Post by Bill Vining on Jul 14, 2004 8:21:37 GMT -5
Todd Riccardi posted this post on catsailor - his thoughts from the Newport Regatta.
I've heard many different opinions and views on the 18HT class... i've seen them sailing at several regattas but i'd never sailed one until the Newport Regatta.
I've been given boats before by boat owners, sometimes for a small fee, sometimes for free. But never before had I been offered a factory owned boat for free by a class. Do any other factories give boats out like this to regular sailors such as myself? As far as I know they just give them to the hotshots.
I was so excited when I was offered this boat I called up my friend Bret Sullivan (2003 U.S. Youth Multi-hull champ) to see if he wanted to sail with me. He said of course and called out of work and drove up to CT that night.
We arrived in Newport expecting an elitist group of catamaran sailors many of whom we'd never met before. Once we found our boat and started talking to the other HT sailors we were amazed to find how friendly they were. I've been to many regattas in the past few years and always found all cat sailors to be great people but I must say that this group was by far the friendliest. Here were two 19 year old kids showing up to use a boat we had never saied before and they did whatever they could to get us on the water. Later that night Bret and I were talking about how awesome the HT sailors had treated us and we both were in total agreement about how wrong some of the class critics had been.
Well I suppose I should mention my thoughts about the boat too. The boat was awesome to say the least... we had a well used charter boat that still sailed better than most boats i've sailed and it handled great. The set up of the boat is for the most part well thought out and it makes the boat a blast to sail.
As for the racing... the wind on Saturday was great with double trap conditions but a little light for our taste on Sunday with a little double trap but mostly single to no one on the wire. We seemed to settle in around 5th and 6th place as we slowly got the hang of the boat and improved on our limited regatta spinnaker experience.
All and all it was a great weekend and we were both very happy we decided to race.
As for the HTs getting into the YC environment... Saturday coming in as were were flying a hull double trapped by the Lasers we yelled to one kid on a laser "you've gotta get one of these" and he smiled at us enviously and yelled back "I want one!". This was a great feeling and it gave us a sense of hope that when all you old folk get to old to race us we will have some competition haha. We had tons of kids come up to us and ask us about the boat and how we got into it and etc. Hopefully we will see some of those kids at some future regattas. I think it was a great way of promoting catamaran sailing to these kids since they saw two other youths on a boat like this. Maybe we need to get more youths on boats like this around yacht clubs so the kids don't think it's just a bunch of adults on these boats. Way to go HT class!
Todd Riccardi
I've heard many different opinions and views on the 18HT class... i've seen them sailing at several regattas but i'd never sailed one until the Newport Regatta.
I've been given boats before by boat owners, sometimes for a small fee, sometimes for free. But never before had I been offered a factory owned boat for free by a class. Do any other factories give boats out like this to regular sailors such as myself? As far as I know they just give them to the hotshots.
I was so excited when I was offered this boat I called up my friend Bret Sullivan (2003 U.S. Youth Multi-hull champ) to see if he wanted to sail with me. He said of course and called out of work and drove up to CT that night.
We arrived in Newport expecting an elitist group of catamaran sailors many of whom we'd never met before. Once we found our boat and started talking to the other HT sailors we were amazed to find how friendly they were. I've been to many regattas in the past few years and always found all cat sailors to be great people but I must say that this group was by far the friendliest. Here were two 19 year old kids showing up to use a boat we had never saied before and they did whatever they could to get us on the water. Later that night Bret and I were talking about how awesome the HT sailors had treated us and we both were in total agreement about how wrong some of the class critics had been.
Well I suppose I should mention my thoughts about the boat too. The boat was awesome to say the least... we had a well used charter boat that still sailed better than most boats i've sailed and it handled great. The set up of the boat is for the most part well thought out and it makes the boat a blast to sail.
As for the racing... the wind on Saturday was great with double trap conditions but a little light for our taste on Sunday with a little double trap but mostly single to no one on the wire. We seemed to settle in around 5th and 6th place as we slowly got the hang of the boat and improved on our limited regatta spinnaker experience.
All and all it was a great weekend and we were both very happy we decided to race.
As for the HTs getting into the YC environment... Saturday coming in as were were flying a hull double trapped by the Lasers we yelled to one kid on a laser "you've gotta get one of these" and he smiled at us enviously and yelled back "I want one!". This was a great feeling and it gave us a sense of hope that when all you old folk get to old to race us we will have some competition haha. We had tons of kids come up to us and ask us about the boat and how we got into it and etc. Hopefully we will see some of those kids at some future regattas. I think it was a great way of promoting catamaran sailing to these kids since they saw two other youths on a boat like this. Maybe we need to get more youths on boats like this around yacht clubs so the kids don't think it's just a bunch of adults on these boats. Way to go HT class!
Todd Riccardi