MIAMI ORANGE BOWL


The Orange Bowl is famous for being a Youth Regatta in Miami between the holidays. What a lot of people don't know is that out of Coconut Grove Sailing Club there is an adult version of the Orange Bowl sailed in Lightnings and Lasers. Over the years the Lightning division has been up over 30 boats, but attendance has slipped the past few years. This year it hit an all-time low with only 5 boats. Team Quantum Racing was one of the boats and our goals were outside of the actual regatta as we wanted to get in some great sailing and test some new sail designs and fabrics.

The boat was already down in FLA from the previous Jax/Clearwater/FLL trip. Thanks to buddy Sponge and his wife Kylie for looking after our machine for a few weeks. Our plan was to get the boat back to Sponge's place, but an unfortunate collision (yep, we wrecked in a 5 boat fleet) forced us to tow the boat back North....but that's another story.

The racing proved to be great. Our scores aside (we won all but 2 of the 8 races) we learned a lot and we are grateful that the other 4 boats were all strong Blue Fleeters (NAs top division). Our sails looked great and we had height/speed when we needed it.

Team Quantum Racing for the Orange Bowl was Skip Dieball, Mike Stark, Karl Felger. Here's a pic of the champs:







Here's a view from our host's great home: