The fleet continues to expand and improve.  This month we welcome Nick Lee, a Junior sailor, who joined in September along with his Hobie Getaway.  It’s great to see Juniors getting involved in Multihull sailing.  Vince upgraded his two year old F-18 to a 1 year old Infusion.  That makes three Infusions at the club now.  The Infusion and the F-18, both made by Performance Cats, along with the Hobie Tiger all are 18 foot cats that comply with Formula 18 (F18) racing rules.  That allows them to race against each other in F18 races.  The concept of formula racing with different brands of boats racing against each other is new to many but very exciting and encourages competition amongst the manufacturers as well as sailors.  This brings us to our next bit of news.  Scott Miller and Dennis Key are each racing their Hobie Tigers in the F18 Nationals in Texas.  As I’m typing I check the stats so far and find Scott and Patti in 13^th place and Dennis in 15^th place with one more day of racing to go.   Not bad for a National Championship! 

The majority of our fleet consists of F18 style boats and Inter 20’s, or as they are now known as Nacra 20’s.  The rest of our fleet consists of 12 foot to 21 foot Hobies, Prindles and Nacras and larger trimarans like those owned by Gary, Rob and Jon.  And we should not forget Vince and Debbie’s Hobie Islands.  The Hobie Island is a peddle kayak with outrigger pontoons on each side and a sail in the middle.  A very fun boat and many of us had an opportunity to sail/peddle them at the Multihull clinic when Ron and Debbie Lane, of Fastlane Sailing Center, brought four of them over for us to use in relay races.  What a blast they were!  Some figured out that it was faster to peddle directly into the wind rather than pinch.  Peddling created an apparent wind much farther forward than you’d normally have on a sailboat so that created its own learning curve.  These were informal races in the middle of the day to give our minds a break from what we were learning in the clinic.  Thanks to Ron and Debbie for this fun event!

Speaking of the clinic, hats off to Dennis Key for organizing not one, but two race clinics in September.  We covered everything from righting techniques to race start tactics.  I think everyone got something out of the clinic, which was well attended including participants from the LA area and Las Vegas.   Members like Dennis who are willing to put in a lot of time to improve our fleet deserve recognition.  Thank you Dennis for being such an active contributor.  Thanks also to Wally, Vince, Scott and Derby for helping out with the clinic. 

October 13^th and 14^th we had more than half a dozen boats participate in the Coronado Yacht Club Fall Small Boat Regatta.  As I’m typing this, we have not had the regatta yet so results will appear next month.  It’s good to see the fleet so active, let’s keep it that way!

This month we had a change of Captains for the Multihull Fleet.  Carl Teyssier has retired from the position and Dennis Key and I (Dave Ness) are taking the reins.  We’ll also be helped by Katie Ham who continues to be a valuable member of the Fleet.  Thanks Carl for all your hard work and dedication.  You made the job look easy, you sly devil you. 

A few more thanks, to all the Mutihullers who have helped out with impromptu work parties to try and salvage the ramp and sand on the North Beach and to Rob Morse and his son Nico who worked again one day on their own.  This kind of initiative and ownership is rare these days.  We’ve certainly been able to retain much of the sand and more is on the way so we should be back in good shape soon.   Wally Chapman and Dave Meacock donated their time and boats to take burn institute kids and staff for rides.  What a great cause.  And, thank you to all the members who helped out with the Race Committee duty on July 15^th.  We had a lot of fun and the feedback we got from the other Fleets was that we did a good job.  The highlight of the day was when our horn didn’t work on the Barca and our airhorns were out of gas.  But there were six of us on the Barca and we figured out we could all “honk” at once and be our own “air horns”.  Fun day, and I do have pictures of the boats sailing.  If you’re interested in pictures email me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .

Congrats to Vince Iacono who recently retired from the FDA.  Vince is a class act and when we attended his retirement party at MBYC we met his family which, no surprise, is a wonderful group of people.  Mike Hammond and Kyle Vanderspek took 13^th in the Hobie 20 Nationals.  Dave and Linda Sparkuhl placed 14^th out of 50 in the Hobie 16 Nationals and now get to go to the Worlds in Figi in mid October.  Way to go Sparkuhls!  It’s great to see MBYC Multihullers placing well in National events.  It’s also great to see MBYC youth crewing with seasoned captains and doing this well. 

I can see it is going to be a lot fun writing about one of the largest, active and fastest growing fleets at MBYC.  But I’d like to take a moment and show some respect and appreciation to one of the oldest Fleets at MBYC, the Geary 18 Fleet.  I have only recently met Joan and Bud Busch who have been CoCaptains of the Geary 18 Fleet for something like 35 years.  They’ve worked continuously to keep the fleet alive, pulling boats for regattas from as far away as Oregon and even searching out possible boat builders to perpetuate the Fleet.  Bud announced at the last Board meeting that the Geary 18 Fleet would be dissolving at the end of this year.  They have already sold their boat, the last one at the club, but they didn’t want the Fleet to dissolve yet because they have one more Race Committee duty.  What a role model they are for all of us to follow.  Bud and Joan, our hats off to you for all that you have done and please know that you are welcome to work, sail and celebrate with the Multihull fleet anytime you desire.