This weekend I was the event chair for Chesapeake Bay Laser Masters Championship at Fishing Bay Yacht Club. This is the 9th year I’ve been the event chair and by now I’ve gotten a pretty good gameplan and a great team of volunteers to help execute it. And of course it could not have gone more smoothly from the food to the race committee to the social activities – everything went off without a hitch for 42 competitors.
Arrived at the Columbia Sailing Club this evening and ready to sail the District 12 Championship tomorrow!
Saturday
We had a great first day of the District 12 Championship at Columbia Sailing Club in Columbia South Carolina. We sailed 5 races that at some point in each of the races we had 4 knots and 10 knots. In the lighter winds I did well on the first upwind leg most races and worked hard to hold onto my spot on the downwinds. I put up a 3-2-8-1-2 and am currently 2 points out of first behind John Potter from Beaufort SC. Tomorrow will be another light air day and hopefully I can keep up the top 3 finishes to have a shot at the title.
Provisional Results (the winner in race 3 will be RET and everyone moves up one)
Sunday
The forecast for the last day of the Laser District 12 Championship was for light air and as we were sailing out to the race course we had great wind – 10-12 knots. By our 10am start it had dropped at bit and it continued to go down from there. Today was a basically a two-boat race. Unless I put up two DFLs it would have been hard not to get 2nd place. Once a drop would be factored in, I was effectively 1 point behind John Potter, so it would come down to today’s races as to who won the regatta.
In our first race today I had a crummy start – I just about won the boat, but had no boat speed at the start. John was to leeward of me and was a boat length and a half ahead when I crossed the line. I took a big duck and headed out right while he sailed to the left. Wanting to consolidate I came back to the middle having made up some ground, but John tacked on me and forced me back to the right. On the middle right of the course I had better pressure and got in front of John, but the boats who went left did much better than us putting me around 6th and John several boats behind me by the time we rounded.
Downwind John caught up a few boats and on the 2nd upwind I stuck to the middle of the course while John went to the left. When we got to the top 3rd of the course a 50-degree righty came in and I laid the mark while John out to the left still had to tack to fetch it. At the mark there was one boat between us and downwind I worked to pass one boat on the way to the finish. With two boats between us that put me 1 point ahead of John.
After the race we sat on the course for half an hour with no prospect of wind and the race committee abandoned racing for the rest of the day and I won the District 12 Championship Regatta. Not only was John great competition this weekend, but so were sailors such as Rob Bowden who would have beat both John and I had he not been OCS twice. All in all it was a fun regatta and I got to visit a an awesome club who put on a great and I got meet a lot of new District 12 sailors.
We had some nice weather and some wind for at least the first half of the Deep Creek Laser Invitational allowing us to get in 4 races on Saturday. I put up a 3-1-1-2 and finished 1st in the 19-boat Standard fleet. Sunday we went out, spent 25 minutes sailing 2 legs and they abandoned and eventually sent us in without any races having not had any wind all day.
Saturday, we went out at 10:30 in partial fog for our 11am start. After a brief postponement we got the first race underway. I had a good start, winning the boat end, but my first two tacks weren’t so good and I found myself 8th at the windward mark. From there I chipped away at boats and got to 3rd at the finish.
In the 2nd race I had another great start and just picked the shifts up the beat and got a nice lead. Darren Van Hutton and Meredith Hillyer, both on-the-lake sailors, both had great downwind speed and always seemed to catch up to me a bit. Upwind I seemed to be able to pick the shifts right and would pull back ahead. As we approached the last downwind mark with just a short beat left to the finish, there was a pontoon boat fishing just 5 feet upwind of the leeward mark. To make matters worse, he had a line out to the right of the mark and he was reeling in ‘something big’ and was refusing to move.
I wound up having to sail 20 feet to the right of the mark to get around his fishing line and just as I was rounding the mark and the boat, I realized he had another line out the other way. Only this one was in the air for about 40 feet so I couldn’t even attempt to sail over it. I was really wishing I had a pocket knife with me. The leader of the Radial fleet who was sailing a shorter course was right next to me with non of his competition in sight, and Meredith was about 10 lengths behind me with the rest of our fleet another 20 lengths behind her. All 3 of us ended up having to sail about 40-50 feet on starboard on a close reach just to get to where the fishing line hit the water where we could pull our boards up and sneak over it. Meredith almost caught up to me and I was able to stay about a boat length ahead of her at the finish.
For the 3rd race, I was going to try to win the boat again, but realized with about a minute and a half left to go that we were likely to get a big lefty at the start. I made my way down to the pin where I was all alone except for one other boat. At the gun I was able to tack onto port and built a pretty comfortable lead by the first mark. By the top mark of the 2nd beat Meredith caught up a bit and rode a nice puff around the mark and downwind on the inside lane putting her just ahead of me. Eventually that petered out and the wind filled back in from the outside and he angle allowed me to get back just ahead through the finish.
After a lunch break (where I filmed this cool time lapse of the fleet coming in) we went back out for one more race in the afternoon. At the start it was clear that left was favored so most of the faster boats were starting there. Right at the gun the wind went left which ended up rafting up 6 of us top of the pin. We couldn’t tack out because the rest of the fleet was on starboard so we just each took our turn bouncing off the pin, sailing out to the left, doing our turn and heading upwind. By then we were clear astern of most of the fleet.
I worked my way up the left and was about 4th at the windward mark. The lead pack went wide on the downwind leg and sailed into a hole while I headed down the inside with Meredith, Daryl and Margaret Podlich just behind me. They ended up reeling me in as they rode a puff down and just as Daryl and Margaret were passing me, Daryl death rolled. Margaret had just enough of an overlap at the mark to take it and I wound up following just behind her the rest of the course to finish 2nd.
With a 3-1-1-2 I was in 1st place in the 19-boat fleet with 2nd place 5 points behind me. We spent the evening with a nice dinner at the club.
Sunday we were initially postponed on shore and they sent us out once the wind filled in a bit. After chasing the wind around a few directions they set a course and started us. I had a pretty abismal start, but picked some shifts up the middle of the course in 2 knots of wind to round the mark in 6th. As we were at the top mark the wind was in transition and shifting about 100 degrees and a few minutes later the RC abandoned the race. We sat on the course for 25 minutes waiting for the wind to settle down and the RC sent us in for lunch. The wind never settled, so they never sent us back out and thus the regatta stood as is.
Just wanted to get one picture posted from this afternoon’s wedding of Grace and Adrien at the Clover Forest Plantation. Credit to Keith Andes for the idea to do this. Here’s the video.
