Fleet 9 Season Kick-Off Call

This past Thursday evening, a large group of Fleet 9ers joined a season kick-off call to discuss the upcoming years schedule, plans, and other to-dos. A brief summary of the minutes can be found after the jump



2010 and 2011 Regatta and Training Schedule

- The 2010 Calendar has been put together and is available for general consumption on the Fleet 9 Website. Click on the link above to check it out!

- 2010 promises to be a busy year for Fleet 9, with a solid and well developed regatta calendar. High profile events include the upcoming Midwinters in Ft. Desoto, FL this February, North Americans in Chicago in late June, the 505 World Championships in Aarhus, Denmark in late July/ early August, and the HPDO this October. In addition to these events, the fleet will continue to attend a strong schedule of regional and local events, featuring regattas from Virginia to Massachusetts.

- Another emphasis for this year's schedule will be to develop the local training and regatta schedule, centered around American YC in Rye. Particularly with this year's relatively front-loaded schedule, it will be important to get focused early in the season and have a strong regional group to prepare for high profile events. Fleet 9 is blessed with a strong concentration of boats that can easily make a 8-10 boat outing happen, and we would like to leverage this critical mass to attract other east coast teams to our events. We will be working hard to make it both practical and worthwhile, with both practice events and regattas populating the Fleet 9 local calendar.

- The 2011 NAs will be hosted at American YC the weekend after the HPDO. An organization/ leadership committee is the process of being formed and will be kicking off its meeting schedule shortly. Watch this space.

Reports from Individual Boat Owners

- Each fleet 9 member on the call shared a brief update on their plans and goals for 2010, as well as some gear selection and winter boatwork notes. The diversity of our regatta calendar and proximity to east coast events has allowed Fleet 9 to successfully cultivate membership with a huge array of interests, from international competition to just going out, having fun, and keeping the pointy end up! Based on the feedback on the call, we can expect the Fleet 9 contingent to be a force to be reckoned with at across the spectrum of events on our calendar.

- On the boatwork front, it seems that most teams have followed the "evolution" vs. "revolution" strategy, electing to just make some marginal upgrades and refinements over the winter. As the big follow-on from last years world championships in San Francisco, many teams appear to be planning the switch to the twin pole-launcher/ separate guys and sheets configuration. We're all looking forward to seeing the fleet's average jibe times get a couple seconds shaved off as a result! While the fleet continues to utilize a large diversity of sail/rig and boat configurations, most teams have calibrated their gear to the Glaser tuning matrix to be able to share notes and observations. If you havent done so yet, make sure you dont head out to the first practice day without having taken care of it!

Subjects for Future Calls

- Most teams agreed that the weekend-night conference call was a great success. As such, we will be trying to have a conference call about every 2-3 weeks, featuring east coast 505 luminaries that will give short talks on everything from crew-work to sail-trim to strategy. Stay tuned for more info!

Fleet Development and Support

- Fleet 9 continues to benefit from its position as the largest fleet of 505s on the eastern seaboard, and we've welcomed a few strong new members to our cause. We'll be putting particular focus on a few American YC recruits as well as Blaine's connection to talent at USMMA. The entire fleet is incredibly eager to share our great boats with newcomers, so if you have someone in mind, dont hesitate to get in touch so we can get them out!