Fishing Bay Yacht Club
I got to get out on the Laser for the first time in 5 months spending 2 hours doing windward-leeward laps around an imaginary course. It was good opportunity to remember how everything went together and to get comfortable in the boat in the ~10kt breeze under overcast skies.
Our yacht club has been working on a new long range plan and we’ve done a bit of age analysis to see how our membership has changed over the past 10+ years. For the past 8 years I’ve run the Chesapeake Laser Masters Championship and I usually skimp on awards for the Great Grand Masters (65+) because historically there have only been a handful of competitors in that bracket compared to the more numerous competitors in the younger age brackets. This was the first year that several competitors pointed out how many more GGM sailors there were and thus deserved trophies that went a little deeper. And that has gotten me thinking about the age demographics of our Laser Masters regattas.
Here are the demographics of the Chesapeake Bay Laser Masters Championship for all of the years I have available. Laser Masters sailing starts at 35 years old and the brackets are Apprentice: 35-44, Master 45-54, Grand Master 55-64 & Great Grand Master 65+. I’ve broken down each year by % of the fleet in each of the age groups to show how that has changed over the years.
Here is the same type of data for the US Masters Championship:
Both regattas differ a little bit in what they show and which age groups are growing, but both clearly show over the past 3-4 years a smaller Apprentice category and slightly larger M, G and GGM categories. What’s causing this? It could be the aging Baby Boomer population who were in their teens-20-30s when the Laser became popular in the 1970’s and learned to sail on them. There’s always been a bit of a boomerang in sailing where people go away during and after college and while they are starting families, and then they tend to come back and involve their family in sailing. Could it be that the following generation (X) that was raised in Optis and spent less time in the Laser, is not returning to the Laser in the same numbers as the generation before them? Or are more boomers just boomeranging back into the class later in life and skewing the pot? Time will tell, but there’s clearly a change underway.
What are your thoughts? Leave them in the comments.
Raw Data:
Chesapeake Laser Masters
| US Laser Masters
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Why Chesapeake Laser Masters and US Masters? 1) Because Masters events are the only events where we know the age bands of sailors. While there are regattas that know the age of the competitors, it’s not typically published. 2) These are the events that I had the most and oldest data on.
I finished my sailing season off on Sunday with the FBYC Laser Frostbite Regatta. We had 9 boats out in some light North and Westerly winds for 5 races. It was fun close racing on a short course. I won the last 3 races to win the day by just 2 points.
That makes for 55 days of sailing this year, one more than last year. I’m looking forward to some time off and I’ll be planning next year soon!
Last weekend was the 31st Chesapeake Bay Laser Masters Championship at Fishing Bay Yacht Club. We had a great fleet of 45 boats come to sail. I was the event chairman and I also got to be out on the water during racing to take some pictures. Here are a few of the best:
All in all it was a great regatta. I couldn’t have done it without the help of our race committee and all of the Laser Fleet members who helped out. And it was nice to have all of the masters sailors I see so often on the regatta circuit come sail with us in Deltaville.
Here’s the back t-shirt design for the 2012 Chesapeake Bay Laser Masters Championship. It’s based on this picture. The front will feature the plate logo.
We did 7 races today in light wind for the Laser Fall Regatta at Fishing Bay Yacht Club. I generally kept the boat moving and didn’t dig too far into any holes and maintained mostly top half finishes to end up 3rd overall.
We had plenty of wind for the first day of the offshore fall series at Fishing Bay Yacht Club and the race committee elected to head inside Fishing Bay to run the races. With winds over 20 at the start of the first race we all had our hands full getting around the course. By the end of the last race the wind was down to 8. We did well and put up a 4-3-4 for 3rd overall out with 3 excellent starts.
After racing we had to deliver a boat from Jackson Creek to Fishing Bay and we timed it to see a gorgeous sunset on Fishing Bay.
Top Photo by Bruce McConnell
We took Wavelength out on Saturday for the Smith Point Race at Fishing Bay Yacht Club with a short 5-person crew of Steve U, John H, John W, Rick and myself. We were sailing against 2 other PHRF-A boats and started the 42nm course at 2pm just south of Stingray Point on the Piankatank. The race started as a beat and the wind eased from 15-18 down to 10-12 by 5:30 and down to about 6 at 8pm.
For the final 5 miles to Smith Point we went east expecting the wind to go right. We found a nice lane of wind and even overstood while the boats inshore to the west were left becalmed. We rounded Smith Point around 8:30 and just as we rounded and were setting up for a broad reach under spinnaker, the wind went even further east and we ditched our plans for the spinnaker under what would now be a close reach. I drove the 2nd half of the way back and we finished around 12:30am, beating a faster J105 to the line and ending up just 13 1/2 minutes behind the winning J109 on corrected time.
Another nice weekend of racing at Fishing Bay Yacht Club for the 73rd Annual One Design Regatta. We had 10 Laser and 3 Radials among the 112 boats total at the regatta. We got in 3 long races on Saturday. The first race was probably the most exciting. I led for most of the race and got passed in the last 50 feet to the finish line and a moment after the pass I death rolled just feet from the finish. I still managed to right the boat and finish in 2nd. I finished 2nd and 5th in the other two races.
We would have raced some more, but storms moved into the area and chased us off the water. Our course got off the water just fine, but the tail end of the Flying Scots coming in from the far racing area didn’t make it before the front hit and several boats were capsized near the club. Thankfully there were no injuries or damage to the boats involved. Dinner and the party got a slow start on account of the rain, but it did clear eventually and allowed for a good time.
On Sunday the wind was a bit lighter. We raced long courses which spread the fleet out quite a bit. In almost every race I would have a great start, miss a shift and find myself 2-4 at the first mark. On the 2nd upwind I could usually pick off all or most of the boats ahead of me. That’s what happened in the final race and passed upwind for the lead on the last 1/4 of the upwind to give me 2nd overall (results). All in all it was a good regatta and we had quite a few fun races.
More awards pictures and a few scenes from around the club are here. Below is a video of a few scenes from the regatta.
I’ve heard the way to get faster is to sail against boats who are faster than I am – even if they have 3 times as many sails and 5 times as many people on board.
