RC Sailing

Report on the 2023 DF95 USA Nationals hosted by Corpus Christi Yacht Club (Texas)

Results are not available as of this entry. The DF95 class really needs to improve its process of posting regatta results somewhere consistently. Facebook (Farce-book) should not be the (official or unofficial) means of this. I don’t mean to nag, but I think this issue happens too often. Let’s get our shit together folks. The top 5 were Peter Feldman, Brian Shores, Steve Landeau, Sean Fidler, and Barr Batzer. Update: here are the final results, which became available at some point after the event. Peter Feldman was outstanding. A well deserved championship. It’s slightly frustrating to experience his dominance but I am, of course, very happy for him! He is getting even better which is scary. Simply put, he is just on a different level than the rest of us. I fear he is getting bored sometimes. Brian Shores was also outstanding at this event and is clearly improved over the last time I saw him sail. I understand he is practicing a fair bit with the Houston fleet and it shows. He is going to be very tough in this class moving forward. He has the potential to challenge Peter as we saw early in this event when he led, and was tied with Peter. Impressive. Steve Landeau was sailing very well as always. He was not burdened by his addiction to above and beyond volunteer roles at this event, which often hinders his focus slightly, and he was predictably sailing very well here without having lots of other chores. With more continued focus he would be even better but that’s not in his nature 😉. He simply loves to help others. Lucky for us all on multiple levels. I was disappointed with my event. I came out of the blocks poorly playing with a new tuning method that I had not tried yet, let alone mastered loosing dozens and dozens of points in the process. Stupid. I made far too many tactical mistakes (partially related to the poor boat speed) and did not really produce “A-fleet” level average boat speed until (maybe) the final day. I spent the first day trying to mimic Craig Richard’s excellent tuning but with my older Cat Sail (4+mm of luff curve vs. Craig’s special 2mm luff curve sails which his tuning technique is based on) and I simply did not make it work consistently (or at all frankly). Stupid. I learned a ton by the end of the event but thoroughly confused myself early. I’m honestly still a little unsure of where to go next on set up. I did order new sails with reduced luff curve so that should be interesting when the next large event comes along. For example, I was leading a race or two on Friday somehow, but was regularly “gobbled-up” by the group and fell to (on average) 6-8th from a leading position early in the race. I couldn’t point when I really needed to. This was all subtle, but significant in a class that is so competitive. I also felt I was not accelerating properly out of tacks. Ultimately, I just could not make the very low mainsail boom position work and was ultimately forced to bring the main into the inner transom corner (standard) and reduce twist substantially. I had simply been sailing to wide on everything, and that made me a one trick pony at best. All that said, clearly Craig RIchards makes all that work. I hate pinching, and generally do not like the tuning process for the DF95 because the fleet tends to pinch significantly at a nationals level. That is quite unnatural for me. I much prefer the IOM which can be tuned very accurately with a ruler and a tuning guide, but I also think that is because I sail the IOM far more often and I am more confident in that boat. If I am going to get better in the DF95 class (something that I really want to do) I must sail it more regularly, and unfortunately that isn’t an option at the moment as the Detroit fleet is very small and just does not have enough strong sailors to practice with. Most (if not all) of the guys in the top 10 at this 2023 DF95 National Championship are regularly sailing the DF95 against top sailors at their club (or have far more experience). Peter and Steve just sailed the US Sailing CoC’s a month ago (which Peter won). I’m basically the only one who isn’t sailing the DF95 regularly at their home club or in a state with lots of comps (like Florida), that I know of, with maybe the exception of (Ivey) 109. I think more experience is essential and have come to the solemn conclusion that my one regatta every 6 months approach has long since reached its apogee. Finally Barr Batzer (5th overall) is sailing very well and we were basically neck and neck most of the event. He has really improved since last year. He is very fast and is easily capable of getting to the top step with Brian and Peter. Ultimately he had a couple bad races on the final day, which can happen to all of us. He will win one of these one day I’m certain. Overall, this class is really strong. The DF95 is a great RC racing sailboat in which many can get to 90% performance relatively quickly and be competitive. The A fleet of this event was extremely tough from top to bottom and getting out of the B fleet was absolutely not assured as many found out over the course of the weekend. The regatta was incredibly fun and challenging. The races were rather intense at times as it often is in the DF95 class. Lots of contact and basic rules issues. This is the nature of such small, quick, even boats and heats with over 20 boats on the starting line. I really wish we could somehow limit these events to 10 boats or so (and had 3 fleets for example). I am still not comfortable pushing the starting line as hard as the average A fleet sailor, and often end up in the second row, which is often fatal for overall hopes. I felt I was also fouled a number of times in the final 5 seconds of the starts by boats dive bombing in from behind and it was often very difficult to execute a protest as I could not see easily see who the contact came from. Not sure that I have a solution unfortunately other than trying to find a way to stay out of the clumps, but the line is often biased enough that a favored end knife fight is the only competitive choice. Finally, the Corpus Christi Yacht Club team (John Kelsey, Mark Foster (PRO), Ken Weeks, and the large group of volunteers including a dedicated mark set boat with extremely competent sailors on board all day, every day) were absolutely outstanding. This is a fantastic group of people and sailing RC events (or any event) at CorpusChristiYC is a true privilege on the level of the finest RC regattas that I have attended thus far. Thank you to all of you!

2023 IOM Nationals Final Results, Photos…

https://www.iomusa.org/_files/ugd/6111bf_f3bbcaaf24ab45c2a6898b8695580165.pdf https://www.iomusa.org/completed-events This was a very well run event, great venue, and great competition, especially among the top 3 competitors Mark Golison, Peter Feldman and Sean Fidler who were all tied going into the final day. Sean had a poor race but Peter and Marks event came down to the final race as they were literally TIED going into it. Congrats to all the competitors and hosts. The IOM class is as hot as it gets right now!

2023 IOM USA 🇺🇸 NATIONALS, Hampton VA

RESULTS HERE —-> https://www.iomusa.org/_files/ugd/e20d6e_a8d45294f160471f89fc3576ee1a38ea.pdf results thru Friday… Awesome pics, as always, from Jen. My boat is USA 91, a Kantun 2 from Croatia 🇭🇷. Very nice until it gets bent and leaks…

2011 IOM Worlds 🌎! As Good As It Gets!!! Great Documentary.

This regatta (and Foster City) were the YouTube videos that got me interested in IOM sailing back in 2021. This video does an extremely excellent job of highlighting the rivalry, camaraderie, and challenge of the IOM World Championships as well as the beginning of the epic reign of Brad Gibson’s “Britpop” and of the British IOM team who dominated the class and developed a league of outstanding model boat racers throughout the world. The Britpop is still today a highly competitive boat after 13 years. What a great group of people. Cheers to you Brit’s 🍻 🥂 👑! Champions in every way. https://youtu.be/acrXx75HbbY https://youtu.be/YaIgJbsdaPk Brad Gibson congratulates 2011 Champion Peter Stollery after they fought a close battle which came down to the final race! Brad designed the epic IOM called the Britpop which Peter sailed to win the event. Quite a touching win and these British sailors are some of the kindest, finest sportsman that I have ever witnessed in any sport.

2023 RC Laser Nationals

Hosted by Metedeconk River YC in Brick NJ, this was a really great event and a great time. Amazing club, amazing members, amazing food, great bar, beautiful weather and RC Lasers are VERY cool boats to sail. Thank you all! 2023 Champion (757) Judy Bonanno photos (excellent): https://judybonanno.smugmug.com/Sailing/LASER/RC-Laser-National-Championship-R Final Results Quick Video Mash Up of Judy’s Videos… https://youtu.be/UhpKIs7izMY Photos of my boat #77 below… Yacht Club and sailing venue

New All White K2 IOM USA 🇺🇸 91

Thank you Kiwi for taking these photos. Fun day of practice today in Michigan with 5 IOM’s in attendance at Cabela’s in Dundee, MI. Breeze was 6-12 mph. Temperature was 60-70 degrees. A really nice day. The new K2 was OUTSTANDING. Today was its first sail. Wow. Really magnificent. Well done SailboatRC!

Zero Britpop’s in the Top 10 at the 2023 IOM European Championships

The end of the Britpop as a competitive IOM in my opinion. Still a very good boat, with an Amazing run of success over a very long period, just not good enough, anymore, to race at the highest levels of the IOM class. The IOM class is, still and at the end of the day, about innovation, at least in hull and keel/rudder shape. This end of life cycle for the once dominant Britpop is fun and refreshing in its own way… It’s great to see those working hard on innovation, Sailboat RC, Alioth, Venti, and others, making tangible progress! Yeah, maybe this is a provocative 🧐 statement that will trigger some. I really don’t give a shit. I think it’s an interesting observation from the standings. The top BP sailors, most from England 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿, are excellent sailors, but they are leaving some meters on the table now with an outdated IOM hull foil platform. Full results here: https://anzamsystems.com/ESP/iomeuro23/Results.html

2023 DF95 Globals Results

Finding these results is EXTREMELY difficult considering the importance of this event in RC Sailing. This post is mainly a bookmark for me on this blog. It is amazing how people are allowing corrupt, censorship and propaganda ridden social media sites to be the repository of their information. Those of us with a brain have been moving away from social media for years for these reasons, and innumerable others... Craig Richards, 2023 Globals Champ. Darn good sailor, great teacher, Bravo Craig! https://www.sail-world.com/news/262191/DF95-Global-Championship-overall Overall Results: PosNatSail NoHelmPts1GBR5Craig Richards462GBR51John Tushingham653USA142Peter Feldman1024AUS719Chris Dance1145SWE121Michael Collberg1296USA111Sean Fidler148.37USA155Mark Golison1528SWE301Thomas Enwall1659GBR87Shaun Priestley21510SWE1Magnus Bood22611GBR33Mark Dicks22912NOR190Odd Ornulf Stray24213GBR20David Potter24414FRA49Gerald Rogivue26815NED180Tjakko Keizer27016SWE93Rolf Andersson28517RSA85Roy Gardener31118GBR12Buzz Coleman319.819SWE15Peter Freden34020USA11Brig North35021AUS272Richard Fisher35322GBR84John Brierley36423GBR83Ken Binks418.624GBR214John Taylor43425ITA130Paolo Cappa46026GBR840David Fowler46827GBR330Dave Burke49328SWE58Ulf Lindberg51229NZL23David Lindsay52330RSA6Bruce Schnell52331USA101Chuck LeMahieu52532SUI43Gregoire Pilly531.333GBR358David Adams55034AUS36John Wyatt572.735GBR46Mick Chamberlain606.936AUS801Phil Burgess60937USA720Reichard Kahle61438IRL52Martin Gray61439FRA82Erwan Le Bot617.340USA466Gary Winton648

DF95 Globals Summary (After two long days)

-in short a fairly complete shitshow of many, many fouls and 3-5 general recalls every start, and a 10-15 minute delay after almost every A and B fleet race to sort out the inevitable 2-3 formal, unresolved protests. The organizers and RC are doing a fantastic job of managing the protests and running the races, it’s the sheer volume of contact, fouls, and protests that is causing me to reconsider here. These boats can take a huge amount of punishment. And with that I think the fleet takes far to many “liberties…” To put it more succinctly, this is a joke. DAY ONE, GREAT UNTIL IT WASN’T: Day one went well until a SWE sailor (121) chose to come into the weather mark in A fleet on port, in strong A rig breeze, in a suicidal effort to cross a solid line (virtually bow to stern) of 6-7 starboard tack boats (including me). It was like a Kamikazee attacking a ship really. He had absolutely no chance and rather than tacking early he dove down straight into my boat at the last second in a impossible effort to duck and hit his victim (me) nearly bow to bow creating a massive head to head collision with our keel fins. Another boat was also effected. We then, of course, locked together and drifted into the shore, with him sawing the sail winch constantly for 3-4 minutes trying to get the boats to break apart. My boats rudder, keel fin, keel bulb, and hull were all damaged as the boats banged into the sea wall for several minutes (mine of course along the wall) on the other side of the pond before being rescued by a powerboat. He then chose not to withdraw and tried to get out of the protest (went to the hearing, tried to get away with it) creating another 10-15 minute post race delay. I WASN’T ALONE: He was also involved with another protest which he lost before my protest was heard, which he also lost. Apparently that happened before my incident. This guy is a special one. I was in 7th place at that time of the foul, on a clean, conservative starboard layline. I was in a very good overall position at that point, but the redress “award” 🏆 did not save me from being driven down to the dredded “B fleet” which is even worse that “A fleet” in terms of fouls. DAY 2: That brings us to Day 2. Fortunately I was allowed to replace my keel fin (at my expense). My rudder was loose and I had to work to fix it in the morning. Somehow my boat seems to leak now, not sure why. Keel trunk seems loser. The breeze was up today and the wind slightly diagonal across the long rectangular (30 degrees right of straight down) pond creating a bit of a one sided racecourse were the best wind is on the left edge and starboard tack is the long tack, 70/30, minimum. The starting line extends across most of the width pond but the windward or boat end is considerably closer to the windward shore and sits in a slight hole essentially. This improved slightly during the day as the wind backed left slightly, but you get the idea. This creates a lot of congestion. I’ll talk more about the port end starts and the room to tack circus 🎪 clownshow off the lee sea wall which occurs every race tomorrow. FORESTAY BOWSIE SLIP: In the first race of the day (B fleet) my forestay bowsie slips slowly during the race and I end up having no forestay tension (and therefore height). I was in 6th(ish) around the weather mark and had an fairly good shot at advancing to A. Up the second upwind it began to losen and worsened more throughout the race. I fell back slightly and missed the top 6. By the end of the race it’s hard to go upwind or tack. I wasn’t really sure what was happening. As soon as I took the boat out of the water and measured after the race I could see the mark had moved ¼ inch +. Brand new rig with 120 lb line. What a PITA. BACKSTAY BREAKS: For the next B race I round the weather mark in 6th (again and easy position to advance) and after being hit by a port tack boat (who actually did their turns) fairly hard in backstay (spinning me down and forcing me to almost miss making the weather mark) while on starboard tack going into the weather mark. The wind was increasing now and was fairly close to C rig conditions. Shortly after turning downwind and with the boat just a few meters in front of me a strong gust hit and the bow went down, the boat stopped, and the backstay broke. I actually heard the “ping!” The knot didn’t come undone, the line itself broke at the crane. I wonder if the port tack boat that had just hit my backstay in full force in top B rig conditions had anything to do with it? Lots of sideload. So, the backstay dragged along in the water behind the boat. Downwind I went with the sails trimmed in slightly to provide some rig support. I lost many places. At the leeward mark I sailed to the shore and retied the backstay which took 20 seconds and that was enough to basically be last. After relaunching I did not have enough backstay, and had to again sail to the shore and add backstay. Ultimately, I was last in B fleet and sent to C fleet. What a costly foul that was on day one. Now my redress score was basically useless. Any chances of a good score at the regatta were gone. FOULS O’ PLENTY: The amount of fouls here, and recalls, has been eye opening. And the damage a foul can do to a competitor at the right time can be significant. Obviously, I am not really enjoying this event. Let’s be honest. I feel it is a shitshow. I think RC sailing has a real problem with the sheer volume of fouls committed at this level. More importantly, the sport has a problem with quantifying the net effect of the foul. It often seems the advantage is with the guy who commits the foul. He she gets the potential benifit of “banging it in there” and if it all goes tits up often can do a quick circle and be right behind (or ahead) of their victim who was playing it safe. For example, hitting a starboard tacker, knocking him into irons near the weather mark, he now cannot lay, loses 10-15 boats in the total process, doing a circle and (immediately or eventually) passing him. I’ve seen this scenario occur several times here (and I’m hardly watching any races) and nobody is calling the boat which commited the foul to relinquish an advantage over the victim boat. It’s exhausting just watching this happen and it’s really not very fun to partake in…there are dozens of other similar scenarios taking place. Perhaps 24 boats on the line is a bit too much. I’ll make the best of the rest of the sailing, assuming it doesn’t get any worse. But this is really not the most enjoyable racing. It’s more like trench warfare. And I think everyone knows it.

2023 Soling 1m NCR

This was my first time sailing the RC Soling. Fun boat. A little quirky, but good fun. Huge thanks to Mike and Peter Feldman for offering to loan me their spare boat and to Mike for fixing it up for the event. It was perfect. http://www.suncoastmodelsailingclub.net/Regattas.html I’m #129.

2022 IOM Worlds Update #2

Regatta Starts in one hour. Here we go! I have about 5 hours of practice racing under my belt. I feel fast! Lots of tuning help. I love the K2! Very comprehensive and ultra high quality. Faster in light air than has been given credit for… Wind forecast today is very light this am for the all important qualifier/seeding races. 15 boats per heat, first three go to A, last three E. 5 heats. Lots of points at stake. Will be a bit of a crapshoot undoubtedly. See wind forecast below. Yesterday Zonko (current world champ and K2 CTO) and Josip (K2 CEO) started a whats app thread sharing K2 tuning tips. See photo. This was very helpful. The K2 has a very different tuning concept where the forestay pivot height is changed both vertically and horizontally (also jib hounds position) rather than backstay and it is very effective. New concept though. i have spend an hour or so with Zhonko and he is very bright! Wish me luck! Photo of racing area at 7:30 am. Glass! Windy forecast. EO Zonkooutstanding K2 sailor message board sharing tuning tips led by K2 C

2022 IOM Worlds Update #1

New boat. Boats practicing in harbor and Worlds sailing area. View from house! Made it to Split, uneventful travel. Croatia is beautiful. It is now off peak season here and the towns are quite and peaceful

Updating SVEA J 111

Lots of items to fix and repair on this boat since its delivery. 1) no lower lowers installed.2) mainsheet broke with field repair and lost its adjustability.3) no counterweight in jib boom. 4) no gravity protection for sheets over sail winch. 5) extend mast base rail6) extend many servo wires

V11 IOM ready to rumble!

Heading to Newport RI for IOM regionals. All new winch, sheets, and spent an hour + tuning my rig to the mm. hope it helps. Nice to do this in my basement. At least it looks fast! thx Steve Landaue for the online help desk (a good hour or two of his time!).

2022 Region 4 DF95 Championship Regatta

Michigan RC Sailing Club is hosting the first-ever Region 4 DF95 Championship in Dundee, Michigan on June 17-19, 2022. The 11 competitors currently registered are some of the best RC sailors from around the USA and Canada. By regatta time we are expecting 20-30 total competitors.For general regatta info CLICK HERENotice of Race (NOR) CLICK HERETo see “Who's Registered” CLICK HERETo register CLICK HERE We look forward to seeing many of you at the event! if you have any questions email Sean (event organizer) here. Here is a video of our sailing area (Cabela's Lake). https://youtu.be/hxyuqpyfK4o

IOM Regatta Photos

A collection of photos from my first IOM regatta! I sailed Calvin’s beautiful orange V9 in Sarasota Florida’s annual event. Thank you Calvin! It's a great boat! Fond memories!

IOM “Gator 🐊 Roundup” Regatta Sarasota FL Jan 22-23

I had a bunch of fun and knocked some RC sailing rust off my brain. This was a hyper-competitive event. I used a borrowed boat (V9) which was great! The amount of fouls and “incidental contact” on the starting line was extreme and I did not fare well in that area. I had less than perfect boat control at this range and this was an area I’ll need to work on. That being said, it’s an awesome group, great class of boat, filled with many excellent sailors, and was tons of fun! I’ll be headed to San Diego in a few weeks for the next IOM event. 2022-IOM-Gator-Round-UpDownloading