FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
CONTACT:
Thomas N.T. Mullen
Lake Winnipesaukee Sailing Association, Inc. (LWSA)
603-726-3076 x 219
603-726-4897
Team Sailboat Racing Comes To Lake Winnipesaukee
During the upcoming weekend of Saturday, June 23rd and Sunday, June 24th, the Broads on Lake Winnipesaukee in Gilford, New Hampshire will be the venue for a new and rapidly growing action sport called Team Sailboat Racing.
In conventional sailboat racing, each boat does its best to sail as quickly as it can from the starting line to the finishing line, hopefully faster than all the other boats in the fleet.
In team racing, identical one-design boats join together, usually three or four boats to a team, and they race as a group against the other team. It’s the combined scores of all the boats on a given team that determine which team wins the race. Points are awarded based on each boat’s finishing order - - one point for first, three points for third, and so on. The team with the lowest point total at the end of the match, wins the regatta.
Physical contact between the boats is discouraged, but it does happen occasionally. The action does get fast, and at times, a bit furious.
This type of racing involves a great deal of coordination. Boats on the same team try to block opposing boats from getting ahead by strategically using right of way rules and by keeping opponents from getting clear air. The object is to help your own team’s boats get ahead by forcing the opposing team’s boats to make mistakes and fall behind.
Team racing is governed by a strict set of rules. To enforce the rules, teams of umpires follow the competitors in small powerboats making immediate decisions and rendering judgments if one boat commits a foul against another. If one of the umps signals a race boat that it has broken a rule by waving a red flag in its direction, that boat has to immediately move away from the other competitors and do a complete three hundred and sixty degree penalty turn before returning to the race course. Having to do a penalty circle will slow that boat down and make it difficult for that boat to get back into a top finishing position.
The match that will unfold this weekend on Lake Winnipesaukee will feature a team of racers from the Ida Lewis Yacht Club in Newport, Rhode Island challenging a home grown team from the local Lake Winnipesaukee Sailing Association (the LWSA).
Both teams will compete in identical twenty-six foot sail boats called J-80’s. In fact, the J-80 Fleet #1 on Lake Winnipesaukee is the largest fleet of this type of boat in the world. Anywhere from thirteen to twenty of these J-Class yachts race out on the lake every week throughout the spring, summer and fall.
Each Thursday nights, these boats gather from all four corners of the lake and
they converge near Welch Island in Gilford where the competition takes place
around a course of buoys designed to test each skipper’s and crew’s racing
expertise. On the downwind legs, when the colorful parachutes-like spinnakers
pop open to the delight of the spectator fleet, the cameras start clicking away
as the boats sail off into the sunsets.
This coming weekend’s team races will start each day around 11:00 a.m. Spectators boats are encouraged to gather, but they should remain off to the sides of
the race course and do their best not to create high wakes that can disturb the
flow of wind across the racers’ sails.
Bragging rights and a beautiful trophy will be the winning team’s prize along
with two days of fun and relaxation in a setting of incomparable beauty.
The LWSA is a 501(c)(3) tax exempt entity that offers a variety of programs to the public, including a Youth Sailing School that has taught over 2000 youngsters how to sail since 1988 from its base of operations at Fay’s Boatyard in Gilford, New Hampshire. More information about the organization’s various programs is available at www.lwsa.org.
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