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Wednesday Night Madness<br />
Bobby Frey, Chairman<br />
Special Events Race Committee<br />
It is the end of March. The last Frostbite race has just finished. The buds<br />
are starting to appear on the trees and my nose and eyes are driving me<br />
nuts. It must be time for Wednesday Night Racing!<br />
The month “off ” between Frostbite and WNR is a welcome break for the<br />
Special Events Race Committee (SERC) and the racers. The racers will use<br />
the time to pull their boats, do their bottoms, and fix all the stuff they broke<br />
during Frostbites. For most of the SERC, it’s four of the 18 weeks they have<br />
off during the entire year. A chance for them to get their boats ready for the<br />
summer, spend time with their families, or go away for vacation. For me, my<br />
back is against the wall.<br />
During this time, we have the Frostbite Awards Party for 200 people.<br />
Final standings and perpetual awards need to be figured out and engraved.<br />
For WNR, the Notice of Race needs to be written and posted. I also need to<br />
write the Sailing Instructions and get them to my judges for review. A copy<br />
of both needs to be sent to the Coast Guard for the permit to run the series.<br />
This will be the basis for the Notice to Mariners that is generated from April<br />
through November warning everyone that there will be, on average, 130 boats<br />
racing out the Severn River and back into <strong>Annapolis</strong> harbor every Wednesday<br />
night.<br />
To write the Notice of Race (NOR) and Sailing Instructions (SI), I use<br />
the previous year’s as a model and change the dates. I also keep a “notice to<br />
me” file with suggestions that I receive during the year. I discuss these ideas<br />
with my judges and some sailors and incorporate what makes sense. I also add<br />
updated language to areas where judges’ decisions or AYC policy has changed<br />
since the previous year. This all gets reviewed by our judges and negotiated<br />
out. The NOR is usually posted by the end of the first week in April and race<br />
entry is open to competitors. The SIs are posted by the third week of April.<br />
We also publish an Attachment “A” that has the courses and class splits.<br />
This is made available on a preliminary basis with the SIs, and a final version<br />
at the skippers’ meeting before the first race. We try to split the classes so we<br />
don’t have too many boats start at the same time, and those that start will not<br />
“sail through” the class in front. Since we don’t know who will sign up for the<br />
race until a few days before the first race, we can’t make a final determination<br />
until just before the series starts. This always makes for some hectic days before<br />
the first race.<br />
I also look at the courses that were run the previous year to see if we need<br />
to add or tweak them. For example, there is a fixed starting point for the race,<br />
and the wind gets to choose where it will be coming from. This makes the<br />
starting line for WNR a real challenge. We instituted a movable first mark<br />
two years ago which enabled us to square the starting line to the wind over a<br />
much wider wind direction. This added a whole new dimension to WNR.<br />
continued on page 12<br />
VOLUME 1, NO. 2<br />
AYC BEACON<br />
11
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