More on the Keys-Tybee 500

This in response to a posting by Mark Shneider after a talk at the C100:

It sounds as if Chuck did not listen to my entire statement.

While media coverage was certainly one of my points, there were other very strong reasons for a fall race:

1) weather -- both times are in hurricane season, but in the spring they come from the east across the Atlantic, are larger, more destructive and have storm surge and huge surf.

In the fall hurricanes normally originate in the Gulf or South America and approach from the south, thus not bringing storm surge and big surf.., and are usually just a lot of rain.

2) Tourist areas will be very expensive and not wanting to help host racers -- they already have their regular summer tourist crowds. The more north you go on the course, the more this will be so -- they are more summer vacation spots rather than winter vacation spots as are the Keys, Miami and Ft Lauderdale.

In the fall, this is OFF SEASON to the entire venue and room rates will be very low and affordable and the hotels will welcome you with open arms.

3) This race certainly need not conflict with any national championship race. For the first year simply schedule it so there is no conflict and then stick with that date for years to come. After that, the nationals can set dates around this race.

Thanks for listening and hope this straightens out my point of view.

Rick

Summary of Discussion with Chuck Bergeron about the Tybee 500 and Mark Schneider for the Down the Bay.

Hello all

Many Many Thanks to Cris Bolton, PRO for this years race. Jodie Perkins, who magically managed to have a great hot meal PLUS dessert served on the beach till 11 PM Sunday night and Harry Murphey senior for building and moving the trailer rack for beach wheel transport to Solomons and back and finally to David Nees for the loan of his van/beach taxi. I would encourage all of the sailors to thank them for their efforts.

Chuck Bergeron introduced himself and spoke about the status of the Tybee 500. He would like to hear from interested racers their point of view as he moves forward with the planning of the event. Chuck made a couple of points. The genesis of the idea to fill a niche of a distance race longer then 2 or three days (i.e. the Down the Bay) but much less then the Worrell occurred 3 years ago.. The impetus for moving forward and creating a new race was the decision for next years Worrell 1000 boat choice, the Jav 2. He described his long history with and his passion for the Worrell 1000 and made it very clear that he does not want to conflict or interfere in anyway with the Worrell 1000. He does disagree with Mike Worrell concerning the boat selection and its impact on existing racing teams.

He made it very clear that he personally will not be running this event and will be looking for a team of officials before committing to the race. A couple of suggestions were offered by the audience. He noted that he and Rick Bliss has made some preliminary investigations concerning the logistics of setting up a 500 mile race in resort communities and that he felt that their were strong arguments for the spring time frame. He was very clear that he was targeting a different set racers then the Worrell competitors. While some of those racers might do both, he was looking for competitive sailors looking for a bigger challenge then events like the C100, perhaps as a step up to the Worrell. He fully expected many teams to remain focused on competing in the Worrell race. He stressed that the highest level of safety standards would be followed and he was not interested in burning out the race committee with unreasonable demands on their time. He was very clear that the race would not be conducted on small boats eg Hobie 16’s. He expected the minimum entry fee to be 500 dollars. He directly addressed some of Rick White’s concerns about media coverage and noted that he was not going to be constrained by these limitations. He stated that the one of the tasks of the organizing committee would be to secure adequate media exposure for the race as part of the prerequisites for holding the race. Finally, he noted that conflicting with the major US builders while they conduct their US nationals was not a good strategy for getting their support. Several of the sailors agreed with this point of view.

Mark Schneider of CRAC led a brief discussion concerning racer interest in the Down the Bay race. (The Down the Bay is a three day. 150 mile event) Mark noted that the last time the event was held the participation was very modest and the fleet just broke even. Moreover, race committee personal were overburdened with two distance races in the season. I asked how many racers would be interested in a DTB version next season and received a very positive response from at least 10 teams. I then asked how price sensitive the teams were to the cost of the event and received feed back that folks were not that price sensitive and that CRAC should price the event with a comfortable margin to take care of their race committee and costs. I asked whether the event should replace the C100 (every other year) and received an equally strong 10 votes for “No… this race was convenient and doable.” Finally, Mark noted that the Annapolis to Oxford big boat race ( 40 mile to Oxford with 170 monohulls in the way) was going to run this September and might be another distance event that would serve the local racers.

Stay tuned race fans!

Take Care

Mark Schneider

Commodore