Cowan Lake, not in the Midwest, but an Easy Drive for Us

For various reasons, I've been thinking a lot lately about how ridiculously spread out our Midwest District is. Think of it, to go from Minnesota (Medicine Lake) to Carlyle or Indianapolis is 9.5 hours! Yikes!! We can almost get to the East Coast in that amount of driving time!!

So often we head over to the Ohio District, where we can get to Cowan Lake, for example, in just four hours. That is where we went last weekend (May 31-June1), to enjoy the Pig Roast regatta. We enjoyed the company of other Midwest District sailors Frank and Marianne Gerry and Geoff Endris, as well as builder Harry Carpenter and his daughter, Carrie (who is part of our Midwest District too!)

The camping facilities at Cowan are lovely and the weather was perfect for it, too. The evenings were cool and the days were sunny and mild. We even had wind on Saturday!! We probably had an average of 8 mph winds, and every once in a while there were gusts and white caps!! For those of you who have sailed at Cowan you will appreciate how unusual that is! The 20 participating boats were split into a Hog Fleet (12 boats) and the Oinker fleet (8 boats). The race committee got three good races in on Saturday.

Skippers Meeting Saturday

Dinner!!

Saturday evening after dinner, Steve Tsuchiya, Cowan Lake member and America's Cup expert (author, among other things, of "Winging It: Oracle Team USA's Incredible Comeback to Defend the America's Cup"), gave a great presentation about why and how the American team's comeback. It was gratifying, because nothing I'd found up until this point really explained how Oracle did what they did. I recommend the book...Father's Day is just around the corner!!

Harry and Carrie on Shadow

Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, Sunday winds were not so kind. Here, then gone, here, then gone for about 45 minutes. Then the race committee was sure the wind had filled in from the south and started us off. The first leg was great ... meaning we had wind. After that, not so much!! Still, we ghosted along the best we could. Harry and Carrie, sailing Shadow, prevailed. The rest of us limped on in. One race was all the conditions could support so we all headed in to pack up and head on home.

Part of the Pig Roast tradition is that the winner takes home a hefty concrete pig and they inscribe their name on the pig's back. I know for a fact the Hog Fleet pig is running out of space. Pretty soon Harry and Carrie, winners three years running, will be writing their names on his curly little tail!!