22 Boats on the Line at Carlyle Egyptian Cup

from left, Chris Wojnar, Angie Hunt, Rick Wojnar and Bryan Hunt

CLSA teams, including Andy Hall in the red tshirt and Anne in front of him

This year's Egyptian Cup boasted 22 boats on the line(and there would have been more if there hadn't been an over abundance of weddings this past weekend) and outstanding conditions, not to mention amazing food and plenty of dark and stormies! We were sad to miss the Pharaoh, Mike Pitzer, but we understand he had a previous commitment. Popular guy!

Before we began PRO Ted Beier announced that because conditions for Sunday didn't look too good, we might sty out for four races Saturday if the winds held. And they did. The race committee ran two windward leeward races before lunch in winds out of the west-southwest of between 8-12. Each leg was 3/4 mile long. After lunch, race committee tossed in an Olympic Modified course and then another WL course. Four races made fora long, long day, but the winds held steady at about 8-12. Racing was highly competitive with a different boat winning every race. At the end of the day, the top four boats were separated by only five points.

We all came off the lake about 5;30 exhausted. Happily there were showers, beer, dark and stormies rum and ginger beer) and a delicious dinner once again prepared by Greg and Melissa Ziegenfuss of Butler's Pantry. Yum!!

from left, Marianne Gerry, Rachel and Bronson Bowling and Heather Johnson

Saturday night in the middle of the night a major storm blew through. The thunder and lightning and buckets and buckets of rain continued for about an hour — the rain for many many hours — and the temperature dropped significantly. As I lay in my tent I was really happy we knew it was coming and everyone made sure to tie their boats down very securely.

Sunday morning we had one more race to do. It took us about two minutes to drain all the water from our boat! The winds were quite high at 7 am, but by 9, when the race started, they had moderated to about 10-12 with some gusts. Even the gusts were quite well behaved, however. The day was overcast and some looming dark clouds on the southern horizon were a little nerve wracking, but as one sailor said, with Ted as our PRO we were in very good hands.

Bruce and Lynn Kitchen sailed another strong race, finishing first. Frank and Marianne had a great overall regatta, finishing second. Ben and Deb caught Bill Vogler in the race Sunday morning to snatch third. But one of the best things about the weekend was that nine boats traveled to Carlyle from Clinton Lake Sailing Association. Considering Eric Bussell's dream last fall was to have 10 boats traveling within five years, we all felt pretty darn great about that accomplishment. In addition to the Gerrys, Ben and Deb, and Eric — with crew Lisa Harshbarger, the CLSA boats included Anne and Andy Hall participating in their first regatta and Tom and Debbie Yeagle (I believe this was Tom's first regatta in which he skippered and it was definitely Debbie's first regatta, yay!). In addition we had Rick and CHris Wojnar, who had a strong showing despite not finishing Sunday's race, Angie and Bryan Hunt, who had a single digit finish Sunday, Stephanie and Chris Tesdal, just in from Las Vegas and looking good, and Heather and Trent Johnson, who after doing the Egyptian Cup last year and Cowan Lake a few weeks ago, are regatta road warriors now!

This time next week we'll be at the North American Championships and we'll try to do brief daily updates from there on this blog. For results for the weekend you can go to http://www.csa-sailing.org/egypt/Egyptian_Cup.html.