Nick Mortgu, Dave Ramos, Ken Shaw, Rick West and I will be sailing in the Santa Barbara Nationals on August 13th & 14th during Race Week. While all of us have our own reasons for attending, this is sort of a story of what happens when insanity meets irresponsibility, or vice-verse. I figure that you can save time and effort by just living vicariously through us on our adventure to San Diego.

Until you build a different class boat, you don't fully appreciate how fortunate we are to have the amount of documentation on building our boats readily available to us. The Santa Barbara class lacks a centralized site, which hopefully will change. Because none of us had ever seen a Santa Barbara, we did just what we did when we built the J's a decade ago. We simply fit an EC12 into the shape of a Santa Barbara.

On August 2nd, we'll ship all four east coast boats in one large box that's close to 300 pounds. On August 9th, we arrive in San Diego with the hope that everything arrived intact. There is a lot that can go wrong inside a box during a 3,000 mile truck ride.

If all goes well, we should be able to get a few practice sessions at the lake over the weekend.

DB
S/B 8

My crystal ball says it will be a 1st to 5th place finish for all our EC12 skippers. Well maybe one or two regular SB sailors will have an edge, but the rest of the classes just don't have the skills to take on an EC12 skipper in any other boat. Maybe I am biased.

Good luck guys and enjoy your time in San Diego. It is one of my favorite cities.

Joe,
I agree with you. I don't think they have a clue as to what is coming to town for Race Week. I can't wait to hear the reports. I also know that Ramos and little Ramos are shipping Dave's ODOM and Pinky's ODOM (for Junior) to sail as well and that should be another fun series of regatta reports to hear. I tell you the SB look funny with such a small rig.
Good luck guys!
Ernest

I for one am a big fan of that group and will indeed be living vicariously through them and the regatta reports I hope to read. Pictures and videos are another thing I will be scouring the internet for. Safe travels and the best to all of them.

We had our last test day at Laurel Acres yesterday and then packed up the fleet for shipping.

The box contains four complete Santa Barbaras. That's Ken Shaw, Mark Rinehart, Alex Ramos and Dave Ramos bolting in the keels It took a little under two hours to beak down the boats and pack everything in the box.


With about an inch to spare, the box fit in van. It's better to be lucky than good


The box gets dropped off at the trucking company tomorrow with expected delivery in San Diego on Monday.

The box gets DROPED off at the trucking company!!! You might as well put them on an airline.

The Fleet in a Box process....

Dave is thinking....If I start now I can deliver them myself.

Oh, that notch in the box...when we uncrate, thats where the angle irons, presently holding the keels in, get bolted to the box to hang rigs from. He thought of pretty much everything. You'll see what this box converts into when we get there.....(can you say Transformers).....

I have to say that DB (with help from Ken) outdid himself on the construction of the S/B Fleet box, MacGyver move over.
After a great final tuning session on the pond where we pretty much confirmed that all the boat are just about set up as well as we could get them and getting a little thumb time on these babies did not hurt a bit. One interesting observation was the adjustment onto NASCAR mode (DB) that we set up to allow VERY quick turns. These are definitely not EC12’s and can really turn on a dime when you want them to but don’t forget that long transom as it swings way wide in a tight turn. We broke for lunch and then back to Dave’s house for breakdown and packing up. There is not much free room in that monster but wait til we get there and post some photos of the regatta box’s “Pond Mode”. LOL
I look forward to sailing ODOM’s (Fri-Sun) with my son Alex but if he beats me I’m making him walk home….HaHa and he will be shore support for the S/B fab five Dave Brawner, Rick West, Ken Shaw Nick Mortgu and myself on Mon and Tuesday.
I’m hoping that he can take some photos and video’s to send to you all and keep you in the loop.
We hope that team Fenstermacher Universal Tool and Die will make the EC12 Fleet proud.
Dave

Great update Dave! Many thanks. Looking forward to more.

NO PRISONERS!

Jon Luscomb

The 336 pound fleet of four S/B boats and gear arrived in San Diego Yesterday. The boys from the East Coast are boarding planes today. West Coast will arrive on the 11th.

Remember that a picture is worth a thousand words and we are looking forward to many pictures. Go Team!