SAISA Open Singlehanded

The SAISA Open Singlehanded event was held in conjunction with the Women's Singlehanded event at the Halifax Sailing Association in Daytona Beach. The women's event started on Saturday morning. The weather had showers all across the Central Florida East Coast, but the sailing venue was spared most of the heavy rain all day. The boats left the beach before 3:00 and sailed south on the Halifax River to our race area. Racing began in north-northeast winds at 7-12 knots at 3:35 pm. We ran two W4 course with our initial course before shifting the course clockwise to accommodate our new easterly breeze as most of the showers moved away.

We sailed three more races in slowly decreasing winds, with the last race ending at about 5:45 in 6-7 knots of wind. We decided this was the right time to break for the day. Racing was tight all day, with multiple boats finishing overlapped in every race. We had to confirm finish order/sail numbers from video we recorded on multiple instances.

It was decided that the report time and race schedule would be delayed an hour, given our experience in waiting for the wind to fill on Saturday for the completion of our regatta on Sunday. We planned to begin racing at 11 on Sunday.

For those that were up early on Sunday in the Daytona Beach area, we had an early hint of fall with dense fog just after sunrise. The fog kept things cool, and a bit calm, for the next few hours. We scheduled a 30 minute postponement to allow the zephyrs to finish filling in across the Halifax River at the Halifax Sailing Association's facility.

The R/C was on station before the 11:30 start time, but the wind was going through large oscillations as we were setting the course, and we needed to rotate all of the marks before we could begin. Racing began a little before noon in 6-7 knots of wind that varied from southeast to east-southeast. The W4 course ended up having a favored port tack on the first windward leg, and then a favored starboard on the next. The course proved to be a bit long, and the wind had settled on a more east-southeast direction, so we paused racing again to adjust. The new course had the racers sailing up to the edge of the ICW, where the tide had reversed direction and the current was starting to rip. (We can see 2-3 knots at times.) A few of the racers noticed the change from earlier, and those that did were rewarded in their results.

We ran three more races with this new course. All were very competitive with multiple boats finishing in overlapped conditions. Again we had to confirm some finish positions from the video we recorded. Very exciting racing on the Halifax! Thanks!

In the end, the top two sailors ended tied in points at 23 each (for the 10 race regatta). Richard McCann ('23, U. of Miami Hurricanes) finished over Benjamín Dufour ('26, C. of Charleston) in the tie-breaker of 5-4 in 1st place finishes. Humberto Porrata ('25 U. South Florida) was a contender with 31 points, finishing in second place five times, and capturing the other first in the regatta.

It was a pleasure to host this event. Thanks to the sailors that made it work so well. A special thanks to the Halifax Sailing Association whose facilities we share. They worked with us to allow for our two Singlehanded Championship events, while they hosted an adult learn to sail course, the youth sailing team held practice and the HSA Windward Women met to plan their October 8th regatta to raise funds to support local breast cancer community support services. What a great weekend at HSA!

Special thanks to HSA member Dave Dunn who provided stellar R/C Mark Boat services. We kept him busy. On the R/C boat with me doing half the work was ERAU student Jay McNaughton. Without our volunteers, we could not have hosted this event! Thanks!

Congratulations to Richard, and good luck at Nationals!

For the ERAU Sailing Club, Dr. Chris Herbster

The following chart shows the relative rank of the teams as of the race indicated. Note that the races are ordered by number, then division, which may not represent the order in which the races were actually sailed.

The first place team as of a given race will always be at the top of the chart. The spacing from one team to the next shows relative gains/losses made from one race to the next. You may hover over the data points to display the total score as of that race.