Hey folks,
the Northern VA Model yacht club is hosting it annual Cinco De Mayo Event on Saturday May 3rd in Reston VA. While its more than a month away Doesn’t hurt to start planning early…
Marc
May 3 2014
3rd Annual Cinco De Mayo RG65 Regatta
Date May 3, 2014
Northern VA Model Yacht Club
Lake Anne
Reston, VA
Winds: 3-5 with gusts 8-10 SSW
Course: windward with offset, leeward gate
After 15 races with 2 throw outs
Marc Smith 25 Ester65e Sloop
Craig Huzway 30 Pakinto Swing
Rob Suydam 33 Blue Splash Sloop
Jim Kammel 45 Pakinto Sloop
Scott Allen 68 Simmatara Sloop
Mike Campbell 69 Skinny Swing
Charlie Fawcett 76 Pakinto Sloop
Rick Bray 93 Pakinto Swing
Mike Russom 102 Pakinto Sloop
After nearly 7 inches of rain earlier in the week, the clouds parted the sun came out and the wind blew as predicted. We had skippers coming from nearly 200 miles away to sail with us, with a couple skippers sailing their RG’s for the first time.
The day started with the first 5 races providing four different winners, proving that this was not going to be a walk in the park, and that clean and consistent sailing would be needed. Susan Allen stopped by and dropped off Chipotle Burritos for lunch, which was eaten after seven races. With no throw-outs calculated the top 5 skippers, Marc, Craig, Rob, Jim, Mike C, were separated by 10 points. When the puffs happened, you had to ensure you were pointing the proper direction and maintain control to take advantage of the acceleration. Just about every boat broached, knocked down or showed the crowd her rudder at some point. Mike Campbell’s Skinny went bow down a few times and when one of the deck patches let go, he had to retire with unrepairable electrical issues. The only other mechanical problems were a broken rudder servo, and a broken mainsheet, both of which were fixed in short order.
Sailing was generally clean, a few folks ventured OCS a bit early and had to come back, and the occasional mark was rubbed resulting in 360’s. Several port/starboard incidents occurred with only a couple minor entanglement and no major collisions or mishaps. Penalty turns were taken by those in the wrong with no disagreements.
In the end, Marc’s consistent top three finishes and six wins proved too difficult to top, but Craig and Rob were chipping away at the lead and had a few more races been logged the results could easily swung in their direction.
Green Chevrons were awarded to the top three skippers, accompanied by etched glass bottles filled with Mr. Cuervo’s finest nectar.
Congrats Marc!!! Your win gives me some good motivation to tune my boat. This weekend I started building a ligther keel. Hull is watertight now. Putting water inside was my way to go anyway. I have to rebuild the interior and redesign the rig and I will be ready to go.
Well done Marc, I’m pleased to discover that the first Esterel 65 in the water, is also the first to cut the line ! All is in the thumbs, of course !
Little remark, a lower jib may produce better ‘invisible’ results…
Cheers
Claudio
Tarm,
glad you got the moisture problem solved…
Claudio,
I did lower the jib to the deck…Yes thumbs are important, but…a fast hull helps… the Blue Splash and Pakinto are no slouches, and Mike’s Skinny from brazil was knocking off good numbers (two wins) before his failure.
The boat is still rigged, and I now need to record all the settings on the boat. Such that I can duplicate the performance
At the end of this month I’ll head down to Richmond for the region 3. so I’ll be able to test the boat in different conditions.
Marc: do you have detailed results from this event? I would like to take a look at them…
Regards,
Thomas Armstrong
Hi Marc - congrats again, and thank you for the write-up which included the regatta conditions. Always nice to get an idea of the weather conditions. Was everyone running full size “A” rigs?
Dick
Tom,
what kind of details are you looking for?
Dick
All A rigs. if the puffs held I would have considered switching to a B rig, but there was not enough consistency to warrant the change and to be honest I think only three of us had B rigs. I wasn’t going to switch until someone else did 
Our sailing area is very protected. http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-9rcjAhteiOE/UFNy0nbtGaI/AAAAAAAAAPQ/E6DOZifCjEE/s1600/20120616+111+Kenna’s+early+birthday+party+on+the+lake.jpg so we don’t have to worry about waves or chop, and as a result of the buildings we do get the occasional 0-3mph drifter. I think based on our location, we are able to carry the A rigs a bit higher than others…
Results by individual heats.
I have not digitized those yet, I hope to have it up and done by weeks end…I need to do the takeoff from the hand written sheet to spreadsheet.
Well I am embarrased…
I put the scores in the spreadsheet… and lo and behold we found a minor error. nothing that affected the outcome. I had a second pair of eyes look at the scores midway through as well. I guess we had too many adult beverages. I know I can’t count past 20 unless I have my shoes off…
Marc Smith 25
Craig Huzway 28
Rob Suydam 33
Jim Kammel 45
Scott Allen 68
Mike Campbell 69
Charlie Fawcett 76
Rick Bray 92
Mike Russom 103
Marc Smith 3 3 3 2 1 3 1 1 6 1 1 3 4 1 2
Craig Huzway 2 1 5 3 5 2 3 3 2 4 3 1 1 2 1
Rob Suydam 4 2 4 6 2 6 2 4 1 2 2 2 2 3 3
Jim Kammel 1 5 2 4 4 1 4 2 3 5 4 5 5 6 5
Scott Allen 7 5 2 4 6 5 6 10 4 7 6 8 6 4 6
Mike Campbell 8 4 1 1 3 4 5 5 5 3 10 10 10 10 10
Charlie Fawcett 5 6 7 5 7 8 7 6 7 6 5 7 3 5 7
Rick Bray 6 7 8 8 9 9 8 7 8 10 8 4 7 8 4
Mike Russom 9 9 9 9 8 7 9 8 9 8 7 6 8 7 8
WOW — is it the weekend already ??? 
:zbeer:
It’s always 5 oclock somewhere…
I want a recount… or maybe another throw out. Getting closer or “maybe” better?
Which all the smack talk I was getting I was expecting you to run away with trophy…horizon the fleet every race…
Craig, if you had 8 throw outs, id still beat you…
I’ve told you before, if you want to WIN a regatta, you have to be the RD… Duh…
Control the pencil and the score sheet…WINNER WINNER Chicken dinner…
Marc,
What were conditions like and what boat designs were raced?
TIA,
Jim Howell
Jim
Post #2…
Marc, my apologies for my bad. It has been a bit since I was on this site, saw that new posts had been made, and went directly to “Page 2” without ever seeing all of the original posts. Your vector to Post #2 was precisely the info I was curious about.
Jim
no worries…