You gotta feel bad for the Supercat boys.

We headed home right after the first race, around 2:45 pm, drove through one hell of a thunderstorm when passing through Sarasota, but it wasn't that big. I feel bad for the race teams and the fans.

According to the news, the winner of each class got $50,000. Is that true?

St Pete News Video

The results as posted on the OSS website are now official. No changes to the unoffcial list posted yesterday.

A huge rainstorm had started at the end of the OSSCL race. The Supercats were the last race of the day. And the storm didn't want to leave, just like everybody who came to that great race. The Coast Guard waited until the last minute. The storm let up, then started again. Can't run a race when it's dark, so finally, the OSSC race was scrapped.

Since it is well known that 3pm is the predominate time that the storms start in Florida, would it not be advisable to start races before 1 & 3pm???

Additionally, unless I missed the discussion, I hope no one was injured in what appeared to be a collision between Team CRC and Dirty Duck...

You would think so, wouldn't you?

From a scheduling stand point there were two problems actually:

1) Why 3 starts?
2) Why 2 hours between the first and second start?

For those of us who watched from the water the hour plus between the first and second race was a bit much ...

Safety is number one.

1. Yes there were 3 needed starts. We were scheduled for (3) races from 1pm to 5pm, that is only four hours for a lot of racing.

One for OSSV and OSSVL
One for OSSCL
One for OSSC

2. Small course and lots of boats equals (3) starts.

3. Sunday had a 1 pm noise ordinance, so we had to start at 1 and stop by 5 per the US Coast Guard. This is not the "norm" but St. Pete had "A LOT" of special rules and regulation that we were more than happy to deal with. Hope that clears things up.

Ben

Hey Ben, thanks for the response, I can understand the 1 PM start time, but that still doesn't explain who thought it was a good idea to wait until 3 PM for the next start. If you're going to have three starts, why plan on having one at 1 PM, wait 2 hours, then have to do two races in 2 hours between 3 PM and 5 PM?

As for the "lots of boats and small course" ... I'll take your word for it that someone made that decision, but 30 boats and a 4.8 mile course seems like a bit of a stretch to justify three starts (Biloxi was different of course with the course being so narrow at the east end) ... was APBA that unsafe with 30 boats running on 5 - 6 mile courses (and often boats with much more significant speed differences than SCL and SC would have had if raced together)?

Anyway, please understand I'm just saying this hoping that OSS to provide feedback and not knocking it ... Biloxi was great and St. Pete was good, but the whole scheduling thing didn't work out for anyone I would dare say, neither the racers, fans, or sponsors, with SC having to get cancelled ... I'm not sure it could have been avoided in any case, but it makes the hour plus break between the end of race 1 and and start of race 2 look like a really bad idea in hindsight.

Helicopters need to be re fueled. It takes a while for all of them to fly back to the LZ and fuel up..especially if there all going to the same place. Plus all the previous races boats need to be back in before the next race goes out. Its a pain I agree, but safety comes first.

Dan

Actually, in St. Pete it takes all of 30 seconds to fly to the airport that is right beside the course ... they certainly did not plan on taking an hour between race 2 and 3, so obviously it doesn't take that long to refuel the helicopters in any case.