In 1993, SAIL (The Sailing Assoc of Intermountain Lakes) created a 'Tour' trophy to encourage sailboat racing in the SAIL area; Colorado, Wyoming, Nebraska and New Mexico & followed up by creating more. The first Tour trophies were awarded to best finishes in the most Open regattas in the SAIL Area.
One of the original purposes of SAIL was to assist the various clubs and fleets in scheduling their regattas with the minimum number of schedule conflicts. The purpose was to coordinate this schedule with Colorado State Parks & Recreation. As a result, this has remained one of the annual activities covered by the annual meeting. The Tour was a natural offshoot of the schedule activities; one for the dinghies and one for the keelboats. The Tour idea had been preceded by the PHRF fleet trophy for those keelboats that belong to SAIL handicap fleet but did not have sufficient fleet size to warrant a One Design fleet at most regattas.
The SAIL Tour has awarded trophies to the best sailors participating in the various Open Regattas within the SAIL Area. Initially the Tour Trophies were based on participation and finishes in either the keelboat series or the dinghy series. The 7 keelboat regatta's originally included in the SAIL tour were The Rust Remover @ CC, The Carter Open, Wyoming Governor's Cup @ Casper, WY, The Aspen Open @ Reudi, The Dillon Open, The Nebraska Governor's Cup @ Lake McConaughy, The Colorado Governor's Cup and The Columbus Day Regatta @ Chatfield. The 8 dinghy regattas included The Horn Blower @ CC, The Firecracker, The Aspen Open, CORC, The Dillon Open, Colorado Governor's Cup, Summer's End Regatta and The Frost Bite @ CC.
For most of the series, the series were scored using the Sprague-Cox System; an attempt to balance the points awarded for any one regatta with its relative participation.
Participation in the SAIL Tours has dropped off considerably over the past few years and right now the SAIL Board is looking at different ways to encourage sailboat racing. We are asking the sailors in the SAIL Area to discuss any items that would improve the regattas, the participation in sail racing and the interest these sailors have in a SAIL event. Comments have been made that SAIL should support a Championship Regatta to determine a champion rather than a long series of regattas over the entire area.
On March 29, 2008, SAIL will host a meeting to discuss the poor participation in the SAIL Tours. SAIL would like YOUR opinion on what action we should take. We will use the results of this survey as a starting point for the discussion at the meeting. Please share your thoughts! We hope to have an open discussion that looks at all of the issues and builds a consensus concerning theTour.
