2003 Texas State Championships
and
Windsurfing Festival
Final Report

Hey folks.... 

Well the 2003 Texas State Champs is history.  And we're really pleased with how it turned out.  Despite having to duck some severe weather on Friday night and listen to NOAA lie about the wind forecast on Saturday and Sunday, we had a fantastic turnout and a great event.  We had a record number of children in the kids camp, served more dinners than ever before and had an amazing number of racers considering the light winds.  We even had our first ever Junior fleet racing - though many of them were skilled enough that they could have easily sailed with the adults.  We also enjoyed HUGE support from our sponsors who donated thousands of dollars of goods and services to the event.   

This is a quickie webpage to give you an idea of what was going on.  I've added some descriptions from my perspective and you can click the thumbnail for a bigger image.  I wish I'd had some more time for picture taking, but I've not yet figured out how to be more than two places at once.  There was so much going on that it's tough to convey just how enormous this event has gotten.  Between the clinics, demos, racing and kids camp, Saturday is best described as a barely contained circus.  Sunday tends to be more of the same.   I would have loved to have some aerial shots since the top of my camper wasn't even high enough to get it all in.  Here's the scoop.

	Our Big Top (well not really ours - we borrowed it from the local Hobie Fleet).  Check out all the banners for all our great sponsors.  I'm not sure how we get all the support, but we couldn't do it without them.  Our sincere thanks go out to all of them.		Pam McCord and my wife, Lynne...  Trying to get organized just before we opened up the registration tent.
	Command and Control Center positioned just up the hill from the event tent.  Dog House Entertainment -  Making announcements was never so easy.  Though I'm not so sure people enjoyed it when I fired up reveille at 8am.		Registration started at 9am.  From then till about 11:00, it was pandamonium....
	A couple of Mikes from Dallas.  Mike Hayes on the right was attending his first race since starting sailing about a year ago.  Mike Howell on the right, Composite 21 owner and event sponsor.  You can see the Rolling Dog House in the background.		Our fearless leader, Aris Tsamis, making an announcment.  Club Commodore, owner of Mariner Sails and an event sponsor.  We picked up some of the slack for him this year, but he was still a whirling dervish as he started and scored the races.
	Trailer time - (l-r) Dog Trailer, Ivey Trailer, Jackson Trailer.  You can just see Mike Hayes' homemade trailer peeking in on the far left.		Another clear start.  The wind was marginal at times, but we managed 7 heats of racing over two days.  We did shorten the course by about 50% after the first heat took over an hour...  Whoops.  Sorry about that folks, but the forecast was for South 15-25mph.
	The crowd starts forming early for the trophy presentation and prize giveaways.		Because of the storms Friday night, we had to set-up everything again on Saturday morning.  We started at 7am and were almost finished by the time registration started.
	Listening to the instructions during the skippers meeting.		Gus Schmiege, our official photographer.  I don't know if he's unhappy because it's cloudy or because I'm taking his picture.  Gus helped us assemble our personalized trophies.  Where are my pictures, Gus?
	Here's the first three "cans" of Dog House Homebrew.  We finished 5 in all...  Along with a pile of Coors/Coors Light and about 1/2 a keg of Flying Dog Pale Ale.  We also pounded down many, many cases of water and soda.		Central Subaru once again provided lunch for anyone in the near vicinity.  They've been one of our main sponsors for years.
	Roger and Ellen before they went into hyper-drive.		Ellen teaching some beginners.
	Zachery Lyman...  You should remember this face.  You're going to see a lot of him on race podiums in the future.  He placed 2nd in the Open Fleet.		A tight finish.  Most of the competition was pretty close.
	Pieter Botha...  Another of the young guns coming out of Abilene.  He won the Junior Fleet, but was fast enough around the course that he'd have done well in any fleet.  His sister, Lene, took 3rd in the Juniors fleet.		Ken Merten, taking a break from our grueling schedule of racing.  Ken is one of our hardcore Formula guys and helped us set up the courses (along with lots of input from the other racers).  Ken also happened to be celebrating his birthday that weekend.  We showed him no mercy though.
	I'm not sure what Jay Clarke (our new newsletter editor) was so happy about, especially since he was only two weeks into recovering from broken ribs.  But he was and he raced.  I guess life is good.		The course marks are where?!?!
	Because the winds were light and the finish line was close to shore, we got to see a lot of pumping up close.		The starting line was a bit longer, but starts were also quite tight.  We had quite a few over early calls, but no general recalls.
	Charles Ivey (with the wrench) and some of the other attendees from Abilene.  They came in a pack and brought their own cheering section.		Charles pointing out the stickers of some of the companies who've helped sponsor the Abilene Juniors.  And yes, that's his new trailer.  I'll have additional pictures up on the Texas Windsurfing Trailers page soon.