February 09th, 2016
Fellow West Coast Weta sailors,
We have seen a regaining of interest in sailing lately, so it is time to kick off the 2016 racing season!
Bruce has posted the preliminary West Coast regatta schedule here: http://www.wetanorthamerica.com/#!calendar/c1t44
There is still room for changes, but our strategy for this year is to have one flagship regatta per month, including
| March 19-20 | San Diego (Mission Bay Cat Fight) |
| March 19-20 | San Francisco (St. Francis Spring Dinghy) |
| June 25-26 | Huntington Lake (Fresno Hobie Commodore’s Regatta) |
| July 23-24 | Santa Cruz (Hobie Multihull) |
| July 29-31 | Cascade Locks (C-GOD) |
| August 20-21 | Santa Barbara (Wine & Roses) |
| Sept 10-11 | Richmond (Multihull Inv.) |
| Sept 21-24 | Bonus: Nationals in Duck, NC! |
There is a lot of work involved in organizing a regatta, and usually a yacht club is trying to lock their schedule 3 to 6 months in advance.
Usually, they require a minimum of 5 boats to give us our own start, but having more boats shows how serious of a fleet we are, and gets us invited to more regattas. For example, last year we were the biggest fleet in the Santa Cruz regatta, and it was noticed. The organizers saw our participation as a significant boost to their event. I really would like to continue that way.
Our West Coast fleet is spread across a very large territory, but with some goodwill, I am convinced the fleet density can grow to a size where we can have consistent fleet attendance for racing, as well as family fun at regattas. I have been involved with this fleet for a few years now, and the Weta really lends itself to a great combination of fun, family, racing, and overall stressless sailing.
The West Coast Wetas are a great bunch. East Coast Wetas are a great bunch. I don’t know those in the middle yet!
We are currently trying to secure invitations to several regattas, but in order for this to really work, we need to have commitments from our fleet.
Over the next several weeks, I will add Polls for all our regattas on the schedule, but right now, we need your responses to the current open polls:
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/westcoastwetas/polls/open
It is OK if you say NO (we know who you are) But please respond, so at least we will know if a regatta is on the calendars for enough Wetas to be worth attempting.
Remember, for each regatta, there must be someone from the Wetas acting as liaison with the Regatta chair. So if the attendance is a NO, then we say thank you and see you next year, and move on. But we need to know NOW if it is worth persuading the Regatta chair to add the Wetas to the Notice of Race. (Wetas were uninvited from several regattas lately… so in some cases there is a lot of convincing to do)
By the way, we have a somewhat stale list of only 50 people on the west coast with Wetas. If you know of a Weta owner who should be included but might not be getting this info, please pass it on and encourage them to contact me or Bruce so we can get them connected to the fun we’ll be having.
Similarly, if you are a West Coast sailor receiving this email via the Weta-Trimarans mailing list, but not via the WestCoastWetas mailing list, let us know so we can add you.
So let’s kick this sailing season in style, and let’s all converge to a number of sailing events were we can be in large number and have a lot of family and racing fun!
Christophe
West Coast Weta 1031
