Sail Fast 2008 Line Product Shoot

We just finished shooting SailFast's brand new 2008 line and the t-shirts look great! We had a good time with models Wells, Trip, Joe and Stacey, taking shots both at the St. Petersburg Sailing Center during Flying Scot midwinters and at the laid-back Pass-a-Grille beach. Both the Flying Scot fleet and Pass-a-Grille embody the SailFast mentality quite well. Flying Scot sailors love the sport and sail a lot, often with families and spouses. Fleets are located in sailing hotspots such as Long Island Sound and Tampa Bay, but also on smaller lakes in non-coastal states. Pass-a-grille beach and the accompanying small neighborhood is picturesque, but quiet. The beach is accessible to the public but never crowded or over-commercialized. It's a great place for watersports or beachcombing- both important parts of the SailFast lifestyle.

One of Allen's photos was used to create the artistic fleet image in the grey shirt pictured above.

See more SailFast products and learn about their dedication to raising funds for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society at www.isailfast.com .

See our client list and learn more about hiring Daniela and Allen for commercial photography including catalog product photos such as these at www.PhotoBoat.com .

Flying Scot Midwinters 2008

The Flying Scots experienced conditions at both ends of the spectrum for their midwinters this week. The fleet has a heavy population of lake sailors and Monday and Tuesday's weather was a bit much for some, with 15-20 from the Northeast and a really lumpy Tampa Bay. Many competitors were happy with Wednesday's dying breeze and Thursday was a complete drifter. That's undesireable for us, but we were happy to get the two days of great action photos. The Flying Scots are a great family fleet, with many parent-child teams and even more wife-husband teams. In fact, they have an annual Wife-Husband Regatta. It was also great to sit in on some of their Top Gun training and debrief sessions. It's always great to see sailors that are so dedicated to helping each other improve.

See Flying Scot Midwinters results at St. Petersburg Yacht Club's website: http://www.spyc.org/.

Take a look at the event photos, sorted by sail number, at http://www.photoboat.com/ .

St. Petersburg Winter Lightning Championship 2008

The Lightning has been around for a long time but despite its more classic shape, it still goes fast and looks good doing it. 69 crews proved that at this weekend's Winter Lightning Championship at St. Petersburg YC, the last stop on the Lightning Southern Circuit. There's nothing like 69 boats on the line and 15 knots of breeze on a lumpy Tampa Bay. The result: Allen took 3,000 photos on Saturday. We had a great time showing a slideshow at the Banquet on Saturday night in St. Petersburg Yacht Club's ballroom, particularly because we got to learn a lot about the Lightning fleet's history and the members' dedication, friendship, and generosity. Maybe we'll end up in a Lightning when we finally find time for sailing again.

See the lightning photos at www.PhotoBoat.com and the results at www.spyc.org.

505 and A Cats finish with a great day

With 20 knots from the North on the heels of a cold front today, conditions were perfect on the South end of Tampa Bay for everybody but A Cats. Only one A Cat lasted all morning and no races were held for the class. Most of the high-performance cat sailors made a decision not to go out before breaking any gear or having serious wipeouts.

The 505s, on the other hand, were loving life (and breaking a little bit of gear and having a few serious wipeouts).

It was a great day for photos, and we really like the silhouette photos taken into the bright sun. When you take as many as 5000 photos a week, something different is really nice...


Check out the sequence below, caused by a big wave from a container ship's wake.


Hopefully Mike doesn't mind us posting this. He was not the only one who hung out in the water today.








See the photos at http://thephotoboat.com/505ACatMidwinters.htm and see the results and more info about the active 505 class at www.usa505.org .

505 and A Cat Midwinters 08 - Saturday

This Hall Spars-owned A Cat has a rigid wing "sail" which had us oogling. It is the only one of its kind at the regatta, but is still class-legal because it meets the sail-area specs. Cool.

We're looking forward to getting some good shots of this A Cat and all the other A Cats and 505s in action tomorrow, with 15-25 knots and sunny skies in the forecast. Today's weather was tough...while the wind was supposed to increase in the afternoon, threatening squalls forced the sailors to hit the beach at noon and they weren't able to go back out. We're concentrating our photo efforts on tomorrow's action. But still, we had a good time at dinner with the competitors and they had a good time too...

505 and A Cat Midwinters 08 - Friday

There wasn't enough breeze for the 505ers to really get out on the wire today, so the PhotoBoat coverage was brief. The forecast calls for increasing breeze throughout this three-day regatta with around 45 boats. Still, the A Cats can look fast in any breeze.

Having been to more Yacht Clubs than we can remember in the last few years, Allen and I find the venue for this event in St. Petersburg refreshing. The sailors are launching from East Beach in Ft. DeSoto on the Southern tip of the peninsula that makes up Tampa Bay. Ft. DeSoto National Park is one of our favorite spots around here and in anticipation of light breeze, we brought our bikes with us today.

SPYC Multiclass 08 Day 2

Today the St. Petersburg Yacht Club race committee showed me why they have such a good reputation for race management. The course I covered had five different classes on it and they were all racing multi-lap courses, some W/L, some triangle. It made my job tougher because every time one fleet was rounding the windward mark, another fleet was finishing just to windward of it.

The above shot shows A Cat, 505, Contender on the layline.

The RC got in two long races (and 3 for A Cats because they are that fast) despite a long postponement in the AM.

With A Cats and Ultima 20s (and all of the five fleets) meeting in right-of-way situations and a big bang from a collision between an FD and a U20, I barely had time to complain about light breeze. There was a lot going on. I didn't get catch the collision on "film" but maybe it can be seen on Kattack's race tracking at http://www.kattack.com/ . Let's hope the sound was worse than the damage.

See the results at the SPYC website http://www.spyc.org/club/scripts/view/view_clubannouncement.asp?pg=PR&GRP=5564&AID=38838&NS=PR&APP=58

St. Pete YC Multiclass Regatta day 1

The breeze was gusty close to shore today but the Southwesterly dropped to between 5 and 8 knots by the time it reached the race course in Tampa Bay.

Still, the Contender and FD sailors put in an impressively long day with 4 multi-leg races. I survived the slow day in the dinghy by playing with our newest photo/sailing-geek toy- a GPS receiver for our cameras. Today's photos are our first ones tagged with coordinates. Is this a useless gimmick or will we rely on it one day?

See more photos and today's results here: http://www.thephotoboat.com/SPYC_MultiClassRegatta.htm