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Recipe for a Well Attended Regatta »
July 8, 2010
Friday morning at 11 am, the E Scow ILYA Invitational Regatta will kick off on Lake Minnetonka, MN with over 50 E Scows on the starting line. It is great to see so many teams traveling to Minnetonka for this event, and the talent level will be off the charts with defending 2009 ILYA and NCESA Champ Tom Burton, 2009 ILYA Invite Champ Augie Barkow, 2009 Blue Chip Champ Vincent Porter, multiple NCESA Champ Brian Porter with all star crew Charlie Harrett, as well as a host of other boats that could contend for the title in this years event. The forecasts look good, the social schedule is dialed…this will be a great weekend of racing on Minnetonka.
All the way from Grand Lake, Colorado, Mark Unicome arrives in Minnetonka with his enclosed, triple deck E Scow Trailer towed with his International Truck...this rig is highly bad-ass.
The most impressive aspect of this weekend however, is that the number of boats in attendance is a direct result of regatta co-chairs Pat Hughes and Chris Jewett. Both of these guys had a mission to get 50 boats to attend this regatta when they started planning a year ago and they reached their goal through good ‘ol fashion, blue collar work. In the age of Facebook, Twitter, micro-sites and various other forms of interactive marketing which are great mediums to convey a message, Chris and Pat decided to go “old school” to get boats to attend the E Invite; they picked up the phone, and called E Scow sailors and let them know they should attend this regatta. If they got a positive answer, great, that is a boat coming. If they got a non-committal answer, or if the person said no, well now they were in trouble because either Pat or Chris would be calling them until they got a “yes” out of them. With books being written on why sailing is declining, and with the current recession being an excuse for why event numbers are down for most classes, Pat and Chris along with the E Scow class have shown that if you pick up the phone and get on people, they will come.
This will be the largest E Scow Invite since the legendary 130+ event a few years ago in Madison that Lon Schoor organized a few years ago with the same sort of tactics. For all of those people who are whining an throwing their hands up in the air as to why they cannot get boats to attend their events, I would say that while all of the online techniques are good, there is no substitute for direct communication and some pressure to get people to attend. Again, huge cudos to Pat (with wife Chrisy as always) and Cupman for getting an awesome event organized for what otherwise would have been the Minnetonka fleet plus 5.
Stay tuned to 42marine.com for daily reports and be sure to attend your fleets’ next regatta, it will be worth it.
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