Laser/Sunfish Sailing – A Big Success!

We should all thank Eric for his diligent, articulate, and enthusiastic reporting of Laser/Sunfish sailing. He has done a great job of capturing the most important aspect of our sailing – how much fun we have. For me and several Laser sailors I have talked to, Thursdays and Saturdays are the most fun we have in sailing.

This season has also seen improvement in almost everyone’s sailing skills. Many have upgraded equipment, and we have all shared sailing information, tips, and observations. Our experiment with video taping and watching ourselves sail was a good beginning, and I’m sure we’ll try it again. We exercise an interesting process of teaching and learning as the old guys teach the young guys a few things about boat speed, and the young guys teach the old guys how to roll tack and roll gybe. We are all becoming better team racers, and the young guys enjoy showing us how much better they have perfected the team race boat handling moves.

It seems that the basic idea of lots of short races has been so popular that participation has been better than ever. If there were ever doubts about the support for our short course racing with multiple formats for small boats, I hope we have put that to rest. At the risk of belaboring the point, I want to share some statistics that quantify the enthusiasm that Eric has so ably described.

• 28 sailors participated in Thursday or Saturday sailing
• 67 races were run on 12 Thursdays
• 45 races were run on 8 Saturdays
• There were 780 starts

• 11 sailors raced more than 20 races
• 8 sailors raced more than 45 races
• 2 sailors raced more than 100 races

• Thursdays averaged 9.25 boats with 15 boats on two occasions
• Saturdays averaged 5.62 boats

And to boot, Thursdays and Saturdays serve more boats and sailors per duty slot than Wednesday or Sunday!

Gary