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Sailing

Tampa Bay area is a favorite sailing regatta venue

By DAVE ELLIS
Published February 23, 2005

Great winter weather is reason enough to visit the Tampa Bay area.

But to be motivated to drag a sailboat behind a vehicle across the country and miss a week of work to go to a regatta, there must be other compelling reasons.

This time of year, we usually have good wind for sailboat racing. But the reason area regattas continue to draw out of town sailors is the outstanding local volunteer committee work.

Consistently, competitors can count on starting lines being aligned correctly, legs of the course set to the wind and scoring done in a timely manner.

There are men and women on both sides of the bay who practically work full time on committee projects for the midwinter season. It's unpaid, often unheralded and sometimes misunderstood. Intensive training is done by more experienced officials for anyone willing to learn.

During the recent multi-class event off St. Petersburg Pier, St. Petersburg Yacht Club regatta chairman Bob Johnson was an observer as others ran the show.

There were a few glitches. Gate marks were not always aligned evenly, and one race had to be abandoned when it was found that a course was too near a ship channel. That's how one learns.

Imagine organizing 221 big boats for three days over several courses. Last weekend's NOOD regatta was the largest big-vessel event on the bay.

Teams of volunteer officials opened the races with signal flags, timing horns and wary eyes on early starters. Mark-set boats scurried around the course, setting bulky buoys and making sure to drop anchors instead of throwing them. Courses have to be the correct length, usually using GPS, and absolutely aligned with the sailors' wind. Shore-side organization is essential to the enjoyment. Launching and retrieving more than 200 vessels and coordinating the raising of masts, trailer parking and overnight docking and parking of cars for nearly 1,000 sailors is a job. Sailing Center manager Casey Barnes and his staff handled the work for the National Offshore One Design regatta over the weekend. Sailors were pleased.

The Thistle and Lightning classes are on the way to our waterfront in the next few weeks. They have been coming for about 50 years. When these boats first started coming, Demen's Landing was a railroad terminus with sandspurs and rocks. The Sailing Center was a World War I building originally used to train troops to fix tank engines.

These sailors keep coming back for the racing, food and hospitality and, yes, the weather.

VALENTINE'S DAY REGATTA: While no longer the big international event it was a decade ago, the Optimist Dinghy regatta drew 178 kids from as far away as the Midwest and Canada.

Principal official Carole Bardes and her team ran the Gold course with 128 boats, and George Pennington's squad oversaw the 50-vessel silver fleet of less-experienced racers.

Among the girls, local sailors took the top five places out of 29 boats. Corey Hall, Mary Hall, Teal Strammer and Maria Dudenhoefer of Clearwater's Team FOR finished in that order. Georgia Hardage of the St. Petersburg Yacht Club was fifth. In the Gold fleet, Justin Doane of Team FOR claimed third and Ian Heausler of Davis Island was fifth. Jason Kuebel and Michael Booker of Team FOR were seventh and eighth, respectively, and Kyle Sowers of SPYC placed 11th.

The Silver fleet was led by Alejandro Ruiz-Ramon of Davis Island. St. Petersburg's Ty Baird was 10th overall and fifth in the youngest age group.

ISLA DEL SOL YACHT CLUB: The organization is not known as a sailing venue. That changed this month with the 505 Midwinter Championship.

Part of the golf course parking lot was used to stage the boats, a sandy beach was used for launching and the amenities were a few yards away.

The sailors were delighted with the Boca Ciega Bay waters in the heavy winds Friday and the tricky easterlies Sunday. On Saturday, the fleet sailed in the Gulf off Pass-A-Grille, using the leftover waves from the big wind. "I think this is the best 505 event we have had down here," competitor Ethan Bixby said.

Dock master Paul Warren is planning for next year's 505, and he has expressed interest in other events.

[Last modified February 23, 2005, 00:34:19]