A-Cat. St Petersburg NOOD Regatta 2019 Results

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All great images by Justin Cheney , facilitated by Emmanuel Cerf. Report & pics sent by Bailey White / US A-Class Assoc. Moe NOOD pics by Phil Pape at philpape.photography

Nice to see long time F18 sailors like Sam Carter and John Tomko racing the A-Class too, been preaching for some years now that if you have the chance, sail and race both Classes, each has its own charm and rewards, both a joy to sail and compete. Ken Marschack also an avid participant for some time now in both Classes in the US.

Tomko did pretty good with a 3rd overall in the Foiling division, the FP hours have payed it seems for his flying D3, Sam is sailing a retrofitted Flyer! with Z10 and Exploder T rudders, he commented the platform is more than Ok and mainly hours on the Class and grabbing the foiling pace are needed.

Sam did a great job customizing that Flyer, in the Foiling division many older hulls can be retrofitted and give those platforms new life. More info on Sam’s Flyer retrofit soon.

Also chatting with Bailey today on this regatta and the Classics Division , the A-Cat floating hull performance came up , as it is clear we will have two separated World Titles each year now after IACA’s new scheme for the major championship,  I told Bailey I will review my A-Class lines from April 2015, together with the proven Scorpion F18 ones (2017/2018 World Champ Design) to refine it further and launch it too as a royalty free design for the A-Class.  More details later on why there is room for yet another A-Cat hull in current scenario.

Going back to St Petersburg, the A-Class Fleet was the biggest of the NOOD regatta, a healthy US A-Cat Class towards 2020 Worlds at Tampa Bay. Bruce Mahoney dominated with his D3 / Mischa’s pinhead DS and Bob Webbon had a good fight with Woody Cope & legendary Admiral Ben Hall to grab the first place on a tight fight for the podium places.

Read below report by Bob Hodges, who finished in second place behind Bruce.
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2019 ST. PETERSBURG NOOD REGATTA REPORT

Thirty eight A-Class sailors participated in what was probably the best St. Petersburg HELLY HANSEN-SAILING WORLD NOOD regatta we have supported since the event invited A-cats to participate. With three days of perfect Florida weather and a total of nine races with breeze ranging from 5-14 knots, it was just about the perfect regatta weekend.

Racing kicked off with three races on Friday. The first race was in 5-7 knots with the entire fleet in float mode. The second race saw 6-9 knots with Chris Batchelor and Bob Hodges pushing the limits of light air foiling on the 1st downwind with Mahoney and the rest of the crew joining in on the 2nd and final downwind leg. The final race of the day saw 9-11 knots and the top foilers took advantage. Saturday was simply perfect A-Class sailing with 10-12 knots for the first two races and 11-14 knots for the final two races. Bruce Mahoney dominated the foiling fleet even though Hodges kept him looking over his shoulder a couple of times. Bob Webbon continued to lead the classics fleet but Messr’s Hall, Cope, and Bird were keeping his hands full. On the final day, it almost looked like a no sail day until about 30 minutes before the drop dead time when a nice seabreeze filled in. Two more races were sailed again in perfect 10-14 knot conditions but with some surprisingly big chop especially in the last race that made the foiling challenging at times. Both Mahoney and Webbon sealed the deal in their respective fleets but were still challenged by the rest of us mortals.

This was a good showing for our class as we were easily the largest class represented at the event even with the foiling/classics fleet splits. A productive warmup for the NAC, it should be a great event in October. A BIG thanks to Emmanuel Cerf who as always was going above the call of duty to support all of the sailors at this event. We are so lucky to have someone like Emmanuel in our class.

See Y’all in Miami, Sarasota, and Panama City.

Bob Hodges

USA 230
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Top 5 Classics & Top 10 Foilers. Full results available here.

Classics
Pos Sail Helm R1 R2 R3 R4 R5 R6 R7 R8 R9 Tot
1. USA 165 Bob Webbon 1 1 1 3 5 2 1 4 2 20.0
2. USA 310 Woody Cope 2 7 2 1 3 3 2 1 1 22.0
3. USA 99 Ben Hall 3 3 3 6 1 1 3 2 3 25.0
4. USA 231 Rush Bird 4 2 9 2 2 4 4 3 7 37.0
5. USA 148 Chris Bolton 8 6 6 4 9 5 7 7 6 58.0
Foilers
Pos Sail Helm R1 R2 R3 R4 R5 R6 R7 R8 R9 Tot
1. USA 311 Bruce Mahoney 1 1 3 1 1 1 1 1 1 11.0
2. USA 230 Bob Hodges 6 4 2 2 4 2 2 2 6 30.0
3. USA 8 John Tomko 14 6 1 4 2 3 7 3 9 49.0
4. CAN 22 Andrew Woods 7 5 7 7 7 8 5 7 3 56.0
5. USA 192 Ken Marshack 2 8 4 11 8 6 6 8 4 57.0
6. CAN 44 Larry Woods 9 3 9 9 14 7 4 4 2 61.0
7. USA 135 Tracy Oliver 8 13 12 8 5 5 8 5 8 72.0
8. USA 294 Richard Stevens 3 21 6 12 13 10 13 10 12 100.0
9. USA 320 Bailey White 25/DNC 25/DNC 25/DNC 5 3 4 3 9 7 106.0
10. Other USA 371 Jeff Brauch 13 11 20 13 17 11 11 11 10 117.0

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