Just Say Yes: Regatta Hosting Can Be FUN

by Carol Newman Cronin from her blog “Where Boats Meet Books”

I’ve sailed hundreds of regattas, and I’ve enjoyed most of them. Looking back, it’s easy to see that the more effort I put into a specific event, the more fun it is. The 2016 World Masters Championship was one example, but the poster child is now the 2026 Snipe North American Championship. 

Narragansett Bay’s own Fleet 17 hosted the championship, so I started thinking about the regatta almost a year before it actually started—as soon as our self-described fleet burger-flipper Bob Adam called to say, “We should host the NAs.” Until then, I had successfully defrayed the many requests to host a stand-alone Snipe event with a steady refrain of “our fleet is too small” and “Newport is too expensive.” Bob wore me down by focusing on the positives: the excellent sailing, and the surprising quiet that now marks the final weekend before Labor Day. Maybe, just maybe, our little fleet could handle such a big responsibility—especially if we brought in Sail Newport as official organizer.

Two months before the regatta, all the usual suspects had signed up—and met our absolute minimum fleet numbers (25 boats). We would lose money, but with Sail Newport staff handling most of the pesky details (like finding the more than 30 volunteers needed to run a weekend regatta), I began to relax. Our fleet was excited, and even names I didn’t recognize were registering.

Read more

Photos: Ted Morgan