GBCA Discussion Forum

Dobbs Davis, the chief measurer for ORC in the United States is coming down later this month to measure boats. Exact day(s) to be determined.

Tom Sutton (J-35 Leading Edge)and I (J-109 Airborne) are signed up and we hope to get more boats to split Dobbs travel costs among all who sign up.

The purpose of measurement is to get an international ORC certificate instead of a club certificate.  An international ORC certificate is only needed for international events or if you want your ORC certificate to reflect the exact weight of your boat. The club certificate is fine for Galveston Bay racing.

The measurement cost is $20 per ft.

Contact me at dc1sail@comcast.net if you want your boat measured.

The cost to get an ORC club certificate from US Sailing varies by boat length. A 22 ft. boat would cost $66.  It is approximately $120 for a 30ft boat and $160 for a 40ft boat. 

To apply for a club certificate go to https://www.ussailing.org/competition/offshore/request-a-rating/

GBCA offers an ORC class in many events, as do the other local clubs.  Larger events such as Charleston Race Week moved to ORC back in 2017 and no longer offer PHRF.  We can expect this trend to continue

Please join us for 2023 GBCA seminar series !

The first seminar, Introduction to Racing, will be held Saturday February 11th .  This seminar is aimed at skippers and crew new to racing.  It will cover the preparation of the boat, skipper and crew for racing in Galveston Bay and offshore. The seminar will also cover the rules of racing with emphasis on the mark rounding situations typical of the summer rum races. 

The second seminar, Sail Trim, will be held Saturday March 11th.  This seminar is a  comprehensive look at making your boat go fast with proper sail trim.  The seminar covers how to trim the main, genoa/jib and both symmetrical and asymmetrical spinnakers.  It also covers the type of control hardware needed to trim each sail.

The final seminar, Strategy & Tactics, will be held Saturday April 8th.  This course is an entry level look at the key elements of strategy / boat to boat tactics required for success on the race course

All seminars will start at 9am at the GBCA club house and will include lunch, we expect to finish by 2pm.  The cost for each seminar is TBD

Please join us for the 2022 GBCA Seminar Series:

Seminar #1, Saturday, February 26th: Please join Dave Christensen, GBCA BOG member, for "Introduction to Racing for Skippers / Crew & the Rules of Racing".   This seminar focuses on how to get involved in racing sail boats from the perspective of both new skippers / crew as well as how to prepare the boat, skipper and crew for racing.  The course also runs around the race course focusing on the key rules at the start, weather mark, leeward mark and finish line.

Seminar #2, Saturday, March 12th: Please join Chris May, GBCA Fleet Captain, for "Introduction to Race Committee".  The seminar will cover serving on the race committee, covering the functions of the signal and mark set boats to set up the course, managing the starting sequence and recording the finishes.  Serving on race committee is fun and provides a different racing experience.  GBCA needs to increase the pool of members who can serve on a race committee !!

Seminar #3, Saturday, March 26th: Please join Dave Christensen, GBCA BOG member, for "A Comprehensive Look at Sail Trim", covering the Genoa/ Jib, Mainsail and both Symmetrical & A-symmetrical spinnakers.  Course participants will be provided with a detailed sail trim matrix for each sail showing control settings in various wind and wave conditions.

Seminar #4, Saturday, April 30th: Please join Dave Christensen, GBCA BOG member, for "An Introduction to Racing Strategy & Boat to Boat Tactics".  Strategy stands at the apex of sailboat racing skills.  No amount of boat speed can compensate for being on the wrong side of a wind shift. Should you lee bow or duck that starboard tack boat ?.... the answer is driven by your understanding of strategy.  If you are new to racing this seminar will help you move up the skills ladder.

The seminars will be held at the GBCA club house, lunch is included.  Seminars will start at 9am and will generally end between 2-3pm.  Cost for seminars 1,3 & 4 is $15.  Seminar #2, Intro to Race Committee, is free and will end before noon.   The club is looking at a remote option, details to be determined. 

Our friend and longtime crew member AJ Taylor passed away last night at his home in the Woodlands.  AJ is survived by his daughters Jordan, Morgan and Corbin and two grandchildren Joshua and Oliver (with another about to arrive).

AJ was diagnosed with a brain tumor in the late spring of 2017. 

AJ was a great sailor and loved both sailing and racing.  He practically grew up sailing in Detroit, his family of five would anchor out on a Ranger 22 !!   He was adept at every job on the boat – fore deck (he was a certified member of the Fore deck Union - "just shut up and drive"), trimming, driving, strategy and tactics.

I have many great memories of AJ, his love of Sponge Bob Square Pants (resulting in making Sponge Bob our boat's mascot), his fear of bananas on the boat, his love of the Sydney Hobart race (he watched the start each year), sitting on Airborne's transom after a day's racing dragging his feet in the water, drinking a Heineken, seeming lost in thought.

My favorite memory is watching him trying to keep his then 2 year old grandson Joshua from jumping off Airborne's bow on a family cruise and the obvious pleasure he experienced sailing with the toddler.

We will miss him. 

Funeral arrangements TBD

Dave Christensen
Skipper
S/V Airborne

Galveston Bay Racing Community

Cam from Sea Bags Maine (www.seabags.com) will be at Lakewood Yacht Club prior to the J/ Fest 2016 skippers meeting (Friday 10/28 at 7:30).  He will be on site at the club from 5-7:15 pm collecting your worn out sails and discussing trade options for Sea Bags items.  Since 1999 Sea Bags has been recycling worn out sails in Portland, ME.  Typically, they will trade a Sea Bags item per sail, based on the size and condition of the sail.  Any questions please reach out cam@seabags.com.  You do not have to be racing in J/ Fest to stop by LYC and drop off your old sails.

Check out the sample sea bag on the attachment.  Great opportunity to clear out your old sails and recycle them into something useful.

If you own a J/Boat please join us for a weekend of racing on Galveston Bay hosted by Lakewood Yacht Club.  The weather at the end of October is some of the best of year; warm water, cool temperatures and plenty of wind. Early sign up's get regatta tech shirts for the entire crew!   Saturday night will feature J/Fest's traditional Frogmore Stew (Shrimp, Shrimp.... and more Shrimp) with entertainment by the LC Roots Band.

Check out the new J/Fest web site and register at http://www.jfestsouthwest.com/, looking forward to a great turnout this year !

J/ Fest Southwest will take place on Galveston Bay Oct 29, 30th.   If you own a J/Boat but cannot sail the event please consider chartering your boat to a qualified skipper and crew.  We have out of town crews that want to charter a local J/Boat.

Please let me know by email. 

Dave Christensen
dc1sail@comcast.net

Please join us on Saturday July 30th for the third seminar in GBCA's Learn to Race Series: Strategy & Tactics

Strategy – how to sail the course fastest in the absence of other boats
   Wind Conditions: oscillating, persistent & mixed wind conditions
   Sources of Weather information
   Upwind & Downwind Strategy in different wind conditions
   Typical Weather systems in Galveston Bay:  Cold Front,  Sea Breeze, impact on strategy
   Rum  & Icicle Race – Issues unique to these races

Tactics- what to do when encountering another boat
   Upwind, tack or duck?
   Bad Air – consequences
   Should I go to the lay line?
   Controlling another boat
   Consolidate your gains
   Covering a competitor

This is the third and final part in a series of events designed to introduce sailors to all the conditions that could affect your decisions. 
The Seminar starts at 9:00 am.  Check in starts at 8:30 am. Seminar will be over by 2 pm.  Lunch and soft drinks/water will served. All of this for only $20.00!!

GBCA's seminar series continues Saturday July 16th with a class on sail trim.  This is the second part in a series of events designed to introduce new or inexperienced skippers & crew on how to make a boat go faster. The seminar will finish in time for sailors to get to their boats so they can participate in Rum Race. #3. 

The course covers:

Theory, the Language of Sail Shape
Main Sail Trim , controls and settings
Genoa / Jib Trim, controls and settings
Symmetrical Spinnaker Trim, controls and settings
Asymmetrical Spinnaker Trim, controls and settings

Cheat Sheets for each sail / wind condition (suitable for lamination & cockpit use) will be provided

The Seminar starts at 9:00 am.  Check in starts at 8:30 am. The seminar will be over by 2pm. Lunch and soft drinks/water will served. All of this for only $20.00!!
If you are new to Sail Trim or want to improve your knowledge of this subject please attend !

Everyone who races in Galveston Bay has an interest in promoting fair ratings.  It is frustrating to race often knowing that the conditions that day favor one boat type over another and that your effort is probably not going to result in getting on the podium.  While PHRF is a great system due to its simplicity and low cost it is not perfect.  The system is empirical and set up to handle only one type of course and one wind condition.  Anytime those conditions are not met the PHRF ratings often do not reflect the performance of many boats.  The other approach is a science based system using a boat's measurements (weight, waterline, draft, rig, sail area, etc....) to develop a math model that predicts the boat's performance over the full range of wind strengths and wind angles.  Typically called Velocity Prediction Programs (VPP), these models allow a naval architect/ boat designer to try out many concepts and fine tune a design before it is built.  They also allow different speed ratings to be established for a given boat depending on wind strength, type of course, etc.....the rating of a typical boat will be different sailing windward / leeward's vs a point to point course.  Since a boat will have multiple ratings for different types of racing/ courses these measurement based rules allow the race committee to fine tune which rating will be used for a given race or regatta to better match ratings with conditions / courses.   So...in theory these type of rules could lead to fairer racing.

While these VPP based solutions are not perfect, the higher end of our sport has evolved to using science based rating systems in major regattas word wide.  US Sailing, the governing body of our sport in the US, has established a relationship with one of the major science based rating systems, the ORC (Offshore Rating Congress).  The ORC sprang from the old IOR and IMS systems and has been refined over decades.  ORC now has a "Club" rating where boats do NOT have to be pulled out of the water & measured.  Data about the boat is simply entered into the database and the rating certificate is issued.  Often you can pull up a certificate from a sister boat and copy the data over to your boat and then make any changes to reflect your sails, etc....  The certificate cost is approx. $100.  The data comes from boats already in the ORC database (over 90,000 boats so far) or from the builder / designer.   Many types of production cruising boats are in the database, S2's, Cal's, Beneteau' s, Ericson's, etc.....

Over the last few months there have been a number of meetings sponsored by PHRF Galveston Bay to discuss whether adopting the ORC (Offshore Racing Congress) rating system would be of interest to the sailboat racing community.   The GBCA Board of Governors has been asked to consider supporting the adoption of ORC for GBCA events.   After extensive discussion, the BOG is willing to support ORC provided a sufficient number boat owners obtain ORC rating certificates to make the effort worthwhile.   The club will have to obtain special software, learn how to properly apply the system based on conditions & courses , etc....

A guide book that explains this in more detail can be found at http://www.orc.org/rules/ORC%20Guidebook%202016.pdf.  You can see if your boat is in the ORC database by going to http://www.orc.org/index.asp?id=1


Discussion invited.......

Dave Christensen
Member, GBCA BOG
s/v Airborne

If you are new to sailboat racing, or just interested in finding out the basics from both the skipper's and crew perspective, please join us on Saturday 4 June at 9 am in the GBCA clubhouse.  You can sign up on the GBCA web site.  The seminar includes lunch and covers:

·         Boat & Skipper Preparation
·         Building a crew.... from the skipper's perspective
·         So you want to crew.....how to get involved --- and be   invited back!
·         Offshore Sailing / Racing – it is different !
·         Which races to enter, what class fits your boat and skill level, obtaining a PHRF certificate
·         Rules for each stage of the race – the essentials only

Check in starts at 8:30 am. Seminar will end around 2 pm to allow sailors to get to boats. Lunch and soft drinks/water will served. All of this for only $20.00!!

Need to build a crew to race a J109 (formally Surprise, now Airborne) for both bay & some offshore events in 2012. If you are interested please contact me at dc1sail@comcast.net.
Dave Christensen