The 2000 Sailing season is now over in the Northeast, and it were a good'n!

     Notes from the Saratoga Indian Summer Regatta, OCT 7-8.
     Nine FD teams showed up at Saratoga despite a discouraging weather forcast of rain mixing with snow, and a downpour on Friday. The weather was instead
     perfect, just perfect. After a light fluky air first race, the rest of the weekend we enjoyed good winds of 10-15 knots, with just a few fan shaped puffs that
     either lifted you miraculously, or backwinded you with danger of capsizing to windward. Four races were had saturday, and four more on sunday. The
     Gorbolds took the first prize with most of the bullets. The Wrenn brothers took second place, despite some problems and a good wetting on Saturday. Bill
     and Doug Hamilton took third.
     There were some interesting crew arrangements. Pavel Ruzicka crewed on my boat once again, and we took a very good fourth place overall, including
     second in one race on Sunday, despite swimming twice. Aaron Pincus appeared with a driver, Matt Reichart, who has some considerable experience sailing
     high performance boats other than FDs. They were right up with the pack, and Matt enjoyed the FD experience. We expect to see both Aaron and Matt at
     FD regattas next year. Tim Sayles once again had his 12 year old son Graeham on the wire. Graeham is a trooper and together the Sayles' team finished even
     some quite heavy air races, and flew the spinnaker. Here again, there is great promise for future years.

     We in Region I, and the Saratoga folks especially are sad to hear that Greg Wiffen has taken a job in California, though of course it is a great move for him,
     and we wish him the best. Greg and crew Eric Vandenburg had a very impressive season this year sailing Greg's thoroughly modernized and competative '59
     Dubdam. The Southern Cal Fleet will be strenghtened substantially by Greg's presence there in coming years, and the crew pool in Region I is strenghtened by
     Eric's continued interest in sailing. It was Greg's last Saratoga regatta, and a very sorry swan song it turned out to be, as he was t-boned pretty badly on
     Saturday afternoon and had to retire from the regatta. The force of the collision threw the crew of the offending boat into the water, and could be heard all
     over the lake.

     The Saratoga sailing club is a terrific place. The regatta is a multi class event, so the conversation at dinner is quite interesting and jovial with lots of sailors with
     varied experience. Besides FDs, this year participants raced Flying Scots, Jet 14s, Kestrels, Lasers, and Hobies.

News  late September, 2000
 
 

Don has posted the results of The North Americans on the USA FD web site:

                http://www.sailingsource.com/sailfd/usaIndex.html

This is the year for Fagen / Anderson, apparently.  Ten Boats from two countries make this the best attended NAs in some years. I am told the weather was perfect
throughout, and Coronado bay is one of the best sailing basins anywhere. Wish I had been there.

     The New Zealand FD association has put up a new web site. Lots of nice pictures of sailing in New Zealand and other interesting features.

               http://www.pizzaz.co.nz/nzfda/

     Remember to look at the FD forums occasionally, Don has created FD class discussion and classified lists, and there are quite a few interesting topics already
     going there:

               http://sailingsource.com/discuss/

     Here is the rest of the east coast schedual:

               Cannonball                        Canandaigua, NY  June 17th & 18th

               Cuspidor regatta               Cazenovia, NY     July 22nd and 23rd.

               Miles River regatta            St. Michaels, MD    August 5th & 6th

               Gremlin regatta                  Lake Monomonac, Ringe, NH    August 19th & 20th

               Indian Summer regatta       Saratoga, NY    October 7th & 8th
 
 

Notes From Monomonac 2000
Eight boats attended the Gremlin this year. All five of the local fleet plus GregWiffen with Steve
Olson crewing, The Hamiltons, and Peter Bushnell. Peter had his young son Marc crewing for his
first regatta appearance. They recieved the gremlin trophy, and did not attempt to sail on Sunday.
Roy Stone had a junior crew also, local sunfish sailor Read James. Read had a good time especially
on the fantastic reaches where he observed that the FD is faster than a motor boat in the right wind.
I had the good fortune to recruit Pavel Ruzicka for crew and he had good fun, especially as we
managed to win a race and take home the third place trophies. Bill and Doug Hamilton took second
place and Peter and Barbara Wells won the regatta the second year in a row. Saturday's weather
was just lovely. Sun, nice trapezing winds and warm enough to sail in shorts and t-shirt. Sunday
dawned quite differently, cold, with a menacing west breeze. The breeze built during the morning
with the most alarming shifty puffs. Boats were going down all over the course and it was really hard
going upwind. The reaches were really close and fast and no one dared to fly the spinnaker. By the
last leg it was really survival conditions.
The Wells' hospitality was excellent as always, and the whole weekend was thoroughly satisfying.

Notes from St.Micheals. The Miles River regatta was another particularly nice event. Seven FDs came in from Florida, Georgia, New Hampshire, New York and Pennsylvania. The Wells' took away third place, Tim and Pavel took second and the unstoppable Wrenns took first place for the nth time. Greg Wiffin in his '59 Dubdam showed particularly good performance in the heavier air on Sunday taking two thirds places. Grover Griffin and I finished the event only one point ahead of him, sailing Dave Fagen's super high tech Mader. We did have to spend a bit of time with our eyes off the course figuring out what strings to pull.
We had three races on Saturday in moderate winds followed by a very long paddle in when the wind died completely at 3.30. Sunday was cooler and sharper with wind rising to 15 kts before lunch. The reaches were tight and we got some fantastic sleigh rides. There were also 13 Stars, a pack of 470s, and many small boats including Penguins and Hamptons in the regatta.
 
 

Notes from 2000 Cuspidor.

This was an outstanding regatta. Twelve teams attended from four US states and Ontario. Good sailing winds, ranging from 5 to 15 knots, though tricky and shifty in spots, made for challenging racing and some spectacular capsizings! Again we observed the unusually cool summer. Full wetsuits were necessary, and some even wore drysuits with no regrets. Four races were had on Saturday and two on Sunday. TheWrenns won the Cuspidore trophy for the second year running, Jon and Anna Gorbold took second and Carl Boller / Jeff Barbero took third. The Graffs tiedfor third on points but lost the tie breaker. Pavel Ruzicka crewed for Jon Sayles this time out so Tim Sayles' 11 year old son Graham could make his first appearence in a class event crewing on USA-251. They finished a very respectable 8th considering the wind, and Graham weighing in at 35kg.

Next event is St.Micheals, MD "Miles River regatta". Aug 5th and 6th. Chris says that a very good turn out is expected.
 
 

Notes from Canandaigua Cannonball regatta. 11 teams competed in this years Cannonball. seven races were sailed over two days, including several times the gated "Phillips course". This course features alot of gybing, by-the-lee running and some short very tight reaches. The weather was great on saturday and lousy on sounday, but the competition was intense with the top three positions changing right to the last race. Final winners: Peter and Barbara Wells from Monomonac NH ! Second place went to the Cananadians Steve and Barbara Graff, and third went to Jonathan and Anna Gorbold.
Top three places to mixed teams: no where else in the world can you see this in the FD class. Five out of the eleven boats at Canandaigua had women crewing. We would like to see some women drivers in our class next. Other interesting features of this regatta were three teams who had never sailed in a regatta together before. Long time FD veteran John Wright hooked up Chris Wrenn for crew and they won the first race! I crewed for Roy Stone.
Together we placed better than either of us expected, and won the "Turtle" for slowest boat finishing all races. This was well earned because the last race was really cold and rainy, more like April than June, and quite a few teams went in early.
Tim Sayles is taking soundings for a container from the Northeast to the North American Championships in San Diego CA, September 9-10. There is considerable interest, mabey four or more teams. It would be terrific if the Graffs could go, as there is word that Mexican teams are interested also. All three NA nations represented at one event hasn't happened in a dozen years.
 
 

There is a new French FD web site:   http://membres.tripod.fr/fdvoile   ,
and also a new Italian site :   http://www.fdclubitalia.it/    Both very well prepaired.

Dennis Anderson has indeed bought a brand new FD from Mader. He will be sailing it at Elba with Dave Fagen III. They are then dashing back to Newport for the US Nationals which they will sail in yet another old Lindsey that Dennis will pull out of his pocket. It remains to be seen if he will arrange to have the new boat imported to the States, or store it somewhere in Europe and thus add it to the growing fleet of US owned boats in exile.

There is a group of FD enthusiasts forming in the upper Great lakes region. If anyone in the east or west would be willing to travel to Chicago, or thereabouts, to support them in some sort of meeting let's discuss it. I'm interested.

This web site is obviously an unofficial initiative, which I undertake due to the lack of activity on the
International FD site. I understand that this inactivity is not Don's responsibility, and I commend him
for the years of good work he put into the official FD web site.With all respect, I hope the
International gets it's thing in gear soon. Everyone is pressed for time these days. I am writing this
instead of sailing, on a sunday afternoon in May, though it has been raining for a month here in New
England.

This site is primarily concerned with North American FD activity, but I for one particularly enjoy the
international aspect of the FD, and hope that all our collective resources are useful and interesting in
one way or another to each of us.

The forum on the International site and the mailing list continue to reveal the level of interest in the FD
around the world. I recommend everyone look at the forum at least once a week and dash off a
response to any inquiry you can constructively address. This is a concrete contribution most
everyone can make to improve our little community. Here it is:

 http://www.sailingsource.com/sailfd/forum/index.html

Keep an eye on the classified list too.

 http://www.sailingsource.com/sailfd/classified/index.html
 

In the US the class continues to suffer from a reputation of decline among sailors of other classes,
eight years after the divorce from the olympics. The class association has also experienced declining
membership numbers. Observation however reveals consistent meeting participation levels, and
growth in numbers of individual enthusiasts outside the racing community. These folks, as experience
has shown us, stay in the class, rehabilitate old boats, and sooner or later invest in better boats. The
internet activity has to some extent replaced the paper and telephone class association. This is
regrettable from a revenue standpoint, but should not distract us from the fact that there are as many
FDs sailing in the States now as there were ten years ago.