What if? 2019 Western Regionals

[alanhsails]

...WHAT IF..

...there was an S2 7.9 "Western Regional Championships" in 2019?. How many 7.9's from California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico would attend? Let's pretend it's on San Francisco Bay, just for starters. I know of two boats on SF Bay...mine and one in Vallejo. There are at least 4-5 in Washington, one in Idaho and I dunno about anywhere else.

Could we get 7-8 boats out to play?

[alanhsails]

Just thinking out loud, here...

Friday: "Tune-Up Race" and welcome shindig

Saturday: 2-3 W/L races on what I would call relatively short courses in flattish water, say 5-7 miles each.

Sunday: Long Distance race that would count "double" (considering as these are kinda supposed to be MORC-type boats) that would get out the Golden Gate to the Point Bonita Buoy, but not so far out that everybody would have to buy the umpty-ump pieces of equipment that the Coast Guard requires for "offshore" here... and maybe add up to about 25 miles overall.

[alanhsails]

Not ONE response? Not a word from any Class officers? Huh....

wow. OK.

Never mind.

[Stef]

I think it's a great idea, but I'm in Pennsylvania. I'd come out to crew! Do a three bridges race.

[Dr.M]

Wouldn't San Fran be a pain to tow through? And expensive for hotels and services? I've towed through Seattle/Bellevue rush hour and that wasn't much fun. My route would be across I-80 to Sacramento and down the east side of the Bay. I've driven that route to pick up a motorcycle dynamometer in Santa Cruz, and it does get busy.

My trailer is long (it's a big 7500 lb capacity EZLoader with 3x5 rectangular tubing),longer than 30' with the boat on it, so when I'm moving that's about 14,500 lbs and 55-feet long (and don't forget, 9 feet wide). If I could figure out when the route isn't as crowded, I'd consider it.

OBTW, there are several national events held at Cascade Locks in the Columbia River Gorge (Moore 24, Tasers, Laser Pacific Coast Championship, collegiate events, etc.). There is an upriver race from Hood River to The Dalles that is a pretty good sleigh ride. Potentially another location for consideration. That might pull in more of the NW boats, but when I view race results around the NW, I never seem to see any 7.9s. Mine is a diesel boat, so I don't know how competitive I could be. But, it would be fun to sail on SF Bay.

Best-
Steve

[FEVER]

I've been watching this thread; living out here in "Flyover country", I find it of interest.
I loaded the "Members" list off of this site into an Excel file so I could sort the data.
Here's what I found:

62 members are West of the Mississippi River or in Western Canada.
9 members live West of the Continental Divide. (I used an imaginary N/S line thru the center of Colorado.)
The largest group/region of members are in the Great Lakes area.
This site has a map showing the sites of existing class races.

I have no particular opinion or position on the subject. Local club handicap racing keeps me busy.

[MnM20]

Wouldn't San Fran be a pain to tow through? And expensive for hotels and services? I've towed through Seattle/Bellevue rush hour and that wasn't much fun. My route would be across I-80 to Sacramento and down the east side of the Bay. I've driven that route to pick up a motorcycle dynamometer in Santa Cruz, and it does get busy.

My trailer is long (it's a big 7500 lb capacity EZLoader with 3x5 rectangular tubing),longer than 30' with the boat on it, so when I'm moving that's about 14,500 lbs and 55-feet long (and don't forget, 9 feet wide). If I could figure out when the route isn't as crowded, I'd consider it.

OBTW, there are several national events held at Cascade Locks in the Columbia River Gorge (Moore 24, Tasers, Laser Pacific Coast Championship, collegiate events, etc.). There is an upriver race from Hood River to The Dalles that is a pretty good sleigh ride. Potentially another location for consideration. That might pull in more of the NW boats, but when I view race results around the NW, I never seem to see any 7.9s. Mine is a diesel boat, so I don't know how competitive I could be. But, it would be fun to sail on SF Bay.

Best-
Steve

We did the 7.9 nationals in my diesel 2 weeks ago as our first 7.9 event (and only races 2-5 of ever racin the boat - #20 is new to us). I can assure you that in conditions greater that 10 knots there is no doubt in my my mind that the inboard boats are just as fast as the outboards. We never saw anything less than that, so i've yet to gauge performance in the lighter stuff.

[cklamp]

I know this is an old, old thread... but if anyone's ever looking, there's one more 7.9 in the Seattle area now. Pulled mine down from BC about a month ago.

My wife and I like to travel, sooo if anyone ever gets some momentum behind something like this, we might be down.

Later
C

[reidmefirst]

Saw your post in the general forum looking for 7.9s in the seattle area. I don't know of any, but I'm on a sailing discord call 'The Companionway' ( https://discord.me/thecompanionway ) and there are a lot of PNW sailors in there (a few very active members from BC as well as seattle area).

One of the folks there swore they had seen some 7.9s sailing, maybe out of Shilshole? But was never able to find any details. Anyway it might be worth dropping into the discord if you're tech savvy, and poking around for other owners that way.

[cklamp]

Saw your post in the general forum looking for 7.9s in the seattle area. I don't know of any, but I'm on a sailing discord call 'The Companionway' ( https://discord.me/thecompanionway ) and there are a lot of PNW sailors in there (a few very active members from BC as well as seattle area).

One of the folks there swore they had seen some 7.9s sailing, maybe out of Shilshole? But was never able to find any details. Anyway it might be worth dropping into the discord if you're tech savvy, and poking around for other owners that way.

Hey yeah, I work at a large software company, so i'm familiar:) appreciate the referral, will take a look when I get some time. I've definitely seen a few s2's and more specifically what I feel like are 7.9s in some pic drops from some of the larger regattas, so i'm sure they're around. Would be nice to meet a few local owners that have first hand knowledge of these boats.

Later
C

[newbflat]

I have the 7.9 “Iskra” and we are based in Seattle out of Lake Union. It would be fun sailing with others but im not sure how many boats are still class legal around here. The boat is new to us and we have been fixing it up with the intention of doing the “race to Alaska” in 2025. We did a bunch of beer can racing this summer and recently got our PHRF certificate for more serious racing. We have an inboard BMW diesel that running fine but none of thr electronics work other than thr starter. It will come out next summer in preparation for the R2AK. We go out to Shilshole on occasion, the last being the Rum Run winning our class (no flying sails)….. cklamp…where are you based?

[cklamp]

Hey Bill, I'm the 7.9 down in Kent. Mine isn't entirely class legal either, but can be made to be class legal really easy and i'm trying to keep it that way. So far, I've found the only thing that's truly not class legal is that I have 3rd Halyard, essentially 2 jib\genoas and one for a spinnaker that's about a foot higher than the forestay. Easy enough to fix though.

I sent you a pm on FB... I was going to sign up for a PHRF cert to do Winter Vashon, but my daughter has a soccer game, so I have to putt of my entry a bit, and didn't want to drag my sails out while it was raining like crazy to measure them, lol:)

There is 1 up in Everett (Exit) that is fully class legal, and i've gone out with it's owner Jim Oosterhoff who I think is on these forums occasionally. I've also heard there are 3 more up in the Anacortes area. At least I have contact info from someone else in the community that says there are 3 there. I haven't reached out to them yet, but it's on my "to do" list to try get us some sort of "group" if not "fleet" of 7.9's in this area. So hopefully I could confirm activity or not soon, but I have heard at least 1 isn't class legal... Though, again, not sure how far out of class bounds it is, or how hard it would be to make it class legal.

Later
C