Hit the Road, Jack (or Bill, or Bob, or Mary!!) and Come to the Midwest Districts!

In case you haven't heard (!) our Midwest Districts will be held June 27-29 at Sheridan Shores Yacht Club in Wilmette, IL. Because this is Chicago area, there is no camping, but the organizers have provided a list of hotels and other amenities at the FSSA website. So, to learn more about the regatta and/or register for it, go to:
http://www.fssa.com/Calendar%20Event/15058

The sailing is always fun and exciting in Lake Michigan and the party is spectacular! I also should mention that we'll be having our annual district meeting and it would be great if all, or at least most, fleets were represented!

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!!

Midwest District Regatta Hosts are SOOOO Organized!!

Here in Illinois it has become chilly and gray again, but that doesn't mean sailing season hasn't begun! And the sailors at Sheridan Shores, who are hosting this year's Districts, have been busy bees, planning the event, which will take place June 27-29.

As soon as it is available I will post a link to the NOR, registration form and a few other items below. Hopefully some people read this blog and can pass this info on to fellow fleet members! Since this is Chicago and there is not any camping, it might be worth finding lodging sooner rather than later.

Jeff Gilman, regatta organizer, has included a list of nearby hotels.

Okay, that's it! Don't forget this is the second year of our annual travel trophy. The Districts is one of those qualifying regattas!
The others are:
Mayor's Cup Indianapolis (May 16-18) THIS WEEKEND!
Ephraim (August 1-3)
Egyptian Cup (Carlyle) (August 29-31)
Glow in the Dark (Clinton Lake) (September 26-18)

You don't have to sail in all the events, but you do have to sail in 3 of the 5 to qualify.

Found My Cord!!

okay, found my cord so I could download my photos from the Great 48, but I can't get into the previous Great 48 post right now, so I'm going to post these separately...

Frank and Marianne's new boat, Eva, with her spinnaker

Frank and Marianne have a great comeback and place 8th!

Race committee looking for wind

Ben and Deb hang on to 4th

38 boats!! This photo can't convey that, but I tried

Reminder: This Year's Travel Trophy Begins May 18

This is just a quick reminder that this year's travel trophy will kick off May 17 & 18 at Eagle Creek Sailing Club in  Indianapolis, IN. You should have received the NOR from your fleet captain, but if you need it, email either me (debaronson@nasw.org) or Geoff Endris (geoff.endris@stonemillconsulting.com) and we can send it to you.

The other regattas in the schedule for the trophy are:
Midwest Districts, June 27-29 at Sheridan Shores Yacht Club
Ephraim Regatta, August 1-3 at Ephraim, Wisconsin
Egyptian Cup, August 29-31, Carlyle Sailing Association
Glow in the Dark, September 26-28, Clinton Lake Sailing Association

You must be a member of FSSA, a member of a Midwest District club, and participate in three regattas to qualify. The skipper with the most points in their top three regattas wins the trophy. Here's how the scoring works:

At each regatta

First place = 10 points

Second place = 9 points

Third place = 8 points

Fourth place = 7 points

Fifth place = 6 points

Sixth place = 5 points

Seventh place = 4 points

Eight place or greater = 3 points

DNC = 0 points

I will also mention that at the regatta at Lake Norman (NC) last May someone got up to talk about what districts have travel trophies and it turns out we are one of only about four, I think. I was kind of impressed!!

A Whopping 38 Boats at Lake Norman Regatta Last Weekend

{First let me say, as soon as I find the cord to my camera I will upload some photos from this past weekend}


The Midwest District once again was represented at a regatta during the Kentucky Derby weekend, May 3-4. Frank and Marianne Gerry unwrapped their brand new boat, Eva, after spending the winter teaching skiing in Colorado. Ben Williams and Deb Aronson came by way of Chattanooga (see previous post).

I'm not sure why there were so many boats this year, but I'm sure that one big attraction was a full-day seminar by Greg Fisher on Friday. I understand that 15 boats participated and that the program included a preliminary outlining of objectives, then a full session on the water with video and instruction and then several hours of review back in the club house. When I poked my head in at 6 pm the room was packed and everyone's attention was riveted on Greg, despite that having been at least 7 hours so far of concentration.

I noticed that the line of sailboats where we usually park only had about two or three boats I recognized and so I wondered if many of those came for the Greg Fisher seminar.

In addition, there were two boats full of juniors from  Lake Murray Sailing Association, which I think is about 2.5 hours away, and another boat that had at least one junior sailor on it. Tommy Weaver, a sailor from Lake Murray that we parked next to (and who gave us a cotter pin for our forestay when I dropped ours in the grass) told us that the Lake Murray juniors sailing program has a steady 15 or more kids in it. One secret to their success, perhaps is that the kids  themselves (those who participated in previous years) do most of the teaching, with adults there just to make sure everyone is safe. The other interesting thing about the junior sailors is how hungry they were. Although I pride myself in being near the front of the dinner line, when the dinner bell was rung Saturday night, there was an actual stampede of very hungry teens to the front of the line.

I heard that the Lake Norman folks also got a little blindsided by the crowd. Several times I overheard someone say they had only 26 people had registered for dinner on Thursday (when the dinner was, presumably, ordered) and they ended up with 100 diners!! Yikes! I do know a few people at the end of the line got short changed, and I can imagine that was very disappointing, though I also feel for the hosts!!

Still, when it comes to sailing, having lots of boats on the line is a nice "problem" to have. The race committee did a great job, setting a plenty-long starting line and finding what wind there was. Saturday, in particular, was pretty light and very shifty ... though I will say it was less light and shifty than in Chattanooga. We got two races in and the race committee tried really really hard to fit a third one in, chasing the wind from one compass point to another. Finally, at about 4:45, they gave up and sent us in, at which point the wind filled in beautifully and blew all evening. Still, I know they had a deadline, so what can you do?!

Larry Vitez, a Lake Norman sailor, promised that the wind would be steadier on Sunday and, by gum, he was right!! I would say the wind was about 220-230 all Sunday morning, with a few 260s-270s tossed in. The race committee got in three races before the noon deadline and we left the water feeling like we'd gotten our weekend's worth of sailing in.

The standings really changed dramatically after Sunday's races. Harry Carpenter, sailing with Joe Brake, had a slow day Saturday and then pulled two fourth place finishes Sunday to finish sixth overall. Our FSSA president and Clinton Lake member Frank Gerry, who also was deep in the standings on Saturday (having one 24th place finish!!) had an excellent day and finished in the trophies at 8th place. So the Midwest District sailors brought home a fourth and an eighth place trophy!

If you are interested in the results, they are here:
http://www.fssa.com/content/2014-great-48-regatta-lake-norman-yacht-club-mooresville-nc

Choo!! Choo!!

We had two Midwest District boats at the Chattanooga Choo Choo this past weekend. This is a regatta Ben and I go to every year: the sailors at Chattanooga (Privateer Yacht Club) are incredibly talented; they are incredibly friendly; and the lake is gorgeous. In addition, this is the very first Flying Scot regatta we ever went to back in 2005. We showed up one week after buying our boat, not even really knowing how to rig it, and everyone from the club came and introduced themselves, showed us how to rig it, rescued us when we got T-boned and then capsized. It was a memorable weekend....!!! And so, we come back every single year....we have been teased that maybe we should become members of the Dixie Lakes District, too...That is silly, of course, though we are considering going to a race at Muscle Shoals over Memorial Day weekend....

This year the club had rebuilt its club house and it's almost finished. When it IS finished, it'll be amazing! They have a gorgeous deck overlooking the lake; that's the best part of the whole building...
Here's the deck, with a bunch of people heckling us as we sailed by!  :-)  

Anyway, about the sailing ~ Eric Bussell  (Clinton Lake Sailing Association) brought a new crew, a buddy of his, Luke, who lives in Louisville. Luke had never sailed before, I don't think, but he was an awesome crew. He learned really fast, and he was always looking around trying to see what other boats were doing. I predict we'll be seeing a lot of Luke this season! Eric and Luke went out early on Friday to practice. For some reason the TVA authority was patrolling the lake and pulled over three sailboats and a jetski. Eric was one of the sailboats they pulled over ... while they had the spinnaker up! Here is Luke, trying to learn how to take the spinnaker down while the police were calling for them to stop. Finally, the spinnaker came down and they were ready to face the authorities. "Do you have your registration?" they asked Eric. "I have no idea," was his reply. Not meaning to be smart or anything, but he just didn't know for sure. Not a good beginning! Anyway, they soon found a sticker on the boat that showed they were up to date and they were allowed to go on their way. Interesting introduction to sailing for Luke!

As for the sailing: winds were predicted 8-10 mpg out of the south, southwest, but that was not to be. Winds were flukey and light out of the north (!) It was one of those days where there were lanes of wind. If you were in a lane, you were in good shape, otherwise, forget about it! I worked so hard, hiking to windward, trying hard not to upset the balance of the boat or otherwise mess with its speed. That kind of sailing is harder work sometimes that sailing in heavy wind!

We chased Tom Clark (pictured above) around the course the first race, but felt good beating Rob Fowler and Ed Craig, two sailors we don't often show our stern to.


Toward the end of the race the promised southern wind came in and we were so happy to get the promised wind. Here you can see the flag on the committee boat is finally flying!

Unfortunately that wind lasted only long enough for race committee to change the course and lengthen the legs. Then the wind died and we started in zero wind, ghosting across the line. My heart was not really in that one! But soon enough the wind did come in. Of course, it filled in on the right and we were on the left, so we were back in the pack, while Ed Craig, Rob Fowler, and Sandy Eustis lead the crowd around the course. Eric and Luke had a high finish, too!

The third race was going to be ours! Winds were stronger and steadier, we were third at the windward mark and caught both boats ahead of us at the leeward mark, rounding just ahead of Willson and Bonnie Jenkins. Trying to be strategic we proceeded to cover Willson, since everyone else was significantly further behind. Well, in the process of covering Willson, we managed to sail into a hole in the middle of the course, while Ed Craig and Rob Fowler snuck up along the right shore, caught some crazy wind and cruised to the finish while we gnashed our teeth!

Three light wind races and the race committee decided to squeeze one more in before the keg was tapped. We got off the line well and managed to make it to the windward mark in first place. There was even enough wind to keep the spinnaker full. We went down the center of the course, while several boats went left (against that same shore that paid off in the third race...). The race was shortened to the next (downwind) mark, at which point we'd slipped back to sixth or seventh. Alas! Racing was finished for the day and we all headed in to commiserate or celebrate, depending on how our day went.

No more wind came our way Sunday, so we settled for the four races Saturday. Ed Craig had three first places and a third, winning the Choo Choo Cup for the first time in a long time. Yay Ed and Tom (his brother and crew)!  That's Ed second from left and Tom at the far right.

 As soon as I track down the results, I will post them here. Meanwhile, we're off to Lake Norman for the Great 48 this next weekend (May 5&6). I know Frank Gerry, also from Clinton Lake, will be there, and I'll keep an eye out for other Midwest District sailors.

Til then, fair winds!