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Tybee 500 Postponed
Message from Chuck Bargeron, organizer of the Tybee 500.
To the Tybee 500 Fleet, its staff and supporters:
Judi and I would like to extend our gratitude and respect to everyone for the years of dedication and effort. On behalf of the entire Tybee 500 administrative team, THANK-YOU ALL!
The last couple of years have been a challenge as tough economic times have required us all to tighten our belts and choose carefully where our hard earned money and vacation time is spent. With that reality in mind, I have made the decision to postpone the Tybee 500 until May 2012. I will be contacting the checkpoints to inform them of this announcement.
Notice of Race for GT300 Has been posted.
The Great Texas Catamaran Race is an off-shore beach catamaran race along the Texas Coast. Starting in South Padre Island and finishing in Galveston, the race covers approximately 300 miles along the Texas coast over Father's Day weekend. The race is conducted in four stages with each stage starting and ending on the beach.
2011 Tybee 500 Notice of Race
The Notice of Race for the 2011 Tybee 500 has been published.
There are several changes from last year.
The date has been moved about a week later, the 2011 race will start on Monday, May 16 from Islamorada, FL and finish Saturday, May 21 at Tybee Island, GA.
The NOR has been changed to allow for the inclusion of additional classes. This doesn’t automatically mean that more than just the F18 and Nacra 20’s from 2010 will be there, but it leaves the door open for new classes if they can come up with 5 entries and are acceptable to the organizer as suitable for the race. This appears to be geared towards allowing the new Nacra Predator 20x10 carbon beachcat introduced recently, but how about a class of F16’s, could the lightweight boats and crews handle the 560 miles of open water?
The stopping place for leg two has been changed from Jupitor Beach to a little further up the coast to Jensen Beach. This was done to even out the length of legs two and three, the Jensen Beach location has a long history with both the Tybee 500 and the Worrell 1000.
Harvest Moon Regatta 2010 - 157 miles of Texas Coastline (in the dark)
Story by Lee Wicklund -- Initially I had planned on doing this race with Chris Green as we had talked about doing it for the past few years on my Nacra 20 beach catamaran, 20 feet long, 8.5 feet wide, 390 pounds with no cabin, just a trampoline between the hulls. Usually something came up and we scrapped the idea. This year, I was hell bent on doing it. Unfortunately Chris has a job and couldn't get out of some previously scheduled commitments.
I contacted Wendy Simkins of Spanish Fork, Utah since she had expressed great interest in doing more of this type of racing at Ruff Riders in South Padre. She bought a ticket and headed down Wednesday evening before the race. I stopped by the Green's for a few last minute items and picked up Wendy at the airport then headed to Galveston. The forecast wasn't looking to favorable for a beach cat doing this in the dark and I was contemplating my escape routes should it get too rough. Initially it was looking like the weather wouldn't get rough till mid day Friday, so we should be ok.
Eaton/Clarke on Canaan Win 2010 Little America's Cup
NEWPORT, RI, August 28, 2010 -- If wing technology didn’t have everyone’s attention after BMW Oracle Racing’s victorious 33rd America’s Cup, it definitely does now. The high speeds and almost instant acceleration of cambered foils had members of America’s Cup syndicates, top designers, and all sailors in awe.
Canadian C Class Catamaran Team of Fred Eaton, Magnus Clarke, Steve Killing, Rob Paterson, and Rossi Milev have been along for the entire ride, one way or another. Clarke, Paterson, and Milev took six months off from their C Class program to manage wing protection for the largest wingmast ever built for a race-boat: BMW Oracle’s (223 foot) 68 metre-tall wing. Reunited in March, their team brought four wings to the International C Class Catamaran Championship hosted by New York Yacht Club on Narragansett Bay this past week.
“Upwind the camber is moderate, but downwind with the flap set at 40 degrees, the wing will produce almost double the force of an equal area soft sail,” explains Killing.
Eaton and Clarke raced Killing’s latest design, Canaan, to a thrilling victory today in the final day of match racing.
Little America's Cup All Tied After Day 1 Match Racing
NEWPORT, RI, August 27 -- The wind was light and patchy on this first day of match-racing in the International C-Class Catamaran Championship. Canaan, the black cat raced by the Canadian defenders Fred Eaton and Magnus Clarke, was in her element yesterday, winning three of three races.
Today, was not so smooth. After a significant shift to the south the seabreeze filled in at 12 knots and the third attempt to run a race was a success. More of a success for Alpha however, sailed by Australians, Glenn Ashby and James Spithill.
At the approach to the line Canaan stalled, losing the start and six legs later the first match-race. 1-0 for Australia. In the fleet race designed for the French, British and second Canadian entry, Orion retired. Invictus, of England, crossed the finish line first, and despite powering around the course, just milliseconds after crossing the line Patient Lady VI’s wing tumbled.
It's Canada VS Australia for 2010 Little America's Cup
NEWPORT, RI, August 26, 2010 -- What a difference a day makes. Today was all Canaan all the time at the International C-Class Catamaran Championship at the New York Yacht Club’s Harbour Court. The stars today were the Canadian defenders Fred Eaton and Magnus Clarke, who won all three races, while Alpha, yesterday’s leader, sailed by Australians Glenn Ashby and James Spithill, finished second in all three races. In point of fact, Canaan has won four straight races, winning the last one on Wednesday.
These two teams will match-race tomorrow and Saturday to determine the winner of the International C-Class Catamaran Trophy in play since 1961. This is the 25th iteration of this regatta.
Missing from today’s racing – indeed the competition – was Aethon, sailed by Steve Clark and his nephew, Oliver Moore. Seconds into yesterday's first start, Moore fell overboard and Clark crash landed into the wing, which unfortunately suffered significant damage. They had to drop out of this much anticipated regatta.
Before today's first race Patient Lady VI had some rigging failure, they were towed in to shore and the crew headed back to the race course to observe in an effort to build their knowledge base of the C Class cats. Orion and Invictus completed all races, often sailing close, but Orion punctured their wing just before reaching shore.
Steve Clark's Aethon Wing Destroyed, America Out of Little America's Cup
Yesterday the C-Class Catamaran Aethon capsized after the start of race one of the International C Class Catamaran Championship (long nicknamed the “Little America’s Cup”) and her wing was destroyed. The team hit a patch of turbulence left by a freighter for which they were not prepared and were unable to react in time. Crew Oliver Moore lost his footing and was washed off the boat with the mainsheet wrapped around his leg. As the wing rapidly trimmed in, the boat capsized and helmsman Steve Clark, unable to get out of his trapeze in time, fell through the wing, breaking the mast in the process. Both crew members would be fine, and the platform would suffer only minor damages, but what was left of the wing was all but disintegrated in the three-mile tow back to New York Yacht Club’s Harbor Court.
Click to see horrifying video of the crash!
“The thing I would like to stress here,” said Clark, “is that this was not a product of the conditions. It was a freak accident that could have happened at any time, at any wind speed. If the wing is trimmed all the way to windward and can’t be eased the boat will tip over, and these boats are not designed to do that. It’s a tough end to the last 18 months of work Oliver and I put in, but sometimes these things happen.”
Little America's Cup Racing Begins, Day 1 Results
NEWPORT, RI, August 25, 2010 -- The nor’easter departed New England today — more or less — and is off to ruin Canada for a couple of days. Its departure — better late than never — gave the half-dozen winged multihulls sailing in the International C-Class Catamaran Championship at the New York Yacht Club’s Harbour Court a chance to stop talking and start performing. As if they needed any other encouragement.
Wednesday’s racing took place near Half Way Rock, north of the Pell Bridge, to minimize the remnants of the seas and breeze from the northeast. The wind at the start of the first race was 16 to 20 with puffs pushing it a bit higher. In the first race, Alpha, sailed by Australians Glenn Ashby and James Spithill, had a brilliant port-tack start. It was a shot over the bow. Ashby is an Olympic Silver Medalist and nine-time A-Class, world champion; Spithill was helmsman on BMW Oracle’s wing-sailed trimaran that won the recent 33rd America’s Cup.
Certainly a major story line was the first-leg capsize of Aethon, Steve Clark's and Oliver Moore’s C-Class Cat. This was a new boat for Clark, an American, the absolute prime-mover in the class, who held the International C-Class Catamaran trophy for 11 years, from 1996-2007. Clark has been as important to the class as Tony DiMauro was to the previous generation. These boats motor — on the sunny side of 20 knots — and the disturbed air off a freighter set off a chain reaction that resulted in a capsize and the loss of the wing.
Little America's Cup Update
NEWPORT, RI (August 25, 2010) — Six boats and wings are ready to fly, on day two of the 2010 Little America's Cup, aka the International C-Class Catamaran Championship. Instead of racing as planned yesterday, internationally accomplished sailors from five countries played show and tell under the tent at New York Yacht Club. A collection of designers, America’s Cup evaluators and multihull pioneers weren’t too upset that a blustery weather system delayed day one.
One of the most prestigious titles in the world of ultra-high performance sailing, the Championship was last raced in 2007, at the Royal Canadian Yacht Club in Toronto. There, Canadian challenger Fred Eaton and crew Magnus Clarke sailed Alpha to a 5-0 victory over the previously undefeated Steve Clark’s Cogito.
Of the four catamaran divisions, the C-Class is governed by a simple set of rules that reward outside-the-box thinking in aero and hydrodynamics to create the lightest, fastest course-racing boats on the planet.
“All wings under the C-Class rule are the same area of 300 square feet but it can be distributed in any fashion,” shares Steve Killing, the designer for Fred Eaton’s C-Class program. They are propelled not by traditional fabric sails, but by elegant wings, rigid but with twist capability.
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