COME FOR THE CLINIC, STAY FOR THE REGATTA!
This time last year we left The J/24 ECC’s a bit disappointed in the turnout-it seemed to getting smaller. At the end of the regatta Mark Hillman swore he was going to change things, thinking outside the box and doing things differently. Within a week Mark was set up on Facebook, emailing the class, etc… people were immediately talking about the great job he was doing: signing up for early registration and sponsors were committing early to the event.
We at North Sails decided to be one of those sponsors but wanted to get away from the usual raffle items that we do all year round at many events. We came up with The North Sails Super Clinic! Basically an all day clinic to be run in stages throughout. Boats could sign up on line for the day of just show up that day and come by to learn from out North Sails Team. Classes were held over at The Eastport YC in the morning covering anything from boat set up, tuning, speed tips, crew placement, trim and so on… this went until noon and the room was packed. Everyone broke for lunch and were to meet for the “On the Water” portion of the day around 1:30pm. Our North Sails Team broke up into teams and went boat to boat helping teams set up for the light to moderate conditions seen that afternoon.
The water portion was awesome with 20 boats showing up on the line, we had a bunch of practice starts to get the teamsprimed. Some tacking on the whistle helped with warm up as well. We went right into as many Windward/Leeward’s aswe could fit in. I ran the R/C and we had two coach boats following the fleet giving instant feedback to the teams, items like moving weight around, trimming of the genoa, etc… were all discussed. Everyone seemed to enjoy getting feedback in this fashion.
We ended The Super Clinic with a debrief at the SSA Tent area, sailors could ask anything they wanted and we were discussing some of the common issues seen amongst the boats out there on the water. Cold beer and about 60 pizzas showed up during this session-it was popular to say the least. A BIG THANKS to Mark Hillman again for helping North Sails pull off a wonderful J/24 Super Clinic!
The racing started the next day and went Friday-Sunday, five races were held over the weekend. Sunday was your typical J/24 ECC’s conditions with a NNW Breeze, chilly temperatures with three races run before a 2pm cut off-awesome sailing day!
A huge thanks to all The Volunteers and R/C for running a sweet event throughout and it was great to see 55 Boats out on the line once again! I know our J/24 Team and all my Co-Workers at North Sails really enjoyed themselves.