My boat is limited out by about 90% of the rules and these races would be way shorter then we designed it for but I guess if I cant race I could be the safety boat and follow along?

Hi Charlie , does this go for all classes ?

CLARIFICATION ........Only Deep Vee, open cockpit style boats..........No cats, canopy or step bottom boats allowed.

The Bahamas location seems to run counter to all the things you are doing to try to keep costs and time commitment down.

If we can get the good old days back .im going to use this formula to get the big three to bring back exact replica muscle cars .
70 ,cuda aaaaahhhhh

As much as I love the old scool race videos and think it would be cool to bring it back. But poker runs took over that style of running. Look at the Erie pa run that's always a ruff one. Alot of my friends thst run it come back with stuff in there boats broken.

This limitation is only for classes 1 - 4.

Historic race boats can be any style with any amount of engines, as long as they have a real offshore race history.

Class 6 for modern boats.... are only restricted by boat size, but can be any style, cat, tri, deep vee hull, . They will also have a navigation course to follow.

Participation trophies for class 6 also. The idea is to allow them to actually get out on the course and see what it takes to navigate on real open ocean water, in a boat that is from 20 feet to 42 feet.

The same size they would have to be in if they decided to join the race groups with a SEARACE type boat.

To begin this, we would start with a South Florida to Bimini and back race.

If there is enough interest from the Bahamas and they would cover the costs of travel and rooms etc, it could be based over there and run in those waters.

We want to have the racers be able to get some great photos over the Bahamas banks, like the one below.

We had a lot of interest when HORBA ran the Miami to Bimini and back races years ago.

The ultimate goal of Open Ocean Offshore Racing is to be able to compete over long distances at speed and finish the race safely..

When the sport first started, many boats did not finish and that created a big interest from the boat manufacturers to build boats that would be safer and able to really be used out there in the deep waters.

As you have pointed out, Seamanship today is lacking in new boaters. If a boat comes back on a poker run with broken pieces and parts.....either it wasn't rigged right or the crew didn't know how to trim it right and abused it to the point of breaking something.

When Donzi first started and began producing the little 16 footer, it was oftentimes delivered on it's own bottom to customers in the Bahamas. What does that mean?? Well, Brownie who worked for Donzi at the time, would take a compass and put it between his feet on the floor of the boat, throw in a cooler of cold beer and head out of Miami to deliver the boat to Nassau in the Bahamas. That is a 185 mile trip. He would stop for gas along the way and have lunch etc, but the boat would be delivered to the customer in pristine condition, just like it came out of the showroom. That is Seamanship.

Thanks for the response. Main thing here is to create a class of racing where everyone feels they have a chance to win or at least finish.

If we upped the boat length to 47 feet, we would have to allow triple engines which would not be an equalizer with the rest of the people in that class. Or we could limit 47's to twin engines, which again would now not be equal to the other boats that are much smaller and running twins.

See the photo of a start at a Long Island race back in the 70's. Every boat in this photo had won a race during this time.

Because the boats were so equal, everyone starting the race here knew that he had a good of chance of winning and it was up to them to do the best with what they had. Rigging so the boat would not fall apart, Navigation so no time is wasted if they miss a checkpoint or a checkpoint boat has drifted off location, Teamwork between Navigator, Throttleman and Driver would produce a win......Not the biggest pocketbook.

Everything about your plan sounds like club racing except the travel time and expenses. Sadly there are not enough racers and boats to create regional race series like:
east coast, great lakes, west coast, gulf coast and florida. Each send their champs to a national. More like what SCCA does with cars.
A racer could possibly run a complete series of great lakes races on weekends for the coast of one trip to the west coast for one race.