A long winded write up for a not so long winded race, but hear me out:
There are many things that can define sailing experiences. Sailing can be a way to get from place to place, a way to relax on a sunny day, a challenge to cross an ocean, survival through a storm, arriving at the weather mark first, or even frustration when you have to break out the paddle. What do all of these things have in common? Each of these versions of our favorite activity all boil down to finding ways to connect with your surroundings. Our version of connection is through competition. Every week, we take to the water hoping to understand the conditions in front of us and find a way to conquer those conditions. Each week presents its own challenges, some requiring crews to sling themselves over lifelines to hold the boat flat as the skipper tries to keep the bow down and the trimmers continuously depower the sails while trying to maintain boatspeed. Others require the whole crew to consistently try to hunt for dark water as the boat struggles to maintain flow over the foils. For me, last night's conditions define what it means to connect with your surroundings on the race course. The lulls had crews rolling the boat to leeward and the skippers hunting for power, but the stronger puffs had crews all the way back to the windward rail and the skippers taking all of the ups while they had it. What is so special about this kind of racing is that it all matters. This racing showcases teams that can constantly change gears and know what the boat needs as it goes through each wind speed by finely tuning the sail trim and moving weight back and forth on the boat inch by inch to maintain proper heel angle. But while doing all of this, crews also had to find the next puff or shift in a breeze that was just consistent enough to hide the differences as much as possible. And on top of that, the fantastic participation resulted in full starting lines and boat on boat tactics coming into play on every tack and gybe last night. When one has to stay that active and attentive on the boat, it makes the time fly and you wish there was more breeze and more daylight to keep going. This activity challenges the mind and the body in ways that we all crave. It's why we love this sport and why we share it with our families, friends, other loved ones, and even strangers. My summary this week has turned into an essay but I was prompted by this gorgeous picture that Jurgen took from RC to share some of the things I love about this sport and I could talk for hours. What I hope is that as you look at this picture and read my essay, you are prompted to share this sport with others too. My shoutouts for the week are prime examples of this. Stefan Schulze and the Cinderella crew took on an extra soul this week. The Georgia Tech Sailing Club managed to field two full J24s this week and had extra sailors, one of which was accepted by Stefan and crew on Cinderella for the night. Scott Bean is my second shoutout for helping the Georgia Tech kids pull their second boat out of the water late last night. I'm not sure who helped them put the boat in the water, but to whoever that may be you earn my praise too. Many of you know the college sailors for their up and down participation at the club, but what most of you may not understand is that the college clubs are filled with volunteer students sacrificing valuable study time to share sailing with other students who haven't had access to sailing before. Following the races last night, these fresh young sailors were telling so many stories of the battles they had across the three boats they sailed on in the race. The excitement Scott, Stefan and others provided for these fresh faces is what will grow our sport and make it last for the future. So when you have the opportunity to provide more sailing opportunities, please do so. Whether it's helping someone set up their boat, tuning up with fellow competitors, explaining a boat on boat situation after heated words on the course, teaching new crew, sharing a rum drink, or volunteering for RC duty. Do your part to further sailing. As always, but maybe more so this week, thank you to RC members Bill Overend, Jurgen Haeberle, Lester Ross, Matt Salley, and Bruce Johnson. Reminder that there will be food following races next week! As always let me know if there are any scoring corrections. We'll see you on the water! -Kyle _______________________________________________________________ Holy Shift! If you managed to brave the rain you were rewarded with an ever changing race course that definitely made for an eventful night. By the time we were coming back downwind in the High PHRF fleet, we had seen many large shifts, but I was not prepared for what became a race to pull the spinnaker back down when we suddenly found ourselves going back upwind. Special thanks to Warren Collier, Jim Schwab, Sidney Brown-Shirley and Ben for sticking out the rain and getting a course set in tough conditions!
I also want to thank Ted Sheldon and company for the fantastic grilled chicken, rice, beans and salad they provided us for dinner last night. I got in late but still managed to get two plates and it was well worth it! (PS I would love to know what seasoning y'all put in the beans). Next dinner will be after race 3! The last story I found out about after the race was that Brad Bowers and crew found out they had one too many crew on the boat last night, After they had gone out already they found a quite large snake on the boat! Make sure y'all pump the bilge before going out ;) For those of y'all that didn't bring your foulies, here's a picture of the sunset you missed after the storm passed. (thanks for sharing the pic Warren!) Let me know if you see any issues with your score! Looking forward to seeing yall next week! _______________________________________________________ These pictures definitely describe the conditions that were prevalent for Sunday’s LARC race. Isn’t this the reason we have a Winter series?
If you were looking for a thrill ride and/or had some old sails to use, this would have been a good day to go sailing. The weather station at LLSC registered 15 mph winds with gusts up to 30 mph. Not a day for new sails or newbies. We had 11 boats registered and we had 3 boats to finish and if you didn’t think the Melges 24 was a boat for all conditions, you haven’t seen their performance. Brent reported that he ripped in old main (thank goodness) in half and the new J-80, Freya, had equipment failures before the race began. It was 13.8 nm course designed by Kent Rogers with a little help from the Melges 24 fleet and it was a race to 11 down to R and back to 11 again. The race took a little over 2 hours to complete by the boats (Melges 24s ) that finished . It was an impressive show and definitely an act of skill. Just a reminder, next Saturday on Feb 3 is the Hot Ruddered Bum by UYC (attached is the NOR and registration form) and the next LARC race is on Sat. Feb 24. Here are the results: 1st M24/ Hermes 2nd M24/ Premature Acceleration 3rd M24/ Uncle! Uncle! Congratulations for completing the race with all of your crew and equipment!! Thanks to David Jackson and Ryan Jones for the great action shots. See you on the race course, Dana ________________________________________________________________ As winter storm Ember raced past us and dumped all its nasty weather on the northeast , we enjoyed a dry but cold day with light winds on this first day of racing. Though many people were concerned with predictions of rain and cold early in the week, the storm zoomed past us quickly on Friday night and Saturday morning and left us with light air, no rain and the promise of more wind as the afternoon progressed. A big thank you to Kent Rogers who set up this 4.2 nm race with a great course that challenged our sailing skills.
Here is the order of the finishes:
Save the dates for upcoming races and regatta in Jan and Feb.
See you on the race course, Dana P.S. Everyone that would like to help make our club regattas even better, please come to the Anchor Committee meeting on Sat. Jan 13 at 2pm at LLSC clubhouse. Refreshments will be provided. ___________________________________________________________ Did we end this series with a bang or a whimper, no we ended this series end with a DRIP. It was a very wet Wednesday night race for everyone involved, but it did end up being an exciting ending for those of us who braved the weather.
Despite our wet and bedraggled condition, we had a great meal waiting for us compliments of chef Wheeler Sutton and his merry band of cooks. But the highlight of the evening was the Keelboat Fleet band that played all evening for us. It was an awesome night of music and a big thanks to organizers/musicians Will Brown and Q, with the addition of the musical talents of Brad Griese, Lee Estes and a few other talented gentlemen. A big thanks to Warren Collier, David Jackson, Doug Early and crew from Your Move for doing race committee for this series. There will be many trophies given out tomorrow night (10/18/23). We will be presenting the LARC trophies for the 2022 Fall series, 2023 Winter series and the 2023 Moonlight series (see attached files). These will be given out in addition to the 2023 Encore series awards. If you are wondering if you are getting a trophy, look at the scores and if you are in the top half of your fleet then your chances are excellent. Please be sure that you have someone from your boat or a friend that will pick up your trophy for you. Look forward to seeing everyone, Dana __________________________________________________________________ If there was any doubt that Fall is here, it was this wet and wonderful day! What a surprise after the light air race we endured last Wednesday. I know everyone had a fabulous time and a big thank you to Stefan Schulze, Amy Larkin and Chris Jackson for setting up the 8 mile course we had for this race. It was not an easy race, but the kind of day that really makes you glad to be on the water. The wind came out of NNW and I clocked wind speeds from 6-20 mph. We got some fabulous videos, though I am still working on sound quality and I had some difficulty in that some of the videos at the end of the race were accidentally put on Slo-Mo video or I was running out of battery, but I did not include those.
A super big thank you to Chris Jackson who provided some very insightful observations of the participants in this race. It was a challenging and fun afternoon. Thank you everyone that participated. After the race we all gathered at the LLSC clubhouse and had snacks and watched the videos. What a great way to end such an exciting afternoon. You will have 2 more chances to see your sailboat from a different perspective on Sat. Oct 21 and Sat Nov 18 with a 11am skipper’s meeting and 1 pm start. LARC Fall #2 video: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1uOIYshnmDcNLW978Sipn9h3rfPA7gkkj LARC Fall #1 videos: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1iLjKYIIsp3PTfytCrTPBfZt7fMxIgYFn The picture above is of #77 Strega on a close reach going to “H” mark. You can tell the wind speed by the huge wake behind Strega and her mainsail is fluttering. Notice the whitecaps in the background, it was an exciting day. ____________________________________________________________ f I told you that 7 boats retired from this race that went from X- E- C- X, what would you assume about the race? I think an apt description of this race was painful. The pileup at E mark gave any Nascar race a run for the money. It is hilarious what people will do when they get bored.. As we all painfully drift around E mark, just ahead of me Ol Sole Mio puts up there black and red spinnaker and starts to drift slower. Here is the highlight of the race, Ol Sole Mio decides they are going to help their spinnaker by starting the engine and going backward. The spinnaker filled and we were all excited until we noticed there was something funny afoot. Obviously we did not follow suit, but I applauded their tenacity to make their spinnaker fly.
A picture is worth a thousand words and this picture shows the pile up at E mark. Thank you Dona Cardenas for this great shot. A big thank you to Dona Cardenas for the excellent Gumbo this evening. I believe next week Wheeler Sutton and company are preparing our dinner for Week #5. Something new and different every week. I want to encourage everyone to register for the Barefoot Open Regatta. There will be great sailing conditions, but getting a Tshirt with this great logo should be great incentive. I have to applaud BFSC, they put on a great party (this year it will be at UYC) and really know how to put on a top notch regatta. Go to BarefootSailingClub.org to register. See you on the race course, Dana __________________________________________________________________ Just a reminder that the 49th Barefoot Open will be in 2 weeks, Oct. 15-16. Please register this week for t-shirts and let’s support this oldest regatta on the lake.
A big thanks to Will Brown for the excellent broccoli and chicken casserole we had this week and Mary Lyons for her help serving and clean up. Thank you race committee of Warren Collier, Mary Lyons, Doug Early, Justin Zagarella, Kendrick Jones, Haley Boullon and Jean-Francois Rivard. They started in a different location this week and provided some interesting sailing as the light starts to fade earlier each week. There did seem to be some confusion about which fleets were to sail the shortened course and therefore several boats sailed an extra lap on the gorgeous Fall evening. We had a couple of changes in the fleets this series. The cruiser fleet combined their Low and High fleet into one fleet and Bruce Barton moved to the Large Sportboat fleet with his Trimaran, Magic Fly. In this second completed race of this series, the competition is getting hotter in the combined cruiser fleet with newcomer Ryan Jones in Daedalus, pushing the “old” experienced sailors. Dan McGraw has been “sizzling” this series with a 1st tonight in the Melges 24 fleet. After coming back from their Sears Cup win at the Florida Yacht Club in J-24’s, Parker Thran sailed Super Bueno tonight and took a 2nd tonight in this race in the Mid PHRF fleet. In the J-24 fleet it was a tight race but as usual in one-design fleet, the start is the key to the race. As a J-24 sailor, I should mention how MUCH I hate it when a J-22 beats everyone in my fleet. Congratulations Kyle and Doug Meyhoefer for an excellent performance in the High PHRF fleet. We had some great photography for this third race of the series. Thank you everyone that shared your experience on these wonderful Wednesday nights. What would we do without them!!!! Beer can racing, my foot. This is how we all keep SANE! _______________________________________________________________ Thank you everyone for your patience in moving the skipper’s meeting to the gravel B lot for this race. A big thanks to Stefan and his race committee team for the flat start at X island. The wind was fluky this weekend, gusty and and shifty on Saturday and then nothing Sunday morning. But never underestimate the moodiness of Lake Lanier because by the 1pm start time on Sunday we had plenty of wind to sail the 7nm race that RC set up.
We did something unusual for this race, Jonathan Stewart and I followed all the competitors around the race course videotaping their progress and sail trim. It was very enlightening watching all the different techniques the competitors used in their upwind and spinnaker leg. After the race we had snacks at the LLSC clubhouse and watched the videos of all the boats and enjoyed the lovely afternoon breezes. I have been slowly uploading all the videos to Google Drive and will send a link in a couple of days so you can watch at your leisure. We will be videotaping the upcoming LARC races on the following dates as well as hosting a post race “dirt up” at LLSC after each race at the LLSC clubhouse. So please come and join us. LARC #2 by LLSC on Saturday Oct 7 LARC #3 by LLSC on Sat Oct 21 LARC #4 by LLSC on Sat Nov 18 Just a reminder that I will be giving out the Fall 2022 and Winter and Moonlight 2023 trophies on Wed, Oct. 18. Attached are the results from Fall #1. See you on the race course, Dana _________________________________________________________________ Thank you race committee for a great job of finding wind to run a race this evening. Thank you Warren Collier, David Jackson and all the RC volunteers for giving your time to do race committee. Even though we have only had one race so far, we have had 2 fantastic dinners. Thanks to Jo Ann Estes for heating up the lasagna and Anne Howard with her helpers serving and clean up. We are still looking for volunteers for to do dinner for Race 3 and 4, talk to Will Brown if interested.
It was great to see Ryan Jones in his Beneteau 23, Daedalus, with a third place finish in the cruiser fleet this evening. In the Melges 24 fleet, Dan McGraw and Matt Perry gave Davis Macleod a run for his money. Hot Toddy, in the Large Sportboat fleet, was 9 minutes in front of the 2nd place boat, Maverick while Magic Fly (trimaran) kept the J-80 and J-88 on their toes and finished within seconds of the first boat over the line in the Low PHRF fleet. Jim Kingery in Sotally Tober was fast finishing seconds in front of Perpetual Motion and Ole Sole Mio for a first place finish this evening. The boats in the J-24 fleet swapped places at the front of the fleet several times with Althea (why doesn’t he give that fast boat some graphics) finally finishing on top. Thanks for the great photo by Brandon Martelino that I call the “battle of the blues”. ______________________________________________________________ Hurricane Idalia
We had some interesting results this week. In the Low Cruiser fleet, there was a tie for first place between Spencer Gay (Revelry) and Greg Cash (Impetuous). The Tony Cellamare in Area 51 of the Melges 24 fleet had an impressive 2nd place finish while Michael Wroblewski in Drippin Wet finished 4th in this race. Kurt Stadele in Ole Sole Mio of the Mid PHRF fleet took line honors on this wild evening of wind and rain while his fleet member Jim Kingery in Sotally Tober has had excellent finishes in the last 2 races. Sotally Tober tied for 2nd in race 2-9 and then he won this race. This last race was crucial in the overall ranking in the one-design J-24 fleet with Tom Graham /Mark Turner winning the race. It was a very close contest in the Low PHRF fleet between Patrick Vrana in the J-88 and Sean O’Connor in the J-80 with this last race determining the winner. A big thanks to race committee of Tommy Sawchuck and Breakaway crew and Darryl Lanier and Instigator II crew. This race committee team not only had to deal with three (3) boats that ran aground on the “hump” by D mark but also an approaching hurricane. What I will remember most about this race is as I started my downwind run back to the finish, the race committee barge and all the boats in that vicinity suddenly disappeared from view. At that point I decided that going back to that area by the race committee barge did not seem like a good idea. We took down as much sail as possible and headed towards a safer area. But unfortunately, the one thing no one could escape was the downpour that occurred just as the first fleets began to finish. This was a challenging race for this team of volunteers and we thank you for your service. Also a big thank you to Will Brown,who has been working very hard to keep us fed. I am looking forward to our traditional Low County Boil again this year. The “boys” do a great job in providing an excellent Awards dinner. Thank you Dona Cardenas and Rachael Green for the stunning photos below. I call them the before and after shots. See you at the awards, Dana. ________________________________________________________________ Race 2-8 Thank you race committee of Sean O’Connor and Bailey White and their crews for abandoning the race for lack of wind.
Race 2-9; Aug. 23, 2023 Things are heating up in more ways than the weather. You could feel the sizzle at the start of the fleets on this next to last race of the series. In the two one design fleets there were 2 boats in each fleet that were called over early. Many people thought with increase in temperature we would have a decline in wind, but Mother Nature has shown some sympathy for us, because even though it was as hot as hades out there, we still had enough wind to sail the 3-4.5 nm course in an hour. A big thank you to race committee of Mike Harrington, Kyle Wheatley, Penny Johnson, Nick Eldridge, Ben Martelino, Mike Smith and special help from injured Brent McKenzie. With only 6 races sailed so far in this series, there will only be one throw out for everyone. We have some very hot contests in some of the fleets. In the Melges 24 fleet, there is a tie for first place between Premature Acceleration and Rapscallion and third place boat, Ex-Kahn is only ¼ (.25) point away from the leaders. Next week’s race is going to be a contest to watch. There is a tie for first in the battle of the J’s (88 vs 80) in our Low PHRF boats between Valkyrie and Meraki. While in the other one-design fleet of J-24’s, Althea and Hawkeye are less than one point away and will need to keep a close eye on each other. A big thank you to Dona Cardenas for the jambalaya that she cooked. There will be food for Race 2-10 and Will Brown and his elves have something special cooked up for us on the awards evening on Sept. 6 as well as the unique trophies that will be awarded. Thank you Dona Cardenas for these gorgeous shots. See you on the race course, Dana ____________________________________________________________ Let me start this with a plea for registered skippers to sign up for race committee for the next 3 races. We have a lot of experienced sailors and potential race committee teams, please do your part in making this a successful series. We can’t have a race without race committee. If you are inexperienced but interested in learning, contact Jonathan Stewart (770-598-4346) and he might be able to pair you with an experienced team. The view of a race from the RC barge (in this case the Jr barge) is always awesome and sometimes scary. Awesome is when everyone completes their course, don’t hit the race committee (I am talking to you, Melges 24 fleet) and comes across the finish line one at a time. But scary is always a possibility.
After all the fleets got started (just one small hiccup), it was time to look around and see what the weather was going to do. Considering the almost daily storms we have had for the last couple of weeks, it would be smart to watch the weather radar and shorten the course before the weather gets nasty. After looking around and seeing the sky (see picture from Otis Sisk on Iniki above), I started to keep one eye glued to the weather app on my phone and one on the 8 fleets that were sailing. In the end, I decided that making fleets 1-4 sail the last 1.5 of their course might put them in the storm. A big thank you to race committee members of Anne Howard, Heather Temske, Doug Early, Claire Bean, Michael Lenkeit and Klaus. We had some very exciting finishes and great performances in the fleet this Wed night. In the EXTREMELY competitive Mid PHRF fleet, Sotally Tober finished 2nd place while Iniki finally put on her hurricane cloak and finished first in the exceptionally fast Low PHRF fleet. The Melges 24 fleet had some remarkable finishes with the first boat, Premature Acceleration, finishing over 1 minute in front of the next 3 boats with only 12 seconds between 2nd and 4th place. That is a tough fleet which means fleet members have lots of room to grow. An exceptionally warm thank you goes to Wheeler Sutton and all those worked to produce a fine meal for after the race this week. Watch the LLSC keelboat facebook page for updates from Will Brown on upcoming meals. I know he has great plans for the awards dinner. See you on the race course, Dana __________________________________________________ We have finally completed 4 races and everyone gets a throw-out. Race Committee averages have been calculated and the results are attached. At the end of the overall results, will be the individual results for Race 2-6.
Competition is getting fierce in many fleets. In the Low Cruiser, Darryl Lanier and Will Lee and company have found the top speed for the Capri and have tied Greg Cash for king of the hill. David Wright is challenging Jim Chambers and his band of merry wine drinkers for the Silver trophy of the High Cruiser fleet. Davis Macleod and his band of Generation Z’s have managed to squeak into the top spot by throwing out the first race. Interesting fact; we have 2 fleets where one boat ended throwing out a first place. In the Low PHRF fleet the battle rages on between the J-80 and the J-88 with these two boats tied for the top spot in this fleet. It is the battle of C&C’s in the Mid PHRF fleet. Bailey White in his C&C 36 has been trying to hold off the challenger, Tommy Sawchuck in his C&C 99. These 2 boats are now tied for the gold. Brad Bowers and his bunch of pirates are dominating the J-24 fleet but we all have to watch out when the Stefan brings Cinderella out and races around the course and making it back to the dock before she becomes a pumpkin (maybe that is why she never sails in Moonlight races)!! Thanks to Davis Macleod and Kyle Meyhoefer for their excellent race course this week (Race 2-6) and thanks to David Wright, David Schenck, Justin Guido, John Antweiller, Mark Turner, Robert Burk, Chet Kemp and Glen Schmudde for their valiant attempt to run a race on July 26 (Race 2-5). Watch facebook for news from our Culinary Specialist about next week’s dinner. The awards and a great meal for this series will be on Wed, Sept 6. Mark your calendar and come join us for a great party, excellent food and unique awards. See you on the race course, Dana ________________________________________________________________ Sorry for the delay in scores y'all! The storms were the primary reason we had the morsel of dying breeze last week, but also created a few issues for us behind the scenes with intermittent power outages through the week. Hope everyone made it through the outages with relative ease and no one's milk went bad!
Big thanks to RC led by Brad Bowers, Bill Overend, Will Shirley, Samuel Trimble, Graham Bowers and Doug, who were able to get us a good race off in the dying breeze (with a good plan in place for a shortened course). It was definitely challenging to keep the boat moving through the midsummer motorboat lump and the spotty breeze. Of course the night wouldn't be complete with yet another fantastic meal led by Will Brown. I assumed we'd be on a burger and dog diet for a while with the current state of the LLSC Kitchen but Will's creativity this past week was a pleasant surprise! Thanks to Will and all those who help him set up and break down every week! Thank You, Kyle Another reminder from Dana: if you are using a different sail # than what you used for registration, you need to notify the RC so that you will get scored. We will not scores boats that are not registered. See you on the race course, Dana ______________________________________________________________ First, a reminder that we will NOT have a race next Wed, July 5, but we will resume racing on the Wed, July 12.
Another day and another awesome course by this week’s race committee team. Thanks to Mike and Rebecca Krantz, Jim Chambers, Linda Hoopes, Bob Burrgarden and JLillian Gray for a fine job this evening and they didn’t have to rescue anyone, that was a real plus. We always appreciate the VHF announcements because it often is hard to get close to the race committee barge because nobody wants to interfere in another fleet’s start. This was a night when the crew had to work harder than the skipper. I told my crew, pretend you are on a Melges 24 and you don’t have any cleats (at least that is what I heard). This was a night where you had to trim all of your sails all of the time, there was no time to cleat. It was quite enlightening to watch the different spinnaker tactics that came to play tonight in the long leg from H to X. We had some new starts in the sky!! In the Mid-PHRF fleet Sotally Tober had the perfect conditions to stomp all over his fleet, while the X-26 in the Low PHRF fleet has shown that this boat handles well in the extreme conditions we have on Lake Lanier. In the High Cruiser fleet, Wind Dancer is starting to put the moves on his fleet. This fleet is becoming very competitive, they are going to have to get new sails to be competitive with Maggie Mae and Wind Spinner. Thanks Chris Flynn for this great shot of the finishers. What a sight it must have been for people driving over Brown’s Bridge Road. See you on the race course, Dana ______________________________________________________________ Message from the scorer, Kyle Meyhoefer.
Whether you chose to brave the conditions or save your sails this week (ours were considerably floppier by the end of the night), you made the right choice! It was a very puffy and shifty night, making sailing quite the challenge, but when you caught one of the 20+ knot puffs it was well worth it. It's not often you see a J22 on plane on Lake Lanier, but we got there a couple of times last night. It's also not often you see a J-88 barreling at you at 16 knots but Patrick Vrana and crew had Valkyrie's bow up out of the water and were making a pretty serious wake as they made their way downwind. I'd be interested to hear what everyone's top recorded speeds were! Not all of the spectacles were good though, the view of the bottom of Hermes' hull was a reminder of Mother Nature's might (and the need to carry a radio). We made a quite wide leeward mark rounding to check on the crew, they were okay and had been able to radio for assistance. Special thanks to Lee and Jo Ann Estes, Jeff Freeman, and crew who took a rescue boat to assist! One thing is for sure, the races were quite the spectacle and many people will have many stories to come! Thanks to the Race Committee crew: Tony Cellamare, Ben Harbin, Caroline Speir, Dave Spiller, Donna Cardenas, and Maggie Moncrief. ______________________________________________________________ Thank you race committee members of Tom Graham, Mike Macleod, Mark Turner, Doug Early, April Macleod, and Paul Morris. When I think of this race, I will always think of the difficulties in starting while another fleet is going through the gate. As one competitor said, “It was an interesting race”. There were 45 boats out on this last night of series 1, but there were two fleets with outstanding attendance this evening with 9 boats participating in the Melges 24 fleet and 9 boats in the Mid-PHRF fleet. What a remarkable feat by these fleets.
There were some exceptional performances by individuals this evening. In the High Cruiser fleet, Bob Morris and Alex Mazurek were hunting down the top guys in their fleet, while in the Melges 24 fleet Mike Krantz and Tony Cellamare finished first and second in this very tough one-design fleet. John McCarthy rose to the 2nd place spot in his Low PHRF fleet this evening while the battle for the top spot in the Mid PHRF fleet was decided by this last race. She-Devil finally took the top spot this week in the J-24 fleet while Chris Beisner in Firefly cemented his 2nd place position in the High PHRF fleet. Just a reminder that we will have a fantastic dinner before the award ceremony on Wed, June 14 at the clubhouse with everyone gathering around 6:30. We will begin Series 2 next Wednesday, June 21 and will have 2 races before we break for a week during the week of the 4th of July. There will be no race on July 5 and series 2 will continue on July 12 for Race 2-3. Thanks to Betty Terrell and Brendon Martelino for these shots of the Mid-PHRF fleet and Large Sportboats. See you at the awards, Dana __________________________________________________________ Another beautiful sunset in the neighborhood and Mother Nature was at her best this evening.
What a great course by our race committee members of Jim Chambers, Pat Finnick, Linda Hoopes, Elizabeth Dixon, Kiri Masters and J. Lilian Gray. Once again, race committee showed their unique talents by setting up the starting pin at “C” mark. We need some help from the registrants/racers. Attached are the scores along with skipper/owner’s name, boat type, boat name and the number listed as your sail #. There were 48 boats that came out to sail on this evening, but too often many people are using sails with sail numbers that are NOT what is listed as their sail #. There are many reasons to use sails with a different number, but you are making it difficult for race committee and the scorer when you use a different sail #. PLEASE, PLEASE, if you find you have to use a sail # different than the one you registered with, you need to notify the scorer (me) by Tues or notify RC as you sail by or radio to RC that you are using a different sail #. This will help immeasurably as RC does a difficult job of finishing 40+ sailboats each Wednesday evening. See you on the race course, Dana _______________________________________________________________ Things are not always as they seem. Tonight was one of those situations. If you motored or hitched a ride to the starting line, you probably were placing bets whether there was going to be a race this night. But if you had bet on no race, you would have lost.
Thanks to the race committee of John McCarthy, Ken Blankenship, Doug Early, Jim Kingery, Bertrand, Betsy Culler, Manning, Tom, Beth, Morgan and Jay for the excellent job of waiting till the wind filled in and started the race. There was some confusion among the Cruisers about where they were in the starting order if the race was postponed. We did have some outstanding performances tonight. In the High Cruiser fleet, Maggie Mae put a crimp in Wind Spinners sails, while Lamorak after winning this week has moved into the top 3 of the Melges 24 fleet. In the Mid PHRF fleet, Super Bueno sailed an awesome race beating Breakaway by 8 seconds (ET), while Cinderella rose from the ashes and once again trounced the J-24 fleet. The big boats in the High PHRF fleet, Firefly, Strega and Hope are fighting over the second spot in their fleet. See you on the race course, Dana _________________________________________________________________ |
Results by Month
April 2024
Results by YearScorekeeperDana Stewart | She Devil |