Fall 48 Sunday

Way to go Ryan! After a goofy Saturday, with many fleet "inversions" as Ben likes to call them, Ryan began Sunday with 20 points and then had two bullets Sunday to climb all the way up to fourth place. Nice job!
Blowing at about 10-12 with gusts to 15, the wind Sunday was more consistent than Saturday's conditions. And boy, was it fun. We got two good races in. Ben and I liked the first race most since we managed to place second just behind Ryan. That was our best finish ever at Lake Norman.
The race committee was unusual at this regatta. As far as I could tell, as the last boat crossed the finish, they blew the five-minute horn and began the series for the next race. That caught a bunch of us flat footed. In fact, Ryan said he was hove to above the finish line and looked up to see an "on course side" flag, which was referring to him. That was the first he realized the start sequence had even begun. And he STILL won that race!
We headed out pretty fast since we delivered Sophie to Harry for a few off-season repairs. Harry, very nicely, met us in Morgantown so we didn't have to drive all the way to Deep Creek. It feels funny driving the rest of the way home with no Sophie behind us. It will be even weirder to look out our back window and see the garage empty. Wait, here's a thought, maybe we could actually put a car in our garage now?!

Fall 48: Saturday

Wow.  Talk about challenging conditions.   For example, we had worked up to 3rd place at one point, when half-way down the second downwind leg  the wind died, and then after a few minutes shifted right into our teeth, and then after a few more minutes, we watched it build again from the original direction as a dark line of wind a 1/2 mile away.  As it came down, it brought the whole fleet down with it, hooting and hollering in some cases.  At the leeward mark it seemed as though at least half the fleet felt it had an inside overlap on the other half. 

We'll see what Sunday has to offer.  I'm hoping for two races that don't have multiple "fleet-inverting" shifts...

Ryan Malmgren is also here, so the Midwest District is pretty well represented. He is sailing with a former Lightning sailor, Michael, who, despite yesterday's conditions, says he is sold on Flying Scots.

After sailing we had a nice visit around a roaring fire with Mark and Maria from Moraine Sailing Club in Pennsylvania. That was particularly nice because we had gotten quite cold on the water. The high temperatures were in the 50s.

More later!

Fall 48

Season is winding down. On our way to Lake Norman we drove through snow. We made it to Mooresville at dinner time and stopped at "Joe Fish" for a wonderful dinner.  NO CAR TROUBLE (so far).  After dinner in the nice warm restaurant, we set up the tent in the dark, in the rain.  Debby's hands got pretty cold, and so did mine, which I demonstrated for her later in the tent by putting them on her bare skin.   Once we got the tent set up, we had a very nice evening reading while snuggled into our zipped together sleeping bags.  Much nicer than any $60 motel room...  Just now finishing up breakfast at "The Daily Grind".  Looking forward to seeing Ryan, who had planned to arrive Friday early enough to sail a bit to break in a crew who is new to Scots.  The lake was beautiful at dawn.  A steady breeze, but "red skies".  I guess we'll be testing the old "Red sky in morning, sailor's warning".  More later.