Race Committee

ANNAPOLIS -- It was a long day on the water for both fleets of racers and two hard-working race committees when a stalled frontal system turned the first day of Annapolis Race Week into a slow and frustrating mess.Sailors' post-race discussions and bragging sessions focused more on a game of "can you top this" based on how many times each crew was forced to raise a spinnaker on what should have been a windward leg, and how often and how long they resorted to anchoring in dismally light air and a foul current, than on the brilliance of their tactics and boat handling.

For the sailors in this year's summer Oxford Regatta, with the Tred Avon and Chesapeake Bay yacht clubs as hosts, it was another memorable event.The event combined a big-boat race to Oxford on Friday and buoy race Saturday with a major one-design regatta Saturday and Sunday. Even a special event for the picturesque and exciting log canoeswas part of the festivities.The big-boat racers found the Friday-Saturday event to be a bizarre combination of feast and famine as far as weather went.Friday's fleet of at least 120 PHRF, IMS and MORC boats and Tritons met at the starting line in a torrential downpour and strong, gusty winds reported at 30 knots or better.

As the first few boats in the PHRF A class crossed the finish line in rapidly building wind in yesterday's third and final race of the fourth annual Northern Bay Race Week, a violent squall forced the race committee and most of the fleet of nearly 80 boats to abandon competition.The series was cut to the two races that had been completed Friday and Saturday.A lesser squall earlier in the day forced committee chairman Larry Martin to postpone starting the race, which finally began shortly after noon in unsettled, broadly shifting winds.

One of the ways I've found to "pay" my way out onto the water to watch and report on some of the exciting sailing events on local waters has been to volunteer for race committee duty.In the past 18 months or so I've been doing this, I've found some unexpected side benefits, a lot of useful knowledge and a fair amount of fun. In many very real ways, serving on race committees is helping to make me a better, smarter, more competitive sailor when I take part in a race as a competitor.I've also learned new respect for the people who make it possible for the rest of us to race by volunteering to manage the competition.

While more than 80 of their smaller cousins battled it out off the mouth of the Severn River in the annual J/24 East Coast Championships, a fleet of 15 J/29s was working toward the J/29 North American Championship title down by Thomas Point Saturday and Sunday.Among their numbers were three teams from the Southern Chesapeake and three from farther afield -- New York, New Jersey, and North Carolina -- as well as a strong Baltimore-Annapolis-Eastern Shore contingent. The regatta was managed jointly by a race committee team from the Severn River Yacht Club in Annapolis and the Fishing Bay Yacht Club of Richmond, Va.There were two short races Saturday morning while the light wind held, and another two later in the day when it filled in again, and a strenuous two-race heavy-air series on Sunday.

The schedule for the opening day of the Cadillac Columbus Cup regatta called for 12 races yesterday. By the end of the day four races had been sailed, and the rest of the schedule had been abandoned.The first flight of races was started on schedule on the Chesapeake Bay off the mouth of the Patapsco River in what New Zealand skipper Russell Coutts called great sailing conditions," with New Zealand matched against Team Baltimore.But before New Zealand and Team Baltimore could finish their match, the wind went flat, and the race committee abandoned the race.