"Little things blame not: Grace may on them wait." (Anon.)

February 1996 Issue Contents Return to the Frosty Home page.


1995 Canadian National Championship Regatta

by David Landsberg

On November 18 and 19 the big event was once again sailed at the Toronto Sailing and Canoe Club, with attendance down a bit at eight boats. Almost the entire season was consistently way too windy for Frosty sailing on Lake Ontario. The typical Sunday breeze through October and November was 25+ knots from the south. Although the sturdy souls of Fleet #11 like this type of wind for Frosty blasting, the slop becomes unmanageable and the boats tend to spontaneously sink despite frantic bailing by the pilot. Anyway, it would appear that the pounding for the five or six weeks prior to the regatta scared away some of the competition.

Ironically, the wind was so lame on Saturday it was a challenge just to keep up sufficient momentum to keep the race committee motivated! Despite this, we managed to get in six races before the annual dinner. Unfortunately, half the fleet did not show up for Sunday, which featured slightly more wind and three races.

The Canadian Nationals also served as a fund raiser known as the Ice Bucket Benefit on behalf of the Children's Wish Foundation--a very worthwhile cause. We managed to accumulate $150 of regatta profits for the cause. This is entirely thanks to all the fine businesses in Toronto that donated a bunch of great prizes, which were raffled off on Saturday night. The donation was down substantially from previous years, but this is temporary. We expect more Frosty activity in 1996, as we are busy recruiting newcomers.

At the end of Day 1, your correspondent had a pretty nice lead after duking it out with Bob Stiff and Marg Eastman, who made the trip up from Montreal. Business kept me from competing on the second day, leaving Bob and Marg to do battle. Bob edged out Marg by a half point to take the coveted Canadian Trophy.

The Ice Bucket Benefit was. as always, a good time!

Place	Competitor			Points
1.	Bob Stiff			17.25
2.	Marg Eastman			17.75
3.	David Landsberg		        24.25
4.	Adolf Shin			34.75
5.	Jamie Vallance			37.75
6.	David Galbraith		        39.00
7.	Rick Needham			46.00
8.	Peter Brayshaw			49.00

On the Cutting Edge:
John Field in his new boat at the Scallop Cup.
Ansel Cahoon photo.


Scallop Cup '95

by Nat Philbrick

Taking up where Bill Koch and America3 left off, John Field and his scary-fast new Frosty proved that when it comes to sailboats--even Frosties!--there's no stopping technology. Not that John didn't sail well to win the ninth annual Scallop Cup convened at the Nantucket Yacht Club on Saturday, October 21, but sailed on Sunday, the 22nd. In fact he sailed brilliantly. But, let me tell you, this boat is fast. For one thing, it has a paint job that cannot be believed. Don Stucke put the facilities of his auto body shop at John's disposal to create a shimmering black paint job that is somewhere between an X-15 rocket and a Ford Escort. Then there is the matter of John's impeccable craftsmanship. But enough about John's new boat, on to the regatta itself.

This is the regatta that shouldn't have happened. The winds for Saturday were predicted to top fifty miles an hour. By a miracle, the Nantucket Steamship left Hyannis that morning and arrived on the island at 11:30 withÄÄto the astonishment of the regatta management team (me)--seven Frosties! But what to do? Bikini tops, hats, and sandals were being ripped unmercifully from the respective breasts, heads, and feet of hapless tourists. Nantucket harbor was positively bursting with foam. In short, this was not Frosty weather. The decision was made to give it a go on Sunday morning, particularly since the ferry had been canceled (due to the high winds) and no one had a way of getting home. Nothing like a captive audience.

On the day that God rested, it was still blowing hard, but at least it was from the west, which put us in the lee. With a mercifully brief triangle that placed a moored boat in the middle of the starting line and the windward mark a few feet off the Honeymoon Suite of the White Elephant Hotel, the racing began with a quick capsize on the part of a Nantucket Frosty neophyte, Beau Barber. (Later his brother Nate made it a family affair.) Soon the fleet had spread across the western corner of Nantucket Harbor like a flock of free-range chickens being pursued by Frank Purdue. Five races later, the day was less than two hours older and we still had a half hour before the ferry arrived at 11:30.

The continued popularity of this event continues to baffle its race organizers (once again, me). I admit, the party on Saturday evening is fun, but come on, these boats are the nautical equivalent of medieval torture devices. Still, the demented people who are drawn to these demented little boats are great fun, and we here on Nantucket really enjoy running this event and seeing you all each year. 1996 will mark the Scallop Cup's tenth year, so please think about coming. Saturday, October 28th will be the date. Even if Saturday looks bad weather-wise, we'll do as we did in '95 and sail on Sunday. So mark it on your calendar, make a hotel reservation, and come on down.

Scallop Cup results:

Place	Competitor					Points
1.	John Field, New York NY		            	7.00
2.	Tim O'Keeffe, Centerville, MA			11.00
3.	Peter Eastman, Barnstable, MA			14.00
4.	Scott McManus, Waltham, MA			26.75
5.	Geoff Stucke, Boston, MA			28.00
6.	Don Stucke, Corning, NY			        30.00
7.	Darren Legge, Nantucket, MA			39.00
8.	Nate Barber, Nantucket, MA			43.00
9.	Tracey Taylor, Barnstable, MA			44.00
10.	Ken Simpson, Brewster, MA			44.00
11.	Beau Barber, Nantucket, MA			46.00

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After 11 years of existance, the "Nauset Hangover Bowl" makes its photographic debut with this first-ever-to-be-published picture. This trophy holds the unique distinction of being the only permanent, rotating trophy to be more routinely displayed behind the old refrigerator in the garage than on the mantelpiece in the living room. Photo: Marc Daniels

Hangover Bowl 1996

The weather forecast looked very promising for Fleet #1's traditional new years day regatta... partly cloudy, 40 degrees F, wind NE 5 to 10 knots. However, at noon as people were arriving at the Hyannis Yacht Club with their boats, it was heavily overcast, blowing a good 15 knots, and there was a nasty chop. Seven hearty Frosty sailors turned out to sail a five race series along with the Hyannis Interclub fleet and the Falmouth DC-10 fleet.

During the course of the afternoon's racing, the wind gradually diminished, though it was up and down a lot. At one point when the Frosties were thrashing to windward, the wind suddenly dropped way down causing everyone to sit down in their cockpits. Unfortunately the chop was still up, and it slopped big lap-fulls of water into the boats which then drained down to become a sort of Frosty sitz-bath. Despite the minor discomforts, it was a great day of racing.

Jen Kano won the "coveted" Hangover "trophy"(see photo) with three firsts and a convincing 5.5 points over second place finisher Tom Leach. Two-time Hangover Champion Tim O'Keeffe finished fourth--quite surprising considering he won every Fall '95 Cape Fleet regatta he sailed in. (Does the word "sandbagging" come to mind?") It is rumored that he was instructed not to come home with "that thing" again.

Full results:
1.	Jen Kano	Cataumet	 8.25
2.	Tom Leach	Harwich		13.75
3.	John Field	NY City		16
4.	Tim O'Keeffe	Centerville	16.75
5.	Ross Weene	Ashland		22
6.	Gary Prahm	Marstions Mills	28
7.	Dave Jost	Ashland		34

Cape Fleet Fall Results

Fleet #1's Tim O'Keeffe absolutely dominated an abbreviated fall series squeezed in between the weekly downpours, gales, and blizzards. With one throwout allowed and 8 points awarded for a DNR, results were as follows:

Place	Competitor			Points
1.	Tim O'Keeffe			2.25
2.	Tom Leach			6.75
3.	Jen Kano			7.00
4.	Tom Philbrick			8.00
5.	Gary Prahm			14.00
6.	Marianne Philbrick		17.00
7.	Trip Barrow			32.00
9.	Peter Kumeiga			33.00

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The Word from Reading: Fleet #10 News

by Eric Nicholls

There is an awful lot of coffee in Brazil! So how does that relate to my Frosty?? Since this was not a particularly good year for Frosty sailing in our area, what to do with that Frosty stimulated the proverbial mind process about what to do with an attractive Frosty when it can't be floating. I was informed by one couple that it made a great luggage carrier for the top of the car. Just pack it, strap it up, then roll it over and off you go. Great aerodynamic look too! Since traveling wasn't in the cards for most of us, and the conversation usually ended up over coffee, it didn't take long to figure out that a Frosty's best second life is as a coffee table. Yep, glass top propped up by four carefully used pink pearl erasers and you have the perfect focal point for your conversations. Now just add coffee and everything is just about perfect, except perhaps how to serve the coffee. By our count, there are at least eight ways. Coffee over glass, stern coffee, Columbian centerboard coffee (crack coffee), Cappucino at the mast coffee, Kenya quarter-deck coffee, and bilge coffee (if you don't prop the hull carefully).


The Grand Design: A Conversation with Tom Leach

[The Frosty News recently had the privilege of interviewing the Father of All Frosties in his office overlooking ice-bound Saquatucket Harbor in Harwich, Massachusetts. Tom's remarks on the origins and early development of the Frosty are printed here. His observations on the evolution of the Class, tuning, boat-handling, and recent refinements in construction and equipment will appear in later issues.]

News: Let's begin with the question you must have been asked a thousand timesÄÄhow did this nutty idea ever occur to you, to design a Frosty?

TL: It was something to do, a something-to-do project, as much as anything. I'd noticed that there was a clever plan to build a rowing dinghy out of one sheet of plywood--it was in Popular Mechanics, I think. It struck me that if you could build a rowing boat that would support a person out of one sheet of plywood, why not try one that could sail? The rowing dinghy was built with Bondo seams and all that, and I thought, this is it, this is a great idea.

News: Did you use the same hull design as the rowing boat?

TL: I used the same idea. It started out pretty much as the same shape, but it changes as you draw your own plans. You're looking at a little sketch in a magazine, and you say, okay, I see how he's doing this and you work it out.

News: Had you designed and built anything before?

TL: I'd built a 21-foot rowing shell out of Lauan plywood. I designed that by having an idea of how the thing ought to look, and then drawing it on a sheet of graph paper. I transferred that onto cardboard and cut it out in cardboard, assembled the parts, and taped them together to see how all the pieces would fit together.

News: So that's how you got from the two-dimensional plan to the three-dimensional shape?

TL: I'm no marine architect--that's pretty obvious--but this is how an amateur does it, using the cardboard to make sure that all the pieces fit and the seams align.

News: Can you anticipate the shape of the underbody?

TL: Not really; you can sort of guess how it's going to come out, but not perfectly. I built another rowing shell out of one sheet of plywood that was not safe. That thing finally went to the dump. I rowed it from one dock to the other here in the harbor, and when I got out, I said never again. But the construction of a model in cardboard has been my way of building things ever since. You trace it out, cut it out, tape it up, and see how it looks. If it doesn't look right, why then you can change it.

News: So that's how the Frosty got started?

TL: Yes. I began building in the basement but had to move out to the garage, because Jackie [Tom's wife] was pregnant then and couldn't stand the smell of the Bondo resin. And I spent a lot of time cutting and fitting, because the original panels didn't even match side to side. I hate to admit that, but they didn't, and the whole thing was twisted. The people who built from the blueprint I later made didn't have that problem because they cut the matching panels as mirror images of the ones on the plan. But I've heard a story that the original J/24's were not symmetrical, so I didn't feel so bad.

News: And how was the maiden voyage?

TL: Well, I got the thing together and my brother Mark and I tried it out, and the thing not only floated--that was a positive experience--but it really sailed. It went upwind, and though we had never sailed anything quite so tender, it was not really unstable. It had a much shorter daggerboard than Frosties have now, but that's the only thing I had to change.

News: How did you ever come to think of your six-foot wonder as a racing dinghy?

TL: People began to show some interest in the thing when they saw it sail, and I decided to go home and build two more. I'd get together with friends and we'd go out and fool around with the boats. People in the restaurant on the harbor front would watch us, and gradually the word spread. Then in early 1984 I went to the J/24 Mid-Winters with Skip Whyte. During the long drive down to Florida, I got talking about this dinghy I'd built and he brought up the subject of frostbiting. That's when the idea of the boat as an off-season racer came into being.

Somehow Dal Dalglish [physician and first-rate dinghy sailor] at the Hyannis Yacht Club heard about the project, and he grabbed me and said we should get a frostbite class going. Dal did more than anyone else to inspire me to get the thing evolving. He came over one day, hopped in the boat and immediately started sailing it the way Jen Kano and most of us sail it now--moving in the boat, hiking, all that; not just sitting there as if you were in a bathtub. Dal was enthusiastic about the boat and told me I really had something. So that put the spark in me.

News But how did you get from just three Frosties to lots of Frosties?

TL: Well, Art Radtke [boatshop owner and O'Day Daysailer whiz] at the Orleans Yacht Club got interested and started a group building project in a barn. Dal decided that if Orleans could do it, so could Hyannis, and they started building a fleet. Then I got the idea of running a dinghy-building class in the adult evening program at the local high school. It was a big hit, filling not one but two classes. So now the whole thing was rolling. We were getting a lot of attention from the media, the mail was flooding in, and the class was under way.


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Cape Cod Frosty News
Copyright Cape Cod Frosty Class Association 1998 all rights reserved.

Editor: Tom Philbrick
Art Director: Jen Kano

Published biannually by the Cape Cod Frosty Class Association for the edification and amusement of its members, their families, and friends. Subscriptions to the paper edition are available through membership in the Class Association.