Fishing Bay Yacht Club
FBYC launched a new website for the Stingray Point Regatta this week. It uses a lot of the things we learned from the 2010 Optimist Nationals website and should serve as a good platform for promoting and providing information about the event. The regatta takes place each Labor Day weekend in Deltaville, Virginia at Fishing Bay Yacht Club and is sailed mostly around buoy courses in 23-40+ foot boats. Check it out at http://stingraypointregatta.org
Fishing Bay Yacht Club won US Sailing’s Regatta of the Year award for hosting the 2010 USODA Layline Nationals. A big part of what set us over the top was our online media and promotion of the event. It was a fun event this summer and I’m glad to have played a part in it. Kudos to the rest of the team that made it happen.
From US Sailing’s Press Release:
The Fishing Bay Yacht Club (FBYC) of Deltaville, Va. won the 2010 Regatta Award for the excellence in development, promotion, and management performed by organizers and sponsors of the 2010 USODA (United States Optimist Dinghy Association) Layline Nationals on July 17-25, 2010.
Co-chairs Noel Clinard and Jay Buhl, along with webmaster Jon Deutsch were recognized for demonstrating extraordinary individual creativity and contribution to the year’s most innovative one-design event of national significance. The regatta attracted broad national and international participation of 317 boats through persistent marketing and communication efforts. The small club located in a village maximized their resources through their entrepreneurial promotions, sponsorship development, community involvement, shore activities and creative dissemination of housing, tourism, historical and racing information.
The regatta site conjoined four nearby properties, including the Deltaville Dockyard, Jackson Creek Condominiums, Deltaville Maritime Museum, and Harbor House Community. The regatta consisted of three events: team racing, girls fleet racing, open fleet racing, plus a green fleet for novices. Despite its small size of about 330 family members, FBYC turned out different race committees for these events with over 50 volunteers.
The backbone for marketing the regatta was an effective, user friendly web site at http://optinationals2010.org. The web site was enabled to provide social networking through Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. A detailed media plan included the engagement of two separate video services, t2p.tv and Sailgroove, who provided ample coverage. FBYC facilitated the recruitment of Layline, a marine supplier, as the first ever Platinum level partner for USODA.
Also, 2008 Olympic Gold Medalist and US SAILING Team AlphaGraphics member Anna Tunnicliffe was in attendance and gave the keynote address for the opening ceremony.
I want to thank all of the sailors who came out for the 2010 Chesapeake Bay Laser Masters Championship at Fishing Bay Yacht Club last weekend. We had a record turnout since 2000 and it was by far the best and most fun FBYC Laser Masters regattas that I’ve been a part of. I also wanted to thank the race committee, our fleet members and all of the other volunteers at FBYC who helped make this regatta what it is. All of the competitors enjoyed it and got some great sailing, and that would not have been possible without the help of everyone involved. Congrats to John Bertrand on winning his second straight Chesapeake Bay Laser Masters Championship.
The complete write-up of the regatta and results can be read here. With 25+ knot winds on Saturday, the boat I was on was just a little too wet to get the camera out. I was able to get a few good shots from shore and a bunch of great photos on Sunday.
I hope to see everyone back at FBYC for 2 Laser Regattas next year: The District 11 Championship and US Sailing Singlehanded Championship Area C Elimination in late May or early June, and the 2011 Chesapeake Bay Laser Masters Championship in October.
Today was the first day of the Chesapeake Bay Laser Masters Championship at Fishing Bay Yacht Club and what a wild windy day it was. Unfortunately it was so windy and so wild that I was unable to get my camera out. With all the spray and having to get in the water to help out tired sailors, I just wasn’t able to get too many shots of the racing.
Read about the day here and check out the first day results. Tomorrow’s forecast calls for less wind and will hopefully enable more photos to be taken.
The 2010 Chesapeake Bay Laser Masters Championship is less than 48 hours away. This is the 29th Annual running of this regatta at Fishing Bay Yacht Club for Laser sailors 35 years of age or older. Since becoming the Laser Fleet captain in 2005 this is the 6th masters regatta I have been event chair for and my 7th laser regatta total.
As of this writing we have 38 boats registered. We’ve reached that number only once in the last 10 years and if we have 2 more boats show up – this will be the largest Laser Masters regatta since we hosted 91 boats for the US Laser Masters in 2000.
It’s amazing to think back at the last 10 years of Laser Masters regattas on how much has changed, yet how some of the traditions have remained the same.
In 2000 we hosted 91 Lasers without all of the new land we have today. We still had the old clubhouse and somehow everyone had a place to rig and eat dinner.
We still have all of the awesome traditions like Alain’s fabulous dinner, excellent race committee, and a fun group of masters sailors who come every year for a great time.
Here are a couple videos of the 2000 Masters showing just how things were:
Another great weekend in Deltaville. Saturday was probably the last regatta I am going to sail in for the year. It was the Sail Against SIDS/Indian Summer Regatta and we had 3 lasers out. I can’t say I sailed very smart, missing things like the number of laps and major wind shifts. But I made up for it by being fast and won 5 close races. It was fun sailing with Mike and Steve and I want to thank Allan’s crew for putting up with me always wanting our fleet to sail a different course than the other fleets.
Sunday was the Offshore Fall Series #2 at Fishing Bay Yacht Club. I ran the mark boat with Miles. With a strong, cool north wind, we sailed the races in Fishing Bay. Occasional light rain added a little misery. It’s always a sight seeing 15-20 twenty to forty footers racing in the shifty conditions in the Piankatank.
Despite the bad weather, I was able to get some pictures of the action that can be seen here.
This year I’m the event chair for the Chesapeake Bay Laser Masters Regatta on October 16-17. This is the 6th year I’ve chaired the Annual Regatta which will be held for its 29th year.
The shirts will be printed on a wicking shirt and the design is a stencil of a photo from last year.
Following up on the USODA Layline Nationals – the event went fantastic. I was out on the water each day for the entire week with one part of the race committee or another. The social media experiment went very well with a lot of traffic hitting the site, and a lot of people following on twitter and facebook. Being able to quickly post information to the web was great for both the RC and organizing authority to get information out, and for parents/coaches to see the detailed stuff. At some point I’ll be writing up something of a case study to share what I learned with those who want to replicate some of what I did with this regatta.
My vantage point with the RC also enabled me to get some incredible photos. Some of those include a fisheye photo of the start from the bow pulpit, and photos of the start while standing on the goal posts. And event photographer Dave Hein was nice enough to swap spots with me for a race so I could get a few shots from around the course.
I did get some photos of the racing action, but I mostly focused on photos that highlighted the club and community effort to put on the event. Those photos were rolled into a scrapbook that is now in the club library. All of the photos that I took can be found here. These collections are about 93% mine and the rest were contributed by other club members.
For more videos, pictures, results and all of the writing done for the regatta. Check out the event website which will remain up for some time as an archive.
This Friday I am embarking on a 10-day odyssey to the 2010 USODA Layline National Championship. Fishing Bay Yacht Club is hosting this National Championship in 8′ sailboats for the top 8-15 year-old sailors from around the country. Deltaville Virginia, a town of only 500-800 full-time residents, will be inundated with over 320 sailors, their siblings, parents and coaches. Three events will take place from Saturday to Saturday to crown the Team, Girls and Fleet National Champions.
Since October, I’ve created and managed the event website at http://optinationals2010.org. During that time it’s evolved as a pretty neat project. The goal of course has been to create a first-rate event website for the sailors, parents and coaches to get information about the event and make their plans. The site will also serve those who may not be making the trip and will be following along from their computers at home. Not only is there a website, but we’ve set up variety of other social media outlets to enable all of our fans and followers to keep up with the regatta in their preferred format. We’ve got everything from the website (including an online shop), twitter, facebook, youTube, flickr, email, webcam, and SMS Text.
To help facilitate this I’ll be the onsite blogger for the duration of the regatta. Throughout the regatta I’ll be writing blog posts, sending tweets, updating the facebook page and getting notices and results posted to the website. During the racing I’ll be stationed aboard the main committee boat with an internet connection where I can connect to the website and upload pictures and information as well as monitor the weather for the race committee.
My role is just one part of the hundreds of volunteers around FBYC and Deltaville who have a hand in putting on this major event. It’s going to be a great week and I’m really looking forward to it. To check out my coverage and see what’s going on, check out the event website at http://optinationals2010.org throughout the week.
Last weekend was the 2010 Leukemia Cup Regatta. It was held in Deltaville at Stingray Point Marina/Fishing Bay Yacht Club. Above is a photo of the crew. After abandoning the first race on Saturday in a lightning storm, we only managed 1 race on Sunday before the wind let out. We finished 4th in our 7-boat fleet. We might not have gotten any hardware on the race course, but we were the top fundraiser raising over $11,000 to support cancer research.