Hey all you racers out there. Tonight begins the 2014 Season. Nooooo, not racing tonight. It is the beginning of the Wednesday night Seminars, where we trot out experts to tell you how to win races on Wednesdays on Clear Lake. Tonight Alex Crowell will shed a bit of light on two of the white knuckle moments of a typical sailboat race. That is, the Start and Mark Roundings. So come on out to the Villa Capri at 6:30 and find out...
When does the racing start???
March 26th.....But there are two more seminars plus a party before March 26th. Check out http://clearlakeracing.org/ (http://clearlakeracing.org/)
for all the info needed. It was a great talk by Alex from Bahama Rigging on starts and rounding. Should have brought paper and pen.
I'll be presenting the seminar this Wednesday. The topic will be "How to lose a sailboat race", a tongue-in-cheek presentation of what not to do if you want to win a sailboat race. Although I will draw on some personal experiences, the audience will be invited to share their stories as well.
6:30 at Villa Capri, Wednesday March 5
Looks like we'll be upstairs again
John
Did you know that the annual fee for junior sailors, ie Skipper and crew 18 or under on October 1, 2014 is only $100 for the year? Did you know that the NOR and SI's for 2014 are posted? Do you understand high point scoring? Did you know that next Wednesday is the third FREE seminar about Sailboat racing AND the last night to claim the reduced rates for signing up to sail all year ($185), that's six series or 24 races? All the answers on the clra web site www.clearlakeracing.org.
Big John
Special thanks to Novice Glenn Gratz who noticed that the Clear Lake Entrance buoy is missing. We have changed our SI to state that a missing fixed mark is replaced by a small tetrahedron nearby. Don't forget the last Seminar and close of the bargain basement annual registration fees this coming Wed Nite, 3/12/14. Get your registration done. There is no time limit on the reduced all-junior registration fee, so you still have a while to kick your teenager into gear and get them out racing this year.
John
Wear your foulies and lifevests tonight, and that's just to go have a drink at Villa Capri
All kidding aside, the Y flag has been promised. Read RRS 4 and get on out there.
Congratulations to all that made it out today. Was not my kinda day! Nice and warm inside Villa Capri....but got a few pictures:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lacyphotos/sets/72157642984817653/ (http://www.flickr.com/photos/lacyphotos/sets/72157642984817653/).
Great pics!
Yes, great pictures indeed. Thank you very much!
Couldn't help myself with the after-finish line photos. Have to make it exciting ;D! Hopefully the Day Sailor will be out next week.
From the CLRA facebook page
Please double check the course layout: http://www.clearlakeracing.com/images/2014/courses.pdf
Everyone must round the Villa Capri "West Marine" mark and the small yellow tetrahedron on each lap and for the finish.
Boats that are heading to the Red Nun #14 (or replacement tetrahedron), must sail through the gate on the way to #14, but not returning.
http://www.clearlakeracing.com/images/2014/courses.pdf
www.clearlakeracing.com
Check the web site for clarification of some issues in a new set of Sailing Instructions. The clarifications were
about the penalty for passing between the turning/finish marks, and the penalty for causing damage.
Junior Sailors note. You must check in with the race committee each week that you race. Failure to do so cancels your junior registration and makes you immediately overdue for payment of the regular fees.
Got a few pictures from April 30th, https://www.flickr.com/photos/lacyphotos/sets/72157644043079159/ (https://www.flickr.com/photos/lacyphotos/sets/72157644043079159/) . If anybody would like the 100%, send me an email at sailsong@swbell.net .
Sorry folks, but temporarily(I hope), the web site has to be accessed by using the .org domain name.
clearlakeracing.org works.
John
Finally. Dot com is back. Wednesday Night Sailboat Racing's web site may now be reached by either clearlakeracing.com or clearlakeracing.org. The technical details appear to only make sense if one regularly corrects the grammar of the Klingon used on "Big Bang Theory". Anyway, it appears to be up and working. The relevance vastly exceeds that of an extra quart of water unless it was in the form of a hailstone hitting your car, but the site is the place to go for finding out the latest results and see the latest rant about whatever.
Oh, heck, just come down to the Villa Capri and watch it happen in real time
To the anonymous J22 folks who sent us a message about errors in their results, it is hard to fix something without details of what you think is wrong. FYI, Series 3 is the second entry in the list. not the third. (caused by a fix to an earlier issue)
We do appreciate the substantial participation in this class and would like to provide service to keep you coming back. If you could provide a little more information, maybe we can help.
J
Got a few pictures and video from last night's WNR. Very light wind but a beautiful day. The start pictures are at:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/lacyphotos/sets/72157645335837070/ (https://www.flickr.com/photos/lacyphotos/sets/72157645335837070/) . The video is at :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OedOthyOABE (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OedOthyOABE). Still not satisfied with the product, but it is what it is! There are two scenes of Ben coming into the finish rounding mark. After the second 2 hour import it was still there, so it stays ???. See you in Galveston (with Missy) next week for Texas Race Week!
Too cool! Wish I was there but I will be for TRW 2014! 8)
Seen myself on two of those videos, but I've yet to see Missy. Very stealthy.
The Wed Nite web site is down so to appease the madding crowd, here are some results.
I have to rework the s6 results. back shortly
John
Results for series 6 split into handicap and one design with race results separate from series results, all pdf's.
John
Again because of some limit Results for series 6 split into handicap and one design with race results separate from series results, all pdf's.
John
Hmm. This is what www.clearlakeracing.org gives me when I poke it.
403 - Forbidden Error
You are not allowed to access this address.
If the error persists, please contact the website webmaster.
If you are the webmaster of this site please log in to Cpanel and check the Error Logs. You will find the exact reason for this error there.
Common reasons for this error are:
Incorrect file/directory permissions: Below 644.
In order files to be read by the webserver, their permissions have to be equal or above 644. You can update file permissions with a FTP client or through cPanel's File Manager.
Restrictive Apache directives inside .htaccess file.
There are two Apache directives which can cause this error - 'Deny from' and 'Options -Indexes'.
Yes Bee, the site is DOWN. Unlike most of the previous failures, It is not down because of anything easily fixable. The web host took it down because it was hacked. They are insisting we upgrade our software (untouched since Buddy built it) to a more secure current version before they let it reopen. I have spent far too much time already trying to deal with obsolete software. Little annoyances like having to upgrade the software before I can use the tool to upgrade it.
This situation is pressing hard on the fundamental law of software. "Software is something that if you fiddle with it long enough, you can make it do something. This is opposed to hardware, which if you fool with it enough, breaks."
Thanks for posting the error message.
I will continue to joust with this windmill for a while longer. There are brute force and awkwardness solutions that I may be forced to.
John
Some time ago I switched 3dbee.com from my own stuff to wordpress. Its free and seems to work OK. Not sure it would be OK for CLRA but might be worth a look. If you allow it wordpress will automatically upgrade when one becomes available. Only hacking issue I had was with tracebacks but the latest version lets me turn that off.
Wordpress has a number of templates that are easy to setup but not so easy to customize. There are also a variety of calenders and other such plugins that might make your job a lot easier. You can also get a lot of help from google.
Good luck John.
John -
Not sure what Buddy used for the old site, but we've been using Concrete5 as a CMS system for a number of event sites (j22southwest.org, and j105mw.com for example), but it's pretty simple to update/ad content and like Bee's WordPress install, it automatically checks for the current version and updates itself.
Let me know if we can help.
Ken Taylor
taylor@regattanetwork.com
Agree with Ken. This is good as well.
It was done in Joomla 1.5 When you count all the code level 'tweeks' that were applied it won't upgrade to 2 much less 3. Poor John and Scott are probably going to have to start over.
While Wordpress and Concrete are good. John has a working understanding of Joomla. It might be easiest to use latest Joomla with a 3 column template and some widgets to hold it all together. They do this on a volunteer basis after all.
OK, the site is down for now and BUT we still need to register for the end on season party, vote for crew - skipper and best liar or whatever. So is there an e-mail address we can send this stuff to until the web site is up? Also, I would like to know the schedule for the finals (no I didn't print out the schedule), so I can help or watch.
Photos Becky and I got from today's Semi-Final. Wind-o-plenty! https://www.flickr.com/photos/lacyphotos/sets/72157647414121706/ (https://www.flickr.com/photos/lacyphotos/sets/72157647414121706/).
Sorry I haven't been watching this very closely. Tough when you have database guts dripping from your ears. The site was done in Joomla 1.5, which was then advertising itself as a stable release. It worked well enough and I was figuring how to do stuff. Things were rocky but usable until they stopped support for 1.5. We knew we were being targeted by hackers, but most were inept and unable to overcome the captcha login on the administrator side. Scott and I had decided to upgrade after this season, even if it meant kidnapping Buddy some dark and stormy night. The hackers were ahead of us and figured out that our "contact us" would get them far enough inside to use the site for spamming others. Hence our present state. All I can say for sure is that once working, you will like the new one better than the old one. But that is a week or so away.
Meanwhile
Scott announces a lot of things on facebook. The Semi finals started Wed the 10th Because we are a little earlier in the year (more daylight), races start around 4, with Skippers meeting about 3. Boats are C22's because of prep issues(thanks to Ben Miller for putting together the four boats on short notice). Tom Meeh, Lauren Berger, and Glenn Ring raced this week. Lauren and Tom are in the finals by the barest of margins. Stuart Lindow was a no-show. Next week, Jesse Fulmer, Jenny Hawkes, Carl Bohannon, and Ben Miller will face off to provide the last two finals positions. For those scratching your heads, we have confirmed that the FJ racers were prevented from sailing on two of the three nights they no-showed because the chartered boats were not available for racing. This re-instates Jenny in place of the Ruder boat team. Next year's SI will be more explicit on this issue.
And
Please address correspondence such as Gary mentioned, eg "best liar" etc to the email addresses at the bottom of the season 6 results in this thread. Please copy both c_l_r_a and me so I can keep bugging Scott. More later. Hmmm wonder if I can ftp this gizmo...
Quote from: Big John on September 11, 2014, 06:21:20 PM
Tom Meeh, Lauren Berger, and Glenn Ring raced this week. Lauren and Tom are in the finals by the barest of margins. Stuart Lindow was a no-show. Next week, Jesse Fulmer, Jenny Hawkes, Carl Bohannon, and Ben Miller will face off to provide the last two finals positions. For those scratching your heads, we have confirmed that the FJ racers were prevented from sailing on two of the three nights they no-showed because the chartered boats were not available for racing. This re-instates Jenny in place of the Ruder boat team. Next year's SI will be more explicit on this issue.
A valid source has indicated that Stuart's no-show was in protest about the handling of the FJ eligibility issues. I take full credit for the ineptness in rule 17 of your SI's. The rule did not properly account for potential situations which did occur. The PRO (Scott) was forced to make several arbitrary decisions, and did so in the fairest way possible under the circumstances.
This is sailboat racing and we do it for fun.
John
A HUGE thank you to John Butler for getting the web site back up and running. If there are some features that don't operate fully, don't worry, John is aware and just taking a breather from the countless hours spent in getting it back up.
The 2014 season winds down to an end, with the final championship race this Wednesday (9/24/14) starting at 4pm off the Villa Capri. If you have not been down to a Wednesday night this year, this would be the race to watch. Four of our best teams are battling out for the overall champion. Will Tom Meeh claim his 18th championship, or will we have a new face on the podium? If you think you know the finish order of each race, email me your prediction to C_L_R_A at comcast dot net and we will see who got the closest.
Thank you to all the volunteers, on and off the water: Christina Tuma, Colleen Fiega, Patrick Fiega, Amy Crowell, Alex Crowell, Diana "Crowell", Tess Devore, Scott Gale, Rick Hassler, Greg Casamayor, John Butler, Cherie LeCompte, Gary Thies, Charles Broadus, Scott Lacey, Chris Dees, Kelly Dees, Ben Miller, Tyler Morgan, & Blair Pyne. We have had a large amount of support, to say the least.
With the end near, also means we have nominations for Sportsmanship, Best Crew, and Most Improved. You can goto this link to make your nominations: http://www.clearlakeracing.org/index.php/home/2014-nominations-for-sportsman-most-improved-and-best-crew
End of Year Party information can be found here: http://www.clearlakeracing.org/index.php/home/reservations-for-eoy-party
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.
A big congratulations to Tom Meeh and Dane Byerly for winning the 2014 Championship. An incredible feat given the competition and the challenging wind conditions.
We hope to see everyone at the End of Year Party on October 22nd at the Villa Capri. Please be sure to vote for your crews that have put forth extra effort. This is the best way to recgonize their efforts.
You can follow the link http://www.clearlakeracing.org/index.php/home/2014-nominations-for-sportsman-most-improved-and-best-crew
And vote from there.
We hope to see everyone at the GBCA Performance Cup party and down at Harvest Moon.
Cheers...
Scott
Some photos from WNR Finals. Missy video hopefully this evening. https://www.flickr.com/photos/lacyphotos/sets/72157648033649105/ (https://www.flickr.com/photos/lacyphotos/sets/72157648033649105/)
Missy Video! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrFKztyAZ3s (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrFKztyAZ3s) As I overheard Pete Meeh say "Tom is really going to be hard to live with now!" Congratulations Tom!