Chicago Area III

[12345]

Boo 3 Cribs cancelled today, little premature in my eyes. We went out and had a great sail.

Informal poll... do races get scrapped to often and early here now days.

 

[Grinder]

Yes. We went paddle boarding. Seemed a little early to call it.

Also seemed like a bad day to schedule the 3 crib Fiasco against a mob of spectator boats along the West-favored race course.

 

[Robin]

Boo 3 Cribs cancelled today, little premature in my eyes. We went out and had a great sail.

Informal poll... do races get scrapped to often and early here now days.

Yes.

 

[12345]

Why do they get cancelled so fast?

Big breeze sailing is fun, and one can not expect to get good at it if we cancel racing when it climbs over 20 kts. It is the Skippers discretion f they go out, why no offer the opportunity for the passionate fools that like inclement weather an opportunity to get better.

As a part time member of RC for the Frostbiting series I understand why on certain days for the little boats but big boats...

 

[Baci]

Boo 3 Cribs cancelled today, little premature in my eyes. We went out and had a great sail.

Informal poll... do races get scrapped to often and early here now days.

Yes...and sadly this mentality is lately pervasive and has propagated to my crew. Sail only when it is nearly perfect. After a down shift on the Mac, when I got on deck I found no head sail put up. Why? "We are waiting for the storm" said the watch captain. My reaction was "If the wind picks up we can take the sail down..." I was overruled. We spent 90 minutes without a head sail.

To sail well in the tough stuff, you need to experience the tough stuff.

 

[12345]

Well that blows Baci

All week long of fun and quite a ride, wish we had more of it in Chicago.

https://youtu.be/X3nThVJc-1M

In Cowes we went out, because well it is Cowes.

 

[Grinder]

I think we are stuck between 2 things. I think we have storms, more than too much wind. \

On Friday of the Verve we had storms. We got sent out. Too stormy. We bitched. (They tried, I appreciate it)

Here, particularly, there is almost always storms with wind.

Rarely do we have just too much wind.

I can see the trepidation associated with an RC sending a fleet out into a potentially dangerous storm, even one that hasn't developed yet. If the National Weather Service places us in a 'potentially unstable atmosphere' I agree with the hold, unfortunately.

If there were a day with just rain and wind, I think we would get sent out; it's the risk of storms that keeps us in.

We have some tenacious weather here, eh?

JC

 

[MidPack]

We did a 30nm delivery on the Verve Friday afternoon, and a 38nm out and back race the day of the 3 Crib. No problems at all, though last Sat was a real downpour (saw peak AWS of 31, so highest wind maybe 25 kts TWS?). But we were responsible for ourselves.

 

[JohnMB]

Rhodes 19 fleet completed Nationals on Friday,

Fleet went out before the storm, went back in again (with a few exceptions who rode it out) and come back out after it blew through.

Of course I understand why it was maybe too much for 30-60ft offshore boats, they really not designed for that sort of thing

 

[proOC]

Everyone is a hard ass when it comes to "dock" talk,...and how WE should've, could've stayed out or gone out to race.

We all know the ones that are hard core enough and skilled enough to get through the heavy shit...

 

[Robin]

This is anecdotal but I truly believe that in the Chicago area there has been an increasing trend of canceling racing for little reason. Not only when the weather is projected to be “bad” or “heavy” but also when it is said to be too “light” or too “shifty” to get off a “perfect” race. Granted that every decision must stand on its own, however, the cumulative effect is that we do a lot less racing and we are ill prepared (lack of experience) to do more. As a consequence more and more race committees and skippers are willing to cancel or accept cancelations as a norm.

In fact I believe that one should practice in heavy weather. While I did not take my boat into a Storm Warning conditions for practice, I have, in the past gone out in 30 kts. So we should race, and let each skipper and crew decide the limits of their own capability. If the necessity of a long rode to keep a committee boat holding leads to an imperfect starting line, so what. In the 40 plus years that I have been racing in Chicago, I can remember only a couple of sinkings and those had to do with collisions not the weather. Spars down is another story.

I had the good fortune to be invited by a British Skipper (and crew) to do a Cowes Week and a Fastnet. That boat did almost nothing but long offshore races and the entire crew were very experienced. Each of them had thousands of miles of Gale Force and Storm Force sailing, cruising racing and deliveries. They knew how to manage heavy weather because they did it frequently. That experience made a permanent impression on me.

We do ourselves a disservice by not sailing (prudently) in bad weather.

My .02cents

Robin

 

[12345]

I hear you ProOC we all have an idea of who can and cant and there is a lot of "fish" tales that get shared on the dock but as Robin points out "We do ourselves a disservice by not sailing (prudently) in bad weather."

 

[Glenn McCarthy]

Right on Robin. Local races can be seen as the training ground for things like the Queen's Cup, Mackinac, Chicago to St. Joe where once away from land, and overnight, anything can happen on the water. If you don't train in daylight under heavy winds, just how well does it work out when the wind pipes overnight in something like the Mac? This year 20 boats didn't cross the finish line, or about 6% of the fleet And the remainder of the fleet had a number of blown sails, etc.

This is anecdotal but I truly believe that in the Chicago area there has been an increasing trend of canceling racing for little reason. Not only when the weather is projected to be “bad” or “heavy” but also when it is said to be too “light” or too “shifty” to get off a “perfect” race. Granted that every decision must stand on its own, however, the cumulative effect is that we do a lot less racing and we are ill prepared (lack of experience) to do more. As a consequence more and more race committees and skippers are willing to cancel or accept cancelations as a norm.

In fact I believe that one should practice in heavy weather. While I did not take my boat into a Storm Warning conditions for practice, I have, in the past gone out in 30 kts. So we should race, and let each skipper and crew decide the limits of their own capability. If the necessity of a long rode to keep a committee boat holding leads to an imperfect starting line, so what. In the 40 plus years that I have been racing in Chicago, I can remember only a couple of sinkings and those had to do with collisions not the weather. Spars down is another story.

I had the good fortune to be invited by a British Skipper (and crew) to do a Cowes Week and a Fastnet. That boat did almost nothing but long offshore races and the entire crew were very experienced. Each of them had thousands of miles of Gale Force and Storm Force sailing, cruising racing and deliveries. They knew how to manage heavy weather because they did it frequently. That experience made a permanent impression on me.

We do ourselves a disservice by not sailing (prudently) in bad weather.
My .02cents
Robin

 

[Glenn McCarthy]

Do you know of anyone who archived Area III race results going back to say 1975 or 1970? Or someone who liked to crunch numbers like MidPack and kept a table or spreadsheet of the races and the number of entries or starters? My old Chicago Yachting Association "Yachting in Chicago" magazines only reports 1st - 3rd for each race, no results deeper than that.

Thanks in advance.

I posted this a while ago, but a fairly recent summary of participation/popularity for Area III races.

 

[JoeO]

Do you know of anyone who archived Area III race results going back to say 1975 or 1970? Or someone who liked to crunch numbers like MidPack and kept a table or spreadsheet of the races and the number of entries or starters? My old Chicago Yachting Association "Yachting in Chicago" magazines only reports 1st - 3rd for each race, no results deeper than that.

Thanks in advance.

I posted this a while ago, but a fairly recent summary of participation/popularity for Area III races.

Perhaps someone (or YC) has a stash of the old "Wake of the Fleet" newsletters that Frank Heyes used to publish every week. I recall getting them until the late 80's/early 90's ?

I recently found a bunch that I had when unpacking boxes after moving (no idea where they are now, sorry), and I recall that for the typical Area 3 race on a Sat/Sun in the late 70's to late 80's, there would be about 4-5 sections with about 18-24 boats in each. There were some years where there were MHS, LMR, and IOR "divisions" with about 2-3 sections in each of them with ~15-20 boats,. So anecdotally speaking at least, we would easily get 100+ boats out each weekend.

 

[Rum Runner]

Do you know of anyone who archived Area III race results going back to say 1975 or 1970? Or someone who liked to crunch numbers like MidPack and kept a table or spreadsheet of the races and the number of entries or starters? My old Chicago Yachting Association "Yachting in Chicago" magazines only reports 1st - 3rd for each race, no results deeper than that.

Thanks in advance.

I posted this a while ago, but a fairly recent summary of participation/popularity for Area III races.

Perhaps someone (or YC) has a stash of the old "Wake of the Fleet" newsletters that Frank Heyes used to publish every week. I recall getting them until the late 80's/early 90's ?

I recently found a bunch that I had when unpacking boxes after moving (no idea where they are now, sorry), and I recall that for the typical Area 3 race on a Sat/Sun in the late 70's to late 80's, there would be about 4-5 sections with about 18-24 boats in each. There were some years where there were MHS, LMR, and IOR "divisions" with about 2-3 sections in each of them with ~15-20 boats,. So anecdotally speaking at least, we would easily get 100+ boats out each weekend.

Wow I remember "Wake of the Fleet". We used to call it "Flake of the Week".

 

[Glenn McCarthy]

Do you know of anyone who archived Area III race results going back to say 1975 or 1970? Or someone who liked to crunch numbers like MidPack and kept a table or spreadsheet of the races and the number of entries or starters? My old Chicago Yachting Association "Yachting in Chicago" magazines only reports 1st - 3rd for each race, no results deeper than that.

Thanks in advance.

I posted this a while ago, but a fairly recent summary of participation/popularity for Area III races.

Perhaps someone (or YC) has a stash of the old "Wake of the Fleet" newsletters that Frank Heyes used to publish every week. I recall getting them until the late 80's/early 90's ?

I recently found a bunch that I had when unpacking boxes after moving (no idea where they are now, sorry), and I recall that for the typical Area 3 race on a Sat/Sun in the late 70's to late 80's, there would be about 4-5 sections with about 18-24 boats in each. There were some years where there were MHS, LMR, and IOR "divisions" with about 2-3 sections in each of them with ~15-20 boats,. So anecdotally speaking at least, we would easily get 100+ boats out each weekend.

Wow I remember "Wake of the Fleet". We used to call it "Flake of the Week".

Put together by none other than Frank Heyes who was head of the Sports Section at the Chicago Tribune. Hell, he used to print the race results from the weekend called in from the various yacht clubs in the Chicago Tribune Sports Section on Sundays and Mondays.

 

[MidPack]

Do you know of anyone who archived Area III race results going back to say 1975 or 1970? Or someone who liked to crunch numbers like MidPack and kept a table or spreadsheet of the races and the number of entries or starters? My old Chicago Yachting Association "Yachting in Chicago" magazines only reports 1st - 3rd for each race, no results deeper than that.

Thanks in advance.

I posted this a while ago, but a fairly recent summary of participation/popularity for Area III races.

Nicholas Hayes maybe? No one in current Area III admin has older records?

 

[Glenn McCarthy]

Do you know of anyone who archived Area III race results going back to say 1975 or 1970? Or someone who liked to crunch numbers like MidPack and kept a table or spreadsheet of the races and the number of entries or starters? My old Chicago Yachting Association "Yachting in Chicago" magazines only reports 1st - 3rd for each race, no results deeper than that.

Thanks in advance.

I posted this a while ago, but a fairly recent summary of participation/popularity for Area III races.

Nicholas Hayes maybe? No one in current Area III admin has older records?

A3 race results were done by computer since the 1970s. The last system used before 2000 was a DOS based system, and it was used for a long time. However it wasn't Y2K compliant. Starting in 2000 a web based system was implemented and all results since then are online. I'm looking into whether the old DOS system is available and presume results might be on floppy discs.

 

[Robin]

As luck would have it I threw out my entire collection of In Wake of The Fleet over the last winter. However, the publication was purchased by, during Frank Heyes' lifetime, Kathleen Gallagher and she continued to publish it for a number of years. She may have all of the records.

Robin