Monday, June 15, 2020

Summer 2020 Update


Interesting times, hopefully the Mayor will announce the Chicago Harbors will open this week. A number of boats have already splashed and been staged in their slips.

An exciting development, Meghan O’Rourke & Sean Wilson have been working with the Sail 22 & the Vanguard 15 Fleet organizing several regatta’s while socially distancing, you might have seen the story about this in the latest edition of Sailing World (see the video link ). Many of the techniques for gathering digital data and using that feedback to coach boats would work with larger boats such as the J105.

The use of Mark/Set/Bot buoys minimize the number of people needed to run a race committee, so what better time to embrace technology. We rented a couple buoys for the month of July and plan to run three events on the Saturday’s of July 11, 18, & 25 (with Sunday’s being rain dates, if needed) were we will use the robotic buoys & gather digital data from each boat with on the water coaching and a debrief afterwards.

All you need is a method for recording data; Expedition, pc, a gpx file on your chart plotter,….. Sean will be sending out a note to those that plan to participate to help with the technical details. He also has access to devices that can be mounted on your boat to record data. Trust us if they can do it on a Vanguard 15 with no instruments, we can do it on a J105.

We will send a note out before each event with more details to aid in registration.

Of course all of this is subject to the harbors opening and perhaps what CASRA decides to do with the race schedule, but we want to make sure we as a Fleet get to go sailing.

Once some of the yacht clubs see these robotic buoys, they may want to rent them too. Please feel free to pass on Sean’s contact details.

Anyway, get your boats ready. There is more to follow, but please mark the dates in your sailing calendar!

One more important detail. Fleet 5 finances are in good shape and with no Spring or Mac party expenditures are expected to be reduced, so we decided to reduce the 2020 Fleet 5 dues to $65.

Please make your check out to - Fleet 5- J/105Class Association and mail it to:      Clark Pellet
680 N Lake Shore Drive,                         #1302
Chicago, IL 60611

Last but certainly not least, good luck to all the J105 Solo Mac participants.

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