North American Laser 2 Class

2003 Newport Regatta

The annual Newport Regatta, held on magnificent Narragansett Bay, is the biggest one-design regatta on the east coast. This year, I have made a requeste of the hosting organization, Sail Newport, to have a Laser Two class. They have met my request by agreeing to have an open-class start with class specific scoring for the Laser Two fleet.

I am specifically targeting this towards Laser Two owners and sailors who have either never raced, or who haven't raced in so long that they've forgotten how much fun it is. Competition will be easy going, with an attitude of and emphasis on helping each other out. If you're sold, please sign up now (please excuse the extremely amature sign-up form, we're working on it).

If you like Laser Twos, but don't think racing is for you, you are so wrong - and the whole purpose of this event is to show you that a regatta is fun in countless ways of which you never even dreamt. I never even guessed myself, until I did it.

I had so much fun, despite being an extremely amature racer, at both the Laser Two Europeans, and CORK, that I've decided somebody needs to bring the world fo racing to the recreational Laser Two sailer. These days, most Laser Two owners in the US don't see themselves are racers. They don't particularly care about winning some random competition, and they probably think they don't stand much of a chance at it anyway, so they figure there's no point. In some cases, they just never even thought about it (this was me less than two years ago). Here are just a few of the reasons it blew me away:

I never imagined how much better you get at sailing by doing it all day, for five days straight
I never imagined how much confidence you get by seeing 20 other boats do something you thought you couldn't do
You end up exceeding your own self-imposed boundaries because you're having so much fun, and in such good company, that you don't even realize you ever had those boundareis
Standing on land with hundreds of boats getting rigged in all direction, including more Laser Twos than you've ever seen in one place at one time, gives you a rush that I can't describe
You just have to come, and feel that grin stretch from ear to ear that you coudn't wipe off if you wanted to, because you know that you're about to sail more than you did last year and nothing is going to stop you.