Team Racing
Team racing is one of the fastest growing and most popular types of sailboat racing. Once confined to high school and collegiate sailing programs, keelboat team racing has expanded the target audience of competitors to sailors who might not quite fit in a Club 420 or Vanguard 15. Due to the high maneuverability of the boat's design, the Sonar has become a popular boat for team racing competition. Being home to the largest Sonar fleet in the world, Marblehead has adopted the Sonar as the team racing boat of choice.
Unlike fleet racing where each boat strives to be first across the finish line, in team racing the winning result is the addition of the scores of all 3 boats on the team. With 6 boats total on the course, 3 from each team, the goal is to have 10 or fewer points with the combination of your finishing positions. Without going deeply into the math (read the Wikipedia article linked below), the combination finish of 1, 4, 5 will win the race, but a 1, 4, 6 is a losing combination. Often the goal is to leverage the rules of sailing to gain an advantage on the other team, compared to fleet racing where a sailor is more likely to avoid rules situations.
Although there is an annual interclub team racing event in the Commodore's Cup, some team racing held as part of the winter frostbite series, and the invitation Jackson Cup run by the Boston Yacht Club, the number of opportunities to participate in organized team racing was limited until recently. About four seasons ago, the Eastern Yacht Club hired a full time Sailing Director who created a summer team racing series, and the Harbor Challenge was born. Each Thursday evening, the Corinthian, Boston, and Eastern field teams and participate in a round robin 3-on-3 competition. The evening ends with a debriefing at the Eastern, where all the teams gather to discuss the racing and build their overall knowledge and skills of team racing.
To learn more about team racing. Here are some web resources:
US Sailing Team Racing -- http://racing.ussailing.org/Categories/Team_Racing___Match_Racing/TeamRacing.htm
ISAF Team Racing Call Book -- http://www.sailing.org/9514.php Wikipedia -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_racing
Contemporary Team Racing -- http://homepage.mac.com/sailing/CTR2005.html (good animated descriptions of basic plays)
No experience is necessary, so if you would like to participate in Corinthian's team racing events, contact Forbes Barber (forbes.barber@gmail.com) and Brent Larlee (brent@waihaka.com).
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