and I think that there's a good chance we will get there.

Complete High Point Standings:

1. Tim Williams
2. TC Williams
3. Lanny Helms
4. Jonathan Adams
5. Harry Gamber
6. J Bergquist
7. Andrew Cole

Hmmm...the two last place boats seem to have gotten the commodoreship. I wonder how that happened?

This season we have increased the racing schedule just a little bit with an emphasis on trying to do at least one additional event on the Magothy. Given the success of last fall's Canadian weekend (the biggest Canadian turnout we have had in many years thanks to Larry, Mike M, and Phil!), we have decided to do a spring regatta at PSA which is going to be on May 9-10. This regatta is going to be run by MRSA the first day and PSA/A30 association the 2nd day. We are going to try and co-ordinate it with a cruise so that there will be a good post-race activity dimension, and it is going to count for 3 different high point races. This means that if you do this regatta and Canadian races, you will qualify for High Point. It would be really great to see us get some more of the Magothy boats to qualify for high point, so I hope that some of you up on the Magothy will come out and race with us at this regatta. It will be a lot of fun!

The rest of the schedule is pretty similar to last year. We will be doing the NOOD on April 24-26, Miles River on May 23, Ted Osius Regatta on June 7, Syronelle Races in Canada on June 13-14, Oxford on September 12-13, Queenstown on September 19-20, and Canadian Races at PSA on 10/17-18. We will also have PSA overnight (6/27) and Hospice cup (9/26) as 'provisional' non high-point races and if we have a good turnout we may do these as 'official' races next year.

One other thing to keep in mind is the upcoming seminars whose schedule is printed in this edition of the mainsheet. The seminars are a great opportunity to get out and meet other Association members, talk shop, socialize, and learn new things. We hope you will all come to the seminars and after-parties.

Before we sign off, we'd like to introduce ourselves to any of you who have not met me before. J has owned an Alberg since 2002 when he bought Calliope #287. His racing experience has been sporadic, to be generous, as he has been distracted by many things (projects, work, you name it), over the course of his boat ownership. But he has always enjoyed racing his boat, even in those seasons when he was not able to do it much (can anybody remember engine replacement?)... J is a first year medical student this year and also still works part time, so he is not sure how much time he is going to have this year for Alberg racing. But he's hoping to get out enough to at least qualify for high point. I hope y'all won't hold it too much against me on the occasions where I am unable to get out there and participate.

Andrew and Ann Cole joined the Alberg family in the summer of 2005. After meteoric initial PHRF success in the 2005 Good Old Boat Regatta, Andrew assumed his rightful place at the back of the Alberg one design fleet and has over the last few years steadily worked to improve his position in both Wednesday Night Racing and High Point. 2008 brought the first High Point qualification for Andante since Lou Maas retired from racing, and brought the Coles and several of their friends the first summer of Alberg recreation. In addition to assisting J with Racing Commodore responsibilities, in 2009 Andrew will work with the other CBYRA cruising one design fleets to share ideas on fleet building and participation bolstering activities. Andrew is looking forward to a second full season of High Point racing with the goal of improving upon, or at least equaling, his 2008 result.

If last season is any indication, this is going to be a great year with lots of excitement. We are looking forward to seeing you all out there on the water!