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Happy New Year!

The next upcoming Class event is the St Pete NOODs. The home page for this regatta shows the 7.9 class and the story of Dave Flechsig who won the S2 7.9 class and first place overall at the 2009 Sperry Top-Sider St. Petersburg NOOD. Sign up now, then dust off that trailer and head south.

2010 S2 7.9 Class Championships Announced!
August 19th - 21st, 2010
Racine Yacht Club

The 2010 S2 7.9 Regatta Dates for 2010

2009 S2 7.9 Class Championships
September 16th - 19th, 2009
Macatawa Bay Yacht Club

Nail-biter at 2009 CCR

Spike Boston and perennial S2 7.9 good-luck-charm Curtis Flowers somehow managed to squeak out an 11th hour, one point victory over the Padnos team aboard K2 at the 2009 Class Championship Regatta. Jeff and Doug Padnos, with Wally Cross, David Becker and Chris Balliet had dominated in the light air and shifty breeze. But the arithmetic turned against them in the very last race.

Nashville’s Dr Paul Latour brought his ‘slow’ boat to MBYC and rounded out the podium in third place. The Itch crew also took home the Top Amateur trophy.

Competition was equally tough in the Silver Fleet. Louisville’s Mickey Gregg won a single point victory over Racine’s Mark Rode with Eric Bert in third place.

Conditions at the 2009 CCR? In a word – Freakish. July weather, light shifty east breezes, showed up just as the regatta got underway on Thrusday morning. Only 24 hrs beforehand it had been a steady 15kts with gusts to 20. Tuesday night, even bigger gusts with tooth-jarring disorganized waves punished anybody who went out for a crew practice. By Thursday…..well it was all very different.

Day one got off to a slow start with a substantial postponement. The sunshine was great. The winds were not. Things finally did settle out of the east. Light air, but better than the predicted zero to three. After a couple of general recalls, R1 got going. The lump took its toll on a lot of boats’ speed. Mickey Gregg was the first to round the windward, and held on to take 4th. Terrific job. K2 posted a bullet, with Flyer next and the Relentless guys in third. R2 saw much of the same type of racing, and similar results: K2, Flyer and Itch. Two races for the day was all we could manage.

Day two was similarly light, but tougher sailing. More lump. Bigger shifts. After more general recalls R3 began with a lot the fleet going left. But Peter Schwartz took the opposite approach and tagged the big right hander with lots of speed. He put a bullet on his scoreboard. Interestingly all of the (eventual) podium finishers burned their throw-outs in this race. Flyer struggled with a 15th, K2 with an 8th and Itch with 11th.

After a course re-set, R4 got off in what initially appeared to be better air. The Hard Tack guys looked great after port-tacking more than half of the fleet on the line. But they got greedy and fate was cruel to them with a nasty lefty half way up the beat. Ouch. Peter Schwartz also got this one wrong. By the end thing were pretty strung out behind Flyer in first, Dash in second and Paul Tobias on Liason in third. K2’s respectable fifth place finish was to play an unkind role the next day.

Day three looked terrible at the outset. After quite a bit of radio jabber, the fleet headed further west to catch a developing breeze. Flyer needed at least two races to throw out a disastrous 15th in R3. And it didn’t look good. Then things got worse for Flyer. In R5 K2 posted their third bullet for the regatta, with Spike two spots behind…in a dying breeze.

But the breeze increased just enough…just enough…to allow the possibility of a 6th race. And when the RC sounded the warning, the scoring arithmetic changed. With throw-outs Flyer tied K2 It all came down to R6. Whoever crossed the line first would win the regatta.

The fleet got off the line and quickly spread out. Rebel, Itch and Songbird were out front. All three of these boats were shifting gears and keeping their speed up better than anybody. The wind got lighter as things progressed. And the RC posted the S flag, shortening R6 to three legs.

At the end, Flyer was 4th for R6. K2 was 5th. One point separated the two in favor of Flyer, where only 90 minutes prior K2 had been untouchable. And that was the regatta. The arithmetic changed. And as Jeff Padnos said “You can never count those guys (Flyer) out. They’re just too good.”

Fifteen boats had a top-five finish in at least one race. Thirteen had a bottom five. So there was plenty of movement. But it was consistency that won the regatta…almost.

Many thanks to Scott Derby for a huge amount of hard work. And to MBYC: Your club sets the standard. What a great place for sailors.

Final Results Overall

Rooster Tail struts its stuff at the St Petersburg NOOD!!

Wins boat of the week.

David Flechsig and the Rooster Tail team managed to eek out one-point victory over Spike Boston's Frequent Flyer at the 2009 St Pete NOODs. But that wasn’t all. Racing was so tight in the 10-boat S2 7.9 fleet, Dave also won the regatta’s overall top honors. Considering that the pro-laden Melges 24 fleet had 44 boats, this was a fantastic tribute to the 7.9 class.

So…we caught up with Dave last night to check in and find out what went right.

7.9CA – Dave, congratulations. Nice job.
DF – Thanks very much. Man it was a great surprise. We had a blast with a bunch of really great competitors. And we really appreciate what Jeff Pawlowski did in promoting the St Pete NOODs for the 7.9ers.

7.9CA – What did you guys do to get fast?
DF – Funny you should ask because I think we were pretty relaxed. We got the boat there early. We set up early. I think that helped us just be more at-ease. I make sure that the bottom was perfect because I’d hit a log and damaged the board a while ago. The boat also picks up lots of grime when you trailer it.
I picked up a new set of sails from Spike. Actually they were an ’05 design. But they just fit my boat and my style of driving. I asked Spike to just duplicate those sails exactly. We got out on the water for a few minutes on set-up day. The sails set perfectly, just perfect. So, we just turned around and went back in. I don’t know….I guess we just figured we’d done about as much as we could do.

7.9CA – Who was sailing with you?
DF – My crew was great. Brian and Kat Malone are locals who have sailed with me for three years. Brian sailed on Stars and Stripes, the catamaran. He didn’t miss a beat doing tactics for us. Danny Weidenhoft was our young-eyes-on-the-water-guy. I don’t know how he sees what he does, but, he was magic. Then Scott Endicott who’s been our jib trimmer since ’03 was on as well.

7.9CA - How’d it go on day one? What was your strategy?
DF – Well it looked pretty grim at first. No air. But they finally sent us out. I’d had some inversion in the mast the previous day and we’d put the outers on tight the night before. We loosened things up and got in to sequence. Our start was OK. Not better than ok. But we had boatspeed so we just tried to keep in clear air. That was especially critical downwind. Our whole strategy was to just be consistent. Don’t freak out. Don’t sail off the course. We pulled in 2nd behind Spike (Boston). That was the day.

7.9CA – Anything different on day two?
DF – We had a bit more wind I guess. It was blowing maybe 9 knots or so with a little chop. There were a lot of guys stacking up on the boat so we tried to get in (close to the line) a little bit earlier and stay out of the mess. Our starts were OK, but we never had an outstanding launch. We were able to sail deeper on the runs than I expected though. I mean in 9 knots we were close to dead downwind maybe 30% of the time. We concentrated on making sure the boat didn’t slide (sideways) at all. We kept it pretty flat. Other than that we just kept consistent.

7.9CA – Seems like that worked. You guys ended the day three points in the lead.
DF – That was fun. But the only thing I could think about was the time I was two points behind Spike at one of the National Championships going in to the last day. I think we would up in 7th overall in that one. In St Pete, Alan Capellin was right there too, behind Spike. Alan’s new to the fleet. He was sailing with his dad, and his daughter who’s a very good little sailor was coming up on Sunday. How great is that? It’s what I really love about this class.

7.9CA – But the last day worked out pretty well after all?
DF – It was close though. Going in to the first race I thought we’d just hang with Spike. Just don’t do anything dumb. But he’s a master. He kept getting our boat mixed up in the fleet. Then we had a disaster at a leeward mark rounding. We got fouled and at that point we were pretty buried. On the last run Spike put another boat between us. He rolled in 4th and we finally crossed in sixth. So we were down to a one-point lead with one race to go.

Just before we went into sequence for the last race we’d noticed the wind on the other side of the bay was changing fast. When it hit it went from 10 kts to maybe 18 kts. And it changed direction by a huge amount, almost 180 degrees. The race committee ran out of time to set a new course. So, there you go. We got it.

7.9CA – When did you guys find out that you’d won the regatta top-boat honors?
DF – Well we almost missed the whole thing. We got back to the dock. Spike was right there with a slap on the back (for winning our division). I think somebody from every other boat came up. And we were feeling great. But I had to drop some crew on the way home so we were going to leave. One thing led to another and we decided to stay around for the ceremonies. When they went to announce the overall winner I was looking at the exit. I had no idea at all that we were in the running. I mean with guys like Dave Ullman in the Melges fleet, who would? But then they called our fleet and our boat. The place went wild. I mean, tons of sailors applauding and whistling….for us, for my team. I was honestly so stunned I couldn’t say anything. It was just outstanding. Believe it or not, it was a pretty cool emotional moment. Who knew? So I got the big Gill bag. It was great.

Back to the Future for the S2 7.9

The news from Tiara Yachts is official: The S2 7.9 will go back in to 'limited production'. Tiara asked the class association to hold the official announcement until today. But the 'rumors' are all true.

The new models will incorporate some very limited changes, but will be fully and completely One-Design Class legal boats. There will be no changes to any of the underwater shapes, nor the rigging of the boat. However, as Scott Smith of Tiara stated recently at an owners meeting in Nashville, "We've learned a few things about building boats over the last several years". So owners of new boats can expect modern build technology where appropriate.

There will be a limited number of options. Those include a painted interior in lieu of headliners, self tailing winches and optional gelcoat colors. Tiara is also looking at using silver anodized toe rail instead of the leg-scorching black. But the boat remains largely unchanged.

I think this is a fantastic testament (a) to the design work of Scott Graham and Eric Schlageter (b) to the build quality of Tiara Yachts on all of the 7.9s and (c) to the dedicated members of the class association.

Personally, I could not believe the price. I was stunned. Tiara build quality + the most versatile 26 footer out there + Blue-water capable + competitive under virtually any race handicap system ever devised + float on/off trailerable....for that money. Amazing.

OK, so you'd expect to find a favorable reception on this page. But please!. Somebody tell me what comes close in terms of value. No disrespect to any other builder or class out there. Nothing else. That's not to say that the 7.9 is perfect for everyone. No boat is. But it's an amazing value. And you won't find a better built, more versatile boat on the market.

Many thanks to Scott for soliciting so many owners' opinions and for involving the class in this project.

Now.... let's hope the economy starts to recover so we can all breathe a little easier.

It is time for the 2008 CCR regatta! Tim Bosma has volunteered to run an 'unofficial' site of the S2 7.9 Class Championship Regatta. Tim has also agreed to keep the online sailing comunitee in the loop by posting updates and results on Sailing Anarchy ( www.sailinganarchy.com). Brandy Boston will be there taking pictures and posting on her fantastic photo site.

Click logo for latest 'official' information on the 2008 CCR

Its Magical
Detroit NOODS Results May 30 - June 1, 2008
"Wow"...light wind, heavy wind...freaky wind...Magic comes on strong to win the Detroit NOODS.