Race Management - St. Petersburg Yacht Club

Race
Management
ST. PETERSBURG YACHT CLUB
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Race Management
… Bring club members together …
O
Program for the 1959 Lightning
Winter regatta. SPYC archive
n the topic of race management, as with
many other SPYC topics, the Fish Class
provides a point of reference.
In the 1950s, following a decades-long practice, a
volunteer would drive a car out to the southeast corner of the Municipal Pier with some small colored
flags attached to bamboo poles to await the arrival of the Fish Boats. This race committee was often
Howard Rees assisted by his wife, Lillian. One of the
Fish Boats would bring out a starting-line mark to be
dropped in the direction indicated by Rees. Course
instructions such as “Three Stakes (three pilings off
Snell Isle) and Bayboro No. 2” would be called out, a
long-forgotten sequence of flag and fog horn signals
made, and a race would be started. Whether the initial course was into the wind, as is the near universal
practice today, was of little concern. After all, a pointto-point race such as St. Petersburg to Havana often
began with a downwind start.
After SPYC began hosting mid-winter regattas for
national one-design classes in the late 1940s, with 60
or more boats on the starting line, SPYC race committee people quickly adopted the best practices of
the time.
The excellent race management offered by SPYC
through its volunteer race committees is a major rea-
Checking the wind: Race officer Maridell Weaver, aboard her and husband Dick’s Ixchel, checks wind direction with her wind stick and hand-bearing compass. Race
officers seek to keep the course directly aligned with the wind, but the wind usually shifts —
­ this would cause her to order marks to be moved. Barbara Watson Clapp
Kell Hennessy, on his cruiser Ishpa, provides a start for a 1974 One-Ton race at St. Petersburg. St. Petersburg Times archive
Previous page: Race officer Maridell Weaver observes as the 2004 Valentine’s Day Regatta contestants approach the committee boat, Ixchel. Barbara Watson Clapp
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CENTENNIAL 1909-2009
son the Lightning Class has been coming back annually for more than 60 years, the Thistle Class for more
than 50 years. The reputation gained with those two
classes led to the club being awarded the 1962 Flying
Dutchman Class World Championship and the 1962
USYRU Junior National Championship (Sears Cup).
Since that breakthrough year, SPYC has regularly
been asked to host major national and international
championship regattas.
Another major reason for SPYC’s success as a regatta host has been the willingness of its members to
serve as event chairpersons and to lend a hand with
the tasks inherent to a successful regatta. These tasks
include maintaining a relationship with the group being hosted, publication of the notice of race, and arranging for housing, registration, parking, launching, dockage, meals, entertainment, media relations
and trophies. Two good examples, among many, are
Robert and Trish Birkenstock’s conduct of the Lightning Mid-Winter Regatta and Paul and Carole Bardes’
conduct of the Thistle Mid-Winter Regatta in recent
years.
In 2009, SPYC will host 31 regatta events. A typical
event, the 2009 Disabled/Open Mid-Winter Regatta,
Nancy Shivers tallies the race
results for the 2004 Alison Jolly
Regatta. Barbara Watson Clapp
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Race Management
J105 Class boats waiting for less fog and more wind at the 2006 NOOD Regatta.
Renée Athey / SPYC archive
had 22 SPYC members on the race committee. These
members worked on or from four privately owned
boats and three club boats including the club’s Coast
Pilot, a decades-old, 29-foot lobster boat. Lawrence
“Larry” Wissing’s Spindra, a motorsailer, served as
the primary race committee vessel. In recent years,
Spindra and George Pennington’s power cruiser Baby
Doll have constantly served as primary race committee vessels for regattas. These two boats rarely left the
dock without their respective first mates, Joy Wissing
and Elizabeth Pennington.
The intensity of the regatta schedule is illustrated
by the fact that the 2009 Disabled/Open Mid-Winter
Regatta was preceded in February by the National
Offshore and One Design (NOOD) Regatta in which
148 boats sailing in 15 classes raced a minimum of six
races on three separate courses, each of which was
fully staffed with volunteer race committee members and support craft. Many of the club members
who “worked” the Disabled/Open Regatta had also
worked the NOOD Regatta. Many of them would
Flag signals: The race committee aboard Fred Stansbury and Sheila Thurmund’s Sheila Te stands by to start the J105s at the 2006 NOOD Regatta. The orange flag
marks the start line, the blue and white “P” flag signals “Prepare to start,” and the purple flag tells the J105s it’s their start. Renée Athey / SPYC archive
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CENTENNIAL 1909-2009
segue right into the weeklong Thistle Mid-Winter Regatta.
Theodore E. “Ted” Tolson Jr. became known as
“Mr. Race Committee” during the 1960s for his demonstrated ability as a race committee chairman and
his organizational work with the United States Yacht
Racing Union (USYRU), now US Sailing, on the racing rules committee, and his advocacy for improvement of race committee procedures and performance.
Tolson led the initiative in 1967 to establish the St.
Petersburg Yacht Club Trophy to be awarded annually by US Sailing, to the yacht club that conducts the
best-run regatta.
Excellence attracts excellence. Our club members
discovered that serving on the race committee team
was both challenging and fun. They enjoyed, and
continue to enjoy, the camaraderie resulting from
contributing to a job well done. Over the years many
men and women and couples who came to SPYC
from all over North America to participate in regattas were attracted to St. Petersburg as a future home,
to SPYC as a club they would join, and, ultimately, to
race committee work as a means of putting their nautical and organizational abilities to work in a manner
that would benefit many people.
Outstanding race committee members in the ’60s
and ’70s included Tom Downs, Bruce Watters Jr., Jim
Thurman, Frances Weaver Buchan, Harold Davenport, Fred Eastman, Pokey Wheeler, Don Sorensen,
Richard G. “Dick” Jones Jr., J. Stan Smith, Pat Talbot
and Peter Wormwood.
Overlapping and following this group were Frank
Mendelblatt, David Fagen, Eugene Hinkel, Walter
Grant, Richard Funsch, Kenneth Carpenter, Robert
L. “Bob” Johnson, Thomas Farquhar, Patricia Seidenspinner and Maridell Weaver.
In 1998, Farquhar, Seidenspinner and Mark Murphy (Annapolis) formulated the race officer training
and qualification program used by US Sailing today.
This program requires study of training manuals,
course attendance, on-the-water experience at every
station on a complex regatta race committee and recurrent education and renewal of qualifications. Successful participants are qualified as race officers at
four levels: certified, regional, national, and, in conjunction with the International Sailing Federation
(ISAF), international.
Farquhar is certified as a national and international race officer, judge and umpire. He chairs the
US Sailing race officer training and certification committee. Seidenspinner is a certified national and in-
Boats raft at the club docks for the 2006 NOOD Regatta. A big event only happens
after a great amount of work by SPYC’s regatta team. Renée Athey / SPYC archive
ST. PETERSBURG YACHT CLUB
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Race Management
SPYC race
committee
aboard
Spindra: George
Pennington,
standing left, with
Pat Seidenspinner,
Carole Bardes,
Lara Walsh, Trisha
Birkenstock,
Maridell Weaver,
Judy Altenhoff,
Char Doyle and
Larry Wissing at
the 2006 Rolex
Women’s Match
Race Regatta on
Tampa Bay.
Birkenstock collection
The St. Petersburg Yacht Club
Trophy for excellence in race
management: Presented to the
SPYC team for 2007’s Winter Lightning
Championship: Bob Birkenstock, left,
event chair; Tom Farquhar, principal
race officer; Amy Smith Linton,
Lightning Class vice president.
Birkenstock collection
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ternational race officer, who for years has edited race
management books and conducted seminars.
Similar programs have been established to qualify
judges, who hear protests after a race, and umpires,
who make on-the-spot calls of infractions.
Johnson and Weaver, as of 2009, are US Sailing
certified race officers, as are Judy Altenhoff, Carole
Bardes, Joseph A. Booker, Gloria Davis, Sharlet Fillingham, Elizabeth Pennington, George Pennington,
Thomas Rinda, Barbara Shaffer, David Shaffer (national race officer), Nancy Shivers and Larry Wissing.
Barbara Farquhar is a US Sailing senior race officer,
judge and umpire as well as an ISAF judge and umpire. Rinda and two Shaffers, Barbara and David, are
highly qualified judges and umpires. These long lists
of names do more than recognize individual achievement. They illustrate the depth of the commitment of
SPYC’s members to conducting superior regattas.
SPYC was awarded the St. Petersburg Yacht Club
Trophy for excellence in race management by US Sailing for its conduct of the 2007 Lightning Class Winter
Championship. Robert Birkenstock was event chair.
Tom Farquhar was the principal race officer. Thirteen
clubs had received nominations for the award.
Race management is a serious undertaking,
but there is always room for fun. Race officer Peter
CENTENNIAL 1909-2009
Tom Wallace’s Mojito prepares to work a 2004
CAT Optis regatta as support boat, laying out
marks and standing by to assist. SPYC archive
Wormwood once guided a fog-bound Thistle fleet to
his race committee boat, Shady Lady, by skirling on
his bagpipes.
Race management and event committee work
bring members together in a way that no social event
could possibly achieve. Members with no technical
knowledge of yacht racing when they first volunteered to help with a regatta have become indispensable members of the regatta team and have established friendships that have enriched their lives.