Where are Footy Regattas posted? The AMYA does not list any on their Calendar and I think it should. All other fleets seem to be posted there.
I have searched various forums and so far no luck. Individual regattas such as Titusville & CT have been found, so there are a couple.
ffastffrank - The regatta announcements on the AMYA Calendar are primarily for regional and National events in the various classes, and other significant regattas. By listing your race on the Calendar it becomes officially sanctioned and open to all AMYA members. Many clubs don’t list their racing schedule on the Calendar because they may run a point series that is not an open invitation type or may not want to host non-club entrants. While you may be welcome to participate in one or two races this is club level racing and usually are internal affairs.
What you are really interested in is organized Footy racing, and except for the few races that are announced on the Footy threads and the few clubs that have enough participation to add a few races to their club’s schedule there really isn’t any. The Footy is a brand new class and while its growth worldwide has been quite remarkable it is not so well established here in the US as to have Chevron level regattas or a National Championship race to list on the AMYA Calendar. YET!
There are a cadre of traveling competitive sailors that show up at races far afield. Bill Hagerup just returned from a strong showing in the UK. Graham McAllister of Scalesailing also hits the road on occasion. And from Long Island here in the NYC area Scott Spacie has been quite active traveling to support Footy racing. You might try contacting them through the e-mail service on the forum to see if there any upcoming events that they might be going to.
Above all be patient, the Footy class will reach critical mass here in the US. Participation will grow, these boats are too engaging for it not to. I expect that in the near future there will be many regattas for these little boats, so many that it will be difficult to decide which ones to attend.
Frank, Niel’s comments are very well said.
Given that we are a young class, we need people who want to race to host events. If you (any of you, not just ffastfrank) can’t find one to attend, how about starting one at your club?
By the way, Frank, the Daytona club holds Footy club races regularly, so you might be able to race with them.
Bill
We will soon have three Footy’s in SE Michigan that I know about and will try to get some races started. If there are other Footy’s in our area, we would like to hear from them. When we do plan a race, it would be helpful to have a single place in this forum to announce them so others can find them easily.
Right now it takes some searching to find the CT and Titusville races. There may be others? How about “Sticky” forums such as USA Footy Races or EURO Footy Races, Canadian, etc? Any club racing Footy’s could post here if they are open to having visitors join them. I would think most clubs would welcome new Footy sailors at this point in our growth.
If a Sticky is created, maybe the first one can be a sample showing the required information. Users could then just copy and paste and fill in the blanks.
If this makes sense, I would be willing to work with others to create this as a few more eyes would ensure the minimum info in included. Here is an initial stab:
Date(s) __________________________
Weekly Event(Yes/No) __________
Start Time _______________________
End Time _________________________
City _________________ State _____
Address __________________________
Pond Map Web Link ______________
Private Mail ______________________
Trophies (Yes/No) _______________
Comments _______________________
As a Brit, I am slightly reluctant to stick my fingers into American pies - but…
If my understanding is right,the position in the USA is not very different from that here in Britain. A very high proprtion of Footy owners here are not members of MYA affiliated clubs (this is equivalent to not being AMYA members). Here the Footy is not an MYA manged class, but it is MYA supported. This means that we can largely do our own thing so long as we do not do anything to which the MYA objects too violently.
Currently we have one event a month plus the Euro GP listed in the MYA calendar. These are spread across England (for unfortunate political reasons there are none in Scotland). I haven’t checked, but I guess that the area is roughly that of New England. We are getting substantial movment over that area. Britain has pretty good roads, but fuel is MUCH more expensiv than in the USA.
Next year the class will be putting out its own calendar uite independently of the MYA or any MYA affiliated clubs. We aleady have one local league in the north Midlands materminded by Peter Hubbard and another run largely by Roger Stollery in outer London south of the Thames. I am hoping that we will soon have others in Southampton/Portsmouth, western Kent and the Southern Cotswolds.
To make things hapen, you have to push, push and push again. A lot of people with Footys are new to radio sailing. Many boats started off as one-off projects destined to be sailed twice and put o a shelf in the garage. We have prowled the internet forums to locte boats and get them to register, wooed them to come for their first race, spent a fortune on phone calls (I an known as the Gentleman Keeper of the Privy Thumbscrew) to get people to make the leap of actually getting in their car and (potetially~) making fools of themselves. Of course they do not make fools of themselves: they are surrounded by sympathetic Footy people who will do almost anything to help. Almost all of them come back for more.
I know that the USA is very different from Britain in both attitudes and demographics, but I hope this helps.:zbeer::graduate:
Hi Angus and Other Respondents
I am totally new to Footy’s and sail 3 other classes in Florida during Winter months for only 3 years. I truly enjoy our internet sailing community and Footy sailing friends from around the world. I hope this enjoyable experience lasts forever which at my age may.
In our Florida retirement community (AMYA club #264), we have many totally new skippers that in the past would sail a few races and give up because the experienced sailors did the horizon victories all the time.
I developed an audio start tape that staggers 4 starts on 20 second intervals with 10 second countdowns on each. Now instead of having 15-20 boats jam up at the starts, they crowd up at the finish line. This makes the race a lot more exciting for all and has led to some nice growth in our club and participation by all.
You can setup a system to move skippers to various handicap times based on results or simply let them pick their own colors (Red 60, Orange 40, Yellow 20 and Green 0) seconds handicap times. It is a great feeling to see the new skippers win and watch the excitement grow.
If any of you want a copy of my male voice MP3 handicap start tape, send me a PM. I simply ask that anyone wanting a copy, send me a request, don’t copy from others. I play my copy with my phone, iPod or cheap Coby MP3 player depending on the situation.
Give it a try and share your successes, failures and modifications with our forum members.
Thanks for listening, Frank
You can also keep an eye on the racing section of the Footy homepage. I’ll get the CT and FL regattas listed soon.
http://footy.rcsailing.net/racing.php
Welcome to Footydom, hope to see you at a pond sometime.
John
That would appear to be a good idea Frank. The easier we can make it to find events the more likely people will attend. Entry levels at Footy regattas do appear to be climbing here in the USA and people are travelling remarkable distances to race. We have a great ‘product’ so now it’s all about marketing perhaps.
Here in Sheboygan, WI we have had success with the Sheboygan Footy Fest over two years and hope to continue to increase the attending fleet. We are trying to run a monthly series but with only four regular skippers, two with young families, we are struggling. These events are not club only races so we are happy to throw them open to anyone who would like to attend so long as we can get a fleet of 4 or more for any one race day. If you are interested please PM me for details.
Graham
Hi Graham
If you and others send me the data, I will merge them into a single post showing whats on the calendar. I will try to keep them updated so only future events are shown. I will delete the out-of-date items. This way, just simply go to the last post and it should list just upcoming events without having to read a bunch of posts. Send me a PM and I will return my email address. Any improvements/suggestions welcome.
When you send in your data, simply copy the suggested format above into your email and fill in the blanks. Sounds simple to me.
What do you Footy skippers think?
Let more Footy racing begin. 
Frank
Sounds good Frank and thank you for volunteering to do the work. As well as asking organisers to send the details it will probably take a certain amount of web trawling to collect event details too. If you can get a thread started then maybe it can be sticky’ed later.
Graham
Regardless if local, regional or national US races - this is the information that should be submitted to the AMYA website and also to the Model Yachting Editor. AMYA’s mission is to support and promote model yachting - this certainly seems like one of those ways!
Then again - I could be wrong, I have been in the past… a couple of times. 
:rolleyes:
Agreed Dick, I had been under the impression though that only AMYA club organised events could be publicised through the AMYA. If that is wrong then I will let them know about next years Sheboygan Footy Fest at an appropriate time.
What Frank proposed here would be international so able to be a ‘one stop shop’ for all of our readers. No harm in repeating race info in as many places as possible.
Graham