RACING RESTART

It's Time To Get Back On The Water!

Ervin Grove from North Sails in Charleston shares how they are helping local sailors get back out on the water safely and within government guidelines. For many of us “racers” our sailing style could be defined as analytical, obsessive, competitive and most importantly, passionate. Whether its an International event, an Offshore event or the Charleston Wednesday Night Summer Series– as soon as we leave the dock for a race, we have reached our happy place. In South Carolina we have been fortunate to see less boating restrictions compared to other parts in the world. While public access was closed for several weeks, we never saw the boating scene shut down. Since we were lucky enough to have access to our waterways although under certain restriction, we've taken up a new love for cruising. John partnered with an old College of Charleston Sailing teammate, Joe Pitcavage last year on a J/105. Since then, his boat partner has used the boat regularly for harbor races. John has also used the boat extensively, but for family cruising. The J/105, like many racer-cruisers, can be set up to do both well. However, a month into this crisis our discussions turned to the unknown fate of sailboat racing. John commented;

"Things have changed and the events aren’t coming back– until we bring them back. Our local sailing community is in the process of a full restart, as many of our friends already have boats. There are some clients that have boats that haven't been as active on the water as they are more into the racing aspect of the sport. Our goal is to get all sailors out on the water, and we've got a good reason to!"

The drafting began and with the help of North Sails cruising expert, Bob Meagher out of Ft Lauderdale. We have now published our Notice of Cruise (NOC). The “Cabin Fever Cruise” is a 7-mile race around government marks in Charleston Harbor. Along the cruise you pass landmarks such as Battery Park, Ft Sumter, the USS Yorktown and the Ravenel Bridge. The start, much like the New England favorite, “Figawi”, is a pursuit style start with starting times published in the NOC. This distance cruise usually takes between an hour and a half to two hour total. This new style of sailing event has brought much interest to the sailors of Charleston and we have seen competitors join in in all types of boats, ranging from a Catalina 22 to a Gunboat 55. The last three Saturdays we had 15 to 20 boats out cruising and we expect to see that number to continue to grow. You can find our Notice of Cruise below and we hope you will adapt along with it to fit into your local communities guidelines when the time is right. We will see you back on the water soon! And for all the local Charleston Cruisers, we'll see you out there at noon on Saturday! Cabin Fever Cruises Sailing Instructions