Chesapeake Racing Beat
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Farewell Weeknight Racing… Bring on the Fall!
ong before the first cold snap, hundreds of Bay sailors at least get goosebumps and maybe even the first wave of winter blues as they bid their summer weeknight racing crews farewell for another season and enter into the time for serious autumn racing. No time to wax nostalgic yet, racing sailors; there’s much exceptional competition to come. More than 150 boats and 1000 sailors are expected to descend upon Annapolis on Labor Day Weekend, September 1-3, for the 46th annual Chesapeake Bay YRA (CBYRA) Annapolis Race Week (ARW). The past two years’ events have been blessed by Mother Nature in the form of breezy days. Let’s start a collective wind dance now to ensure that the trend continues. A minor change to the 2012 edition that competitors should note before day one: SpinSheet, provider of the program and the Annapolis Race Week Daily News, has found a new vendor for the current charts for the race course areas. The data from Weather Routing, Inc. is so close to “real time” that we are unable to fit it into the program in time for print. We will display a link to the updated current chart for Saturday, September 1, on spinsheet.com and include a link and QR
code in the program that you will find in your skipper bag. On days two and three, September 2 and 3, updated current charts will be included in the Daily News as usual. You may find copies of the ARW Program and Daily News in the following places: Annapolis YC (AYC) annex, AYC boatyard, Bert Jabin Yacht Yard ship’s store, and race headquarters at City Dock Annapolis. Another change to the event is having the Cedar Point Race run concurrently with ARW on Monday, September 3. For the third year in a row, daily awards parties with live music, food, drink, and vendors will unfold at ARW race central at City Dock. Again, parties are open to the public, so spread the word to your non-sailing (-yet) friends. Click to cbyra.org/arw for details. Among the other regattas coming soon are the Naval Academy Sailing Squadron’s popular Race to Oxford (September 15), Hospice Cup (September 22), fall series up and down the Bay, and a SpinSheet favorite for those who may have not raced for a long time but still have enough energy to sail 10 miles in a dinghy: the Hampton Roads Sunfish Challenge and Dinghy Distance Race (September 22).
##CBYRA Annapolis Race Week unfolds September 1-3. Race central will once again be at City Dock. Photo by Dan Phelps
78 September 2012 SpinSheet
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