Bailey White secures the Florida Winter Series title
A nice turnout for the last round of the US Florida Winter Series at Panama City, won by Joseph Bello with Bailey White winning the series on his eXploder A14 (Z). Ken Marshack and Ben Hall were second and third, both on C boats, proving there is lots of life in the old C boats yet. They even get prize money there!!
Bill Vining reports.
The final regatta of the A-Class Florida Winter Series started on Saturday with sailors arriving as early as Wednesday from all over North America and Canada. St Andrews Bay YC is arguably one of the nicest clubs that hosts a major regatta for the Acat fleet. STABYC has great amenities, heated pool, nice outdoor deck, a teriffic restaurant/bar and great staff. B&C and STABYC sponsored a free Bushwacker, a sit down dinner on Sat night, and cash prizes. Sailors roll their boats 5 or 10 feet off the lawn into the protected waters of the bay to race. It is one of the nicest places that the A-cat fleet sails all year.
Friday’s practice day was delayed due to a heavy line of thunderstorms that sat over Panama City until late in the day, and after the weather cleared, the wind died. Most of the day was spend sitting around talking about foiling, A-cats and new ways to make these amazing boats go even faster and foil even easier.
Ben Hall said “I hate rainy days at regattas, lots of smart people sit around all day and give me great ideas for new boats. Now I am going to have to build another A-cat.” Be on the lookout for another new innovation from Ben in the future, which may or may include a new wing and a solid area deck instead of a tramp.
Bill Vining and Larry Woods both upgraded from JZ boards to Z05 boards in A14 ½ Exploders. Larry moved his boards 8 inches forward and redid the trunks and all controls. Bill left his boards in the original trunks and couldn’t quite get them to go in from the top, so he inserted them from the bottom. Bill says that the in from the bottom method wasn’t too difficult as long as you had waist deep water to stand in. Larry reported a more stable flight, less fore and aft pitch and a more stable up/down flight from the boards. Bailey While took a turn on Larry’s boat and found it to foil easily and had a long stable run. Larry’s results are improved over his previous regattas, so this seems to be an improvement. Bill’s slider control systems didn’t quite hold up after a couple of hard drops off the foils and he was forced to retire.
Woody Cope showed up with a modified deck sweeper sail and managed to get his new sail to foil on his OH Rodgers built A-cat. Both Rush Bird and Woody have put Exploder JZ boards into their OH Rodgers A-cats and seem to be going better with the new foils.
Joseph Bello arrived with the only DNA foiler and was fast on the race course. He foiled in light air when no one else could. Jeff Meyers said after the racing that he saw Joseph do a foil to foil gybe that was as fast as a moth gybe. “He looked like Spiderman and his gybe was better than anything I’ve seen, even from the worlds videos. Keep an eye on Joseph, he may be a contender at the US Nationals in Sept.
Saturday saw building breeze on the course and boats were foiling downwind. The RC ran 5 races with Bailey White leading with 1st/1st/6th/4th/2nd. Sunday the RC ran two races in light air. Joseph Bello beat Bailey White on a tie breaker for the win and collected a total of $550 US DOLLARS AS PRIZE MONEY! Bailey White in 2nd place received $250 and Ben Hall in 3rd received $100. The prize money was graciously sponsored by B&C. In addition, Jeff Meyers and Ken Marshack got blind drawing cash prizes of $100.
Over two days, we had 24 A-cats, and 3 F18’s sailing on the same course. There was immense interest in the A-cats from everyone at the club.
This regatta capped off the final leg of the Southeast winter series. 57 boats competed over 6 regattas for a high point score, with 22 foilers and 35 classics. The overall champion was not decided until the last regatta. The top 20 boats were evenly split with 10 foilers and 10 classics.
Bailey White ended up winning the B&C Perpetual trophy for the series and Zhik sponsored gifts for the top three sailors in the classic and foiler divisions. The foilers and classics battled it out to the end, and before Ken Marshack ripped his finger nail off in Orlando sailing in too windy conditions, he was in close competition behind Bailey by 4 points. The top three boats in this series were a mix of foilers and classics with Bailey on an eXploder 15 foiler with Ken Marshack and Ben Hall on DNA classic boats.
The US system of scoring the foilers and classics together, while also acknowledging the top finishers in the classic and foiler divisions is working well. No one has complained how the class scored this winter series. Sailing a foiling boat does not guarantee a win, as evidenced by Ben Hall, Ken Marshack, John Harper, Mike Krantz and Jeff Meyers all sailing classic boats. All of the above have been competitive in this series, and Ben and Ken were only just barely beaten by a very talented Bailey White for the series win.
Personally I see this model working well into the future. In the US we have very few regattas with perfect foiling weather and many foilers tend to put their boats into skim mode when the wind gets to be too much, or too gusty. On the other side of the wind scale, the classic boats, and especially some of the straight board boats are very hard to beat when the wind is light. It will be interesting to see what the future holds for the A-cat class, but I think that our scoring system will continue to work. The US Class has experienced its strongest year with 85 dues paid members (to date) and 125 active A-cat sailors in the US. The US A-cat goal is 100 dues paid members, and 125 active A-cats. We are well on our way to meeting and exceeding that goal.
Pics are here: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/1bc0s7rns1psvrs/AAB_pw1qjFEB9qjx8OuI-9nAa?dl=0
All photos Mary Ann Beck
