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!