Year: 2019

Final 2019 USAFA rankings are now available at https://finnusa.org/rankings/. Congratulations to Darrel Peck (USA 35) who came on top with 135.99 points, just 0.7 points ahead of Rodion Mazin (USA 16). Derek Mess CAN (115) finished the season in third place with 134.89 points. We expect a lot of activity and very close competition in 2020. Happy New Year to everyone and remember to pay your dues!

Finn USA National, North American, and Masters North American Championships are the biggest events for the Finn Class in North America besides Miami Word Sailing Cup, Round 2. These 3 events are Type 1 regattas that have the biggest participation rates and give the most amount of points for USAFA rankings. The USAFA leadership made a decision to forecast the schedule for the next 6 years and spread theses major events equally amongst West, East, Gulf Coasts, and the Great Lakes regions. These parts of the country have seen the biggest growth of the Finn activity in recent years. Following the principles of equal opportunity and fair distribution among all the coasts and the major fleets. Bids for 2021 events can be submitted through the online form.

Before many regattas, I walk around the boat park seeing sailors polishing boat bottoms with PTFE, etc. to go faster!?

However, these same sailors will open a bailer or both when it’s windy and leave them open all day. (Many of these sailors use a leech tension gauge without measuring how much their sails have shrunk–that’s just funny and I love to bring it up). If you’ve ever caught weed on the rudder while doing some speed burns in training, you know how catastrophic it can be to boat speed. Now, look at the projected area of the bailer while open. It should be easy to visualize the impact. So, why just open it and forget it? On most of my boats, for the last 50 or so years, I’ve attached a line to the bailers to be able to pull them up closed quickly. That still required “going in” to open the bailers again when necessary. Around 1980 something, I saw a lever system in use on Derek Mess’ Vanguard allowing remote control of the bailers from a hiking position. I started rigging up systems for myself since then.

My latest system replaces the plastic grate on the supermax bailers with a machined plastic (UV protected HDPE to be exact), a lever to open and close the bailer. Some people ask if it slows water egress. It does not as the bailer’s gate is only 13/16″ square (remember high-school science class — the smallest part of the funnel restricts flow). One of many things in our tricky sport that makes you say, “umm”.

By Coach D> 7 x Finn NAs champ.

Long Beach, Cal. – ABYC Turkey Day Regatta is in the books. Incredibly beautiful weather with Saturday sunny, perfect temperatures, and breeze clocking around to the ‘Long Beach normal’ with 8-10 knots early finishing the day with 12-14 knots and more. Saturday night Finn sailors were treated to a great sunset on the bar deck and the famous Thanksgiving turkey feast. ABYC dis a great job serving over 140 sailors from multiple classes. Sunday was more of the same perfect, sunny, mild weather in the 8-11 knots range. Close racing among the fleet and many sailors improving and mixing it up- including and welcome new Finn sailor Ed Feo from ABYC! Congrats podium (Turkey) winners.

1. Mike – 5 pts.
2. Robert Kenny – 9 pts.
3. Andreas Siggelkow – 17 pts.

By Michael Dorgan

Photos courtesy of JoySailing.com (Bronny Daniels)

Full Results https://www.sailwave.com/results/ABYC_2019_Turkey_Day.htm

US Sailing invites all the U.S. and Canadian Finn sailors to participate at the World Sailing Cup, Round 2, Miami. All the U.S. sailors are offered a  free 1-year U.S. Sailing membership. To get the free membership, e-mail your registration to US Sailing Olympic Coordinator, Kate Drummy at: katedrummey@ussailing.org. For more questions or concerns contact USAFA secretary at: secretary@finnusa.org.  Let’s make Finn great again!   

Darrel Peck (Coach D) will lead the Finn clinic at the Fairhope Yacht Club March 25th through March 27th. The clinic is conveniently scheduled between Finn Midwinters in Sarasota, FL and Gulf Coast Championship in Fairhope, AL and will be priced at $150 per boat.  All USAFA members will get a 10% discount if registered before 15 February 2020.

Clinic registration

Contact Coach D if you have any questions. darrell.peck@gmail.com

Clinic page

Mark Tegio and Mike Dorgan advertised this regatta as fantastic and FREE FUN! It absolutely was. Unfortunately, an ankle injury kept Dorgan on shore while the rest of the sailors enjoyed champaign conditions. The wind filled in nicely for the noon start and topped out with puffs to 18 by the last race. Morty won the first race edging out D by a few feet at the finish with Rob Coutts and Mike Entwistle just behind. In the 2nd race, Rob Coutts jumped out to a nice lead in his beautiful Fantastica. He protected his lead from a late charge by D all the way to the finish line. Mike, Gregg, and Lee hope had a photo finish to round out the top 5 with new finnster Dave Ryan holding on for 6th. In the third race, D got the lead on the run in front of Lee Hope and held off speedy Rob Coutts on the last beat to the finish with Entwistle and Morty just back. In the 4th race, Mike Entwistle got a good start and just continued to open up on the fleet. He had such a big lead that he got to the windward mark finish line before the RC. So, the sailors sailed an extra run back to the starting line but the RC tossed the race… In the last race, Entwistle and Morty arrived at the top mark overlapped for 1st with D just back. At the bottom of the run, the 3 overlapped boats negotiated the exciting and (now) breezy jibe leeward mark rounding avoiding catastrophe. D escaped with the lead and held off Morty by inches at the finish line. The obviously tired fleet headed in for drinks and Ibuprofen.

1st 35 Darrell Peck 6
2nd 2 Gregg Morton 12
3rd 27 Mike Entwistle 14
4th 9 Rob Coutts 16
5th 61 Lee Hope 17
6th 60 Mark Tegio 27
7th 94 Gary Mitchell 29
8th 511 Jim Hecht 31
9th 21 David Ryan 36
10th 8 Mike Dorgan 40

The October 2019 rankings are posted. Please contact the class secretary to update your profile picture or if you notice other discrepancies.

Rankings page

Scored Regattas:

Type 1: North American Championship, 2018 Gold Cup, 2019 European Championship, Miami World Cup, USA National Championship

Type 2: 2019 CORK OCR, 2019 PCCs, Great Lakes Championship, Gulf Coast Championship, Masters Worlds

Type 3: Toilet Bowl, SD January One Design, SD Midwinters

If you think that your regatta should’ve been included, please contact your regional representative. All the results should be submitted to the class secretary before December 15, 2019 to be included in 2019 rankings.

Please Join the Nady family to celebrate the life of Louie Akos Nady on Sunday, November 3, 2019, 12 pm to 4 pm at Starting Line Room, St. Francis Yacht Club, 700 Marina Blvd., San Francisco, California. As was requested by Louie’s family, USAFA will retire his sail number USA 150. Rest in peace Louie.