GBCA Discussion Forum

As a reminder, we are still not hosting post-race socials.

With it being 2020 and our efforts to get people out on the water, we are waiving the late registration fee for Chili Chase.

Also, unfortunately, we are NOT going to have the chili cook off portion.

In the spirit of fairness, I have decided to abandon Fall Series #1. I apologize for the confusion.

The results for Sailing Angels will stand as is.

I was rushing to get the SIs out after being out of town. I was notified of some mistakes and made the corrections. I posted the amendments to the Sailing Angels end. I was focusing on the Sailing Angels part and overlooked those who had signed up for Chili Chase. I see where the confusion came from; we never intended people to have to sign up for Fall Series, but understand where the thought came from because of the scoring requirements for the series. We tried something new and have discussed the issues that arose.

There were some ideas of correcting the start time errors, but the results would be hypothetical.

Our goal is to provide the best race possible.

We look forward to seeing everyone for Fall Series #2 and Chili Chase.

Thank you for your understanding and patience...

Cheers...
Scott Tuma
Fleet Captain

I will post an amendment to the NOR, but the gathering time will be 1830 hours (6:30 pm) at True North Marine.

Sorry for any confusion or any inconvenience.

First of all, I want to thank everyone who participated in last year's Sailing Angels Regatta and fundraiser. With that success, we are hosting an event this year. We have held off advertising because of COVID.

We will hold the 2020 Sailing Angels Regatta on October 24 with Fall Series #1. I will get the NOR out shortly.

Thank you again!!!

Cheers...
Scott Tuma.

We are planning to hold a post race social after Rum Race #8 this Saturday at True North Marine on FM2094. We are planning to hold the event in the boat yard. If it rains, there is no indoor plan.

We will have RR awards present as well as awards from previous events for pick up. We will also have the collector's edition Rum Race 2020 shirts for sale and pick up.

We will require that current CDC requirements be met in regards to masks and social distancing. If you need to pick up an award, or would like to purchase/pick up some shirts and unable to make the social, please give me a shout and I will see what we can do to accommodate you.

Thank you for a weird season.

Cheers....
Scott Tuma
Fleet Captain

NOR for the GBCA Women's Regatta is posted.

Maybe we can get a class of RS21s, or all 12 out there?

We should easily have a dozen of J-22s also...

This regatta requirements is easy; woman drives... can have male and/or female crew...

Regatta info: https://www.regattanetwork.com/event/20931

Registration: https://www.regattanetwork.com/clubmgmt/applet_registration_form.php?regatta_id=20931

yes, Rum Races will start on May 30th...

Sailing Instructions are being finalized with some needed changes.

There will not be an official post race social with awards until further notice.

The only available date in the fall has taken home of the Performance Cup Regatta; October 17-18.

Notice of Race & Regatta Documents are as follows: https://www.regattanetwork.com/event/20174#_home

I have replaced the Notice of Race to hopefully minimize confusion.

Yes, GBCA is working with Clear Lake Racing Association to host and promote the winter seminar series.  If you missed the first two seminars given by Dave Christensen, you are already behind the game.

The next seminar will be 7pm March 11 at Villa Capri given by Pedro of UK Sails about how to use your sails. 

So, you bought new sails to stay competitive. Has your sailmaker gone out with you to help you get up to pace? Have they shown you the differences between the last generation and this generation of sails (yes, they do change)? Are you wanting that slight edge to gain an advantage on that windward leg?

Now is your chance to ask one of our local sailmakers how to trim sails and any weird questions one may have...

Just think, if you can gain 2° of point you could gain a little over a boat length every 1000'!!!

There are only 6 SPOTS LEFT for Saturday's Commodore's Ball... And you do not want to miss this one..

Registration: https://gbca.org/event-3628041

Venue: HYC (Best view of Galveston Bay)
Band: The Line Up (Need I say more?)

NOR is published and registration is open for Performance Cup Regatta.

https://www.regattanetwork.com/clubmgmt/applet_registration_form.php?regatta_id=20174

This will be a 2-day event with Windward/Leeward, Triangle-Windward/Leeward, and distance courses. At least two lines are expected. We are expecting ORC, PHRF, Club Handicap, one-design, level classes, and multihulls.

We are working through weeding out duplicate entries.

If you happen to notice a duplicate, please email me and we will address it. In order to help consistency; when entering your boat info, please make sure the same email address is used and boat name is consistent. We believe with the split of the Cruising Club, the system "got confused" and duplicated some entries. We believe we have worked these bugs out. We still encourage everyone to use RaceQs as this has helped clarify some finishing confusion in the past.

Please find the race finish detail here: http://racing.gbca.org/

The ballots for 2020 GBCA board members and awards have been sent out.

If you have not received yours (i.e. we don't have an updated email for you), please let us know.  The voting for the board members is very important for the future of the club. This will let you chose how things are run. The annual awards are very important as well; they acknowledge the hard work people have done to build the sport.

If you are passionate about something that needs to change, or continue, we welcome your opinion with volunteer hours. The volunteers is what has kept this club strong since 1947. If you have an idea, send us an email. We will be happy to sit down and discuss the possibilities.

GBCA has been lucky enough to be involved with the Sailing Angels this year. 

We are hosting the regatta portion of this fantastic fundraising event. I have posted the NOR on GBCA's website, or you can follow the link: http://www.regattanetwork.com/clubmgmt/regatta_uploads/19795/2019NOR.pdf

To find our more information about the Sailing Angels program, follow this link: http://www.sailingangels.org/

Many of you have heard that this will be my last year running Wednesday Night Races. At this point, no one wants to take the lead and run races instead of racing. There have been a lot of ideas thrown around of what to do, but still no one wants to run races. i suggest the following:
- Basically go old school
- Races run out of BARGE 295 using the No Wake buoy as start and finish mark
- Start and finish from there.
- Use fixed marks (#14, #17, etc..)
- Each boat that races, takes a turn running races. People can either volunteer for certain weeks or people can draw for their week.
- Maybe have it as 3 laps and can shorten if wind is light.
- Use TOT where distance is a non factor.
- Course could be: Start at BARGE 295 > Mark off Villa Capri or apartments west > Day beacon #16 > Nun #14 > Start mark  at BARGE 295.
- The one running race could get average points. or, use it as a throw out. Or don't worry about cumulative scores.

Alright boys and girls, it is time to get our juniors out on some keelboats.  Now that we have all these kids racing and winning across the country, it's time to introduce them to the next phase of racing...

GBCA Junior Regatta is 7/27/19. We have blended this event with our Rum Race with the Jrs racing the same course. This gives them the opportunity to race against "the big boys" and be scored among their peers... The NOR is available here: http://www.regattanetwork.com/clubmgmt/regatta_uploads/19485/2019JuniorRegattaNOR.pdf

It's simple: driver must be under 18 years of age by the day of the event. Crew can be of any age.

I noticed a post where someone took note of our Rum Race Buoy and alerted the USCG of it's location. They noted they were going to push for it to be removed. We will look for alternatives...

It's that time of year again... Time to prove to your crews that you CAN sail the dang boat by yourself. Infamous GBCA Singlehanded Regatta is July 13th and the Mixed Doubles (Divorce Cup) is July 14th.

The kids are out racing locally... time for your to go racing yourself.. .

I'll get NORs up soon.

We have the Sailing Instructions for 2019 Rum Races posted. We have made a few changes to hopefully make the racing more fair and the sailing more fun. We have learned that the facet of racing is changing rapidly; sometimes faster than we can keep up. I say 'we' as the Galveston Bay community as a whole. We all are struggling to keep boats on the water and come out sailing. We are having to change how we run races, how we score boats, and how we divide classes. We have taken input from the fleet and observations from the board being out on the water (and discussions with the racers) to reorganize some of our race management methods. Our main goal is to make racing as fair as possible and keep it fun as well.

Some of the big changes are: I. Rum Race Buoy mark change of location II. Class breakdowns

I. I moved the Rum Race Buoy N-NW about a mile hoping to avoid any underwater obstructions. I have noted the new coordinates in the Sailing Instructions. Obviously, it did shorten the course a bit and changed some of the angles to Kemah #2 and the High Range Mark.

II. Something that has been contentious is the class breakdowns. With so many different design boats, what is the most fair way to group boats? We decided to go with like performance and comparing Sail Area to Displacement ratios (SA/D) is the simplest. Unfortunately, we do not have a huge pool of boats to chose from so therefore the groupings will have wide spans. If you group boats by ratings, you will get a lot of bias based on wind conditions. For simplicity, let's compare a J-80 and a Cal 40. They both rate 120 spinnaker. Tell me the wind and I'll tell you the winner. If you absolutely have to, they can (and have) race against each other. The SA/D of the J-80 is 25.93 and 18.48 for the Cal 40. On your valid PHRF-GB certificate, the SA/D is in bold towards the middle bottom of the certificate. The Cal 40 would be more competitive against a Catalina 30 with a SA/D ratio of 17.21. Yes, one can argue that boats close to either side of 19 may be a better fit. The break has to be somewhere. We are simply using the Racer/Cruiser definition already set by PHRF-GB.  The biggest contention is in the spinnaker fleet. This R/C definition applies to the spinnaker fleet. We will have a Racing Spinnaker Class (SA/D < 19.0) and a Racer/Cruiser Spinnaker Class (SA/D >= 19.0).  In each of these classes, fly the chute you have. The Non-Spinnaker class will stay unchanged. The GBCA Club Handicap class will have a split between spinnaker and non-spinnaker. Yes, the original class allows either spinnaker or non-spinnaker, but the benefit of a spinnaker drops the adjustment to a point a boat would have a hard time going back to non-spinnaker and being competitive. Plus, we had some in the class flying spinnakers ask to separate out. Basically, if you race with a spinnaker and use your PHRF-GB handicap, you will either race in the Racing Spinnaker Class or the Racer/Cruiser Spinnaker Class. If you prefer to use the adjustable Club Handicap, you will either race in the Club Handicap Spinnaker or the Club Handicap Class. If you need training wheels, you will race in the multihull class. Boats that are going to race in the Club Handicap Spinnaker class will restart their rating with an assumed PHRF rating. For more information and a more detailed explanation, follow the link to PHRF-GB in the SIs.

I hope this helps with any confusion or misunderstanding there may be. Sailboat racing is not simple anymore.