Day #3 NACs

We have wind! Not much, but enough to run two races. We woke up to a red sky, which I decided not to point out to Ben. I was feeling cautiously optimistic, and sure enough, by 8:45 there was a light, but steady breeze on the lake. They got the first race off a little late, in order for all the boats to make the start, and then we had a 90-minute, 5-leg windward-leeward race. Boats on the right definitely did better than those on the left ... we were on the left. Bummer!

The second race the conditions were about the same, with light winds between 30 and 60 degrees. Greiner Hobbs and Robert Hobbs, from Davis Island Yacht Club, took an early lead the second race and held on to it for three legs at which point the race committee shortened the course as the wind died. Jeff and Amy Linton, also of Davis Island Yacht Club were second and Rob Whittemore and John Wake of Fishing Bay Yacht Club were third.

In the challenger fleet, Frank and Marianne Gerry from Clinton Lake Sailing Association are in first after two races and Don Smith and Chris Kicinski of host club, Lake Norman Yacht Association are in second place.

We were off the water by 1 and a bunch of us headed — surprise!— back to the house where we wallowed in the water.

Later in the afternoon severe thunderstorms moved through the area. We sat on the porch and enjoyed the show.

Three more races are scheduled for the championships.

Here's a link to the results:
http://www.fssa.com/content/2013-north-american-championships-lake-norman-yacht-club-mooresville-nc

Before dinner we had Scottish games. Sailors were strongly encouraged to put on a "kilt." Frank Gerry said a woman he'd never met marched right up to him and put a kilt on him, at which point he said, "Pleased to meet you!"

 The winner of each game gets a coveted red plate, which allows them to go to the front of the dinner line. Ben and I really wanted a red plate so we picked the haggis toss, run by our pal, Dave Safirstein. Only one other person had participated so we thought our odds were good. The toss involves taking the soccer ball (in a spinnaker bag), and tossing it over a badminton net.....while standing backwards!

Here is Keith Eustis throwing ....

And Sandy "catching!"
You can see from these photos that competition was low (Sandy claims they won the senior division) and Ben and I successfully won a red plate. Dinner was yummy; marinated pork loin, a cold pea salad in a vinegary dressing that was delish, and a hashbrown casserole that was so good I do NOT want to know what was in it. It was too good to be good for you.

Day #2 NACs

7 a.m.:
Ben and I put our boat in the water
8 a.m.:
The water is like glass
9 a.m:
Postpone flag goes up
Noon:
No wind. Everyone is relaxing and the flags are limp.

4 p.m.
The race committee, after looking up and down the lake all day, calls it quits.

20 or more of us go to dinner at Joe Fish. Yay Joe Fish. Good food, nice atmosphere, closed both Sunday and Monday, which surprised us. We go to Joe Fish almost every time we come to Lake Norman. The party was so large that we split into three tables. We sat with John Kreidler, Mike Phelan, and the Cooksons, Chris and his dad, Pete. Then, in addition to the 20 people in our party at least two other Flying Scot groups came in, including Harry Carpenter, Melanie and Bill Dunham, Larry Taggert, and Heidi and Kelly Gough.

BTW, we all ordered the Pasta Fra Diablo (except Mike, who went with the shrimp special)

9:30 p.m. Ben and I took our boat out of the water.

Day #1 NACs

I’m sitting on the back porch of our rental house and there is a great blue heron on the neighbor’s dock. It’s a peaceful sight and a satisfying end to a day that did not look all that auspicious. We all got to the racecourse ready for a 9:30 start, but the wind that looked imminent never materialized. We drifted around for almost two hours and then the race committee sent us in.

After we tied up our boat at the dock Ben and I trooped over to the house, along with everyone else staying there plus some others and proceeded to hang out for three or four hours, trading stories, napping and looking at various blogs. We kept an ear on our radio and listened to the race committee as they went out dutifully looking for wind.

I was convinced that our best chance for wind would be about 5 or 6 pm, but at 2:30 the breeze filled in. We all scattered like so many cockroaches making our way to our boats. We got to the racecourse in time for a 4 pm start and the conditions were really perfect. Maybe about 5 knots and all filled in across the lake. Hallelujah!!

There were two separate starts with about 35 boats per start. Both starts went off without any general recalls. We did one really long, five-leg race that took about 90 minutes and then went on in.  For a really great description of the race, go to

http://www.amysmithlinton.com/blog.html

I was sorry that Coral Reef Sailing, which has sailing clothing and other equipment and always comes to the Midwinters and often to the NACs, was not here. But we got something even better, Rick's Canvas repair! We got a strap replaced and all kinds of other rips and tears mended. Here's a big shoutout for Rick's! Check out all the other sailors doing the same.

Day #0 of North American Championships

It is Sunday afternoon and we are sitting on a screened porch by the water, in a house two doors down from the Lake Norman Yacht club. The wind is gorgeous! About 10 mph steady from the northeast. The women and the juniors’ championships are finished, though I couldn’t tell much from my view. 

Racing for the rest of us starts tomorrow. We are divided into four fleets and will sail, round-robin style, against the other three fleets over the next two days. The top half of the finishers will then be in the Championship Fleet and the other half will be the Challenger Fleet and the finals will begin on Wednesday.

We are all wishing we could bottle some of this lovely air and save it for the coming days because most models predict maybe 6 or 8 tomorrow and then absolutely nothing, with the wind boxing the compass, until Friday. Plus temperatures in the 90s…Yikes! Well, time will tell, of course.

It’s been wet and cool in North Carolina, just like in the Midwest (best line I heard today was from Stuart Cofield of Privateer Yacht Club in Chattanooga , “last summer was so hot and dry fishermen had to check their catch for ticks!”). LYNC has gotten so much rain in the last few days that the usual field where we park is a swamp and they had to reorganize all the parking places so they didn’t tear up their field.

Best part of the regatta so far? The Loch Ness/dragon-style gumball dispenser (in keeping with the theme of the regatta “Loch Norman”). You put a penny in it and turn the contraption and a gumball comes out. Green, blue or yellow and that tells you what measurement you get. Yellow is the biggest pain in the neck; you have to get your boat weighed, among other things.

We have about 70 boats registered, based on my last information and there are several boats representing our district: Frank (who will become President of FSSA at the end of the regatta) and Marianne Gerry, Ryan Malmgren, Bill Vogler, and Ben and myself.

Give Lake Pymatuning a Try!

Ben and I went to the Ohio Districts to help support the young Flying Scot fleet at the host club at Lake Pymatuning, Ohio. The regatta coincided with their annual Independence Day regatta and I haven't seen so many boats in one place since I was at St. Petersburg. There were 45 Thistles, 20 Flying Scots, six Lightnings, about the same number of Highlanders and J-22s. You'd think that tempers would flare trying to maneuver all the boats into the water, but nothing of the sort happened. Everyone was very mellow and patient with one another. As Ben and I rigged our boat in the middle of the lot, blocking several parked boats since it was the only free place without overhead wires, a Lake Pymatuning Thistle sailor generously moved his buddy's Thistle (who wasn't sailing the regatta) onto the grass so Ben and I could pull in and out of the way. Very kind! This photo doesn't even convey the degree of crowdedness, but it's the best I could do.

 Pymatuning is a large lake and it has a horse power restriction on boat motors so we had the lake to ourselves, except for some pontoon boats and fishermen. The wind was light on Saturday and I'm not sure we really should have had the last race, which ended this way!

Though I shouldn't complain because Ben and I were at the back of the fleet on that last race, with not even a whisper of wind. Our mantra, "don't give up," and so I practiced not feeling frustrated (practice being the operative word). On the last leg we got some weird private wind and ghosted past a big knot of boats, coming in second. The wind gods were on patrol for us, I guess!

Sunday was a little windier — we were even both on the high side! — and we got a couple very good races in. Bruce and Lynn Kitchen had an awesome day, beating Harry Carpenter and Courtney Dunham in one race.

I don't have the results, unfortunately, but I'll try to track them down....

 Ben and I had never been to Deep Creek Lake before, so we were really looking forward to going to the Wife-Husband this year (June 29 & 30). It had been raining forever but you can't tell from these photos! Deep Creek is gorgeous. It's up in the mountains so the mornings are cool and then it warms up comfortably. Despite predictions, it was sunny and gorgeous all weekend. Winds were moderate Saturday and then lighter and flukier Sunday, but that's sailing!

 Deep Creek is, of course, the "birthplace" of the Scot, what with Harry's factory (which was Sandy Douglas's and Eric Amman's before) in town. I was really struck by both the number of Flying Scots on the lake and the virtual absence of any other sailboat. This dock has FOUR Scots. It's just a private home, not a club. The mooring field in front of one of the clubs, the one where we've all parked, is full of Scots and only a small number are even participating in the regatta. It's an eyeful.

It's always gratifying to look at a photo like this and count each of these people as our friends. We have made such an amazing group of friends in just a few years. That doesn't happen often at our age and we don't take it for granted. From left: me, Don Smith, Chris Kicinski, Sandy Eustis, Keith Eustis, Tom Hohler, Chris Czapleski, Jo Baugher, and Rick Baugher.

I have submitted a story about this regatta to Sailing World magazine and, while nothing in life is guaranteed, my hope is that it will be published some time in the next six months. Stay tuned!

Midwest Districts Had it All

The first Midwest District Regatta hosted by Eagle Creek Sailing Club had it all: light wind, moderate wind, thunder and lightning, sunshine and buckets of rain!  We had boats from six clubs, including Medicine Lake (MN), Ephraim (WI), Chicago, and Clinton Lake and we got all five scheduled races in. Our district covers a lot of ground, when you figure Larry Klick came from Medicine Lake, Minnesota, and that's a 12 hour drive!!

The wind Saturday was light and variable out of the west, southwest. The trick at Eagle Creek is that, unless the wind is coming due south, the course runs across the width of the lake, which does not leave much room for a race course. We were all hoping for some nice southerly winds, but on Saturday it started in the southwest and soon clocked to the west. I will be forever haunted by the windward mark placed up against the shore, where Ben and I approached roughly even with Carrie and Harry Carpenter and by the time we rounded, they were at the leeward mark. It was the hole of death for us!

(From top: close racing; Chris and John Wright; Mike and Jennifer Faugust; Fleet 135!; and tight pack at the start)


Eagle Creek harbor is at the end of a long inlet and quite protected, so we occasionally had to get a tow in or out to the race course. Saturday as we began sailing back to the club a storm that we thought was going to dodge us dumped an absolute deluge on us. It wasn't cold, exactly, but it was very, very wet! As  lightning lit up the sky, we graciously accepted a tow... By the end of the evening many participants were very happy to put on their long-sleeved, Eagle Creek Flying Scot commemorative tshirts!

The water was a little too much like a mirror early Sunday morning and race organizers were very nervous. Nevertheless, by the time we got to the race course the wind had picked up and was out of a friendly, southerly direction. We got two more races in, mostly along the long axis of the lake, which was a very nice way to wind up the event!

Mike and Jennifer Faugust were by far the most consistent in the difficult conditions. Clinton Lake sailors won the Fleet 135 trophy, which is for the three highest finishing teams from a single club. Clinton Lake IS Fleet 135, but this is the first time our club has won the trophy since it was inaugurated in 1995. Frank and Marianne Gerry also won the "Old Salts" trophy as the highest finishing boat with combined ages of 100 or more.

The results are here:
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Sail #	Skipper	Crew	Club	Race 1	Race 2	Race 3	Race 4	Race 5	Total
5775	Mike Faugust	Jennifer Faugust	Ephraim	2	2	3	2	1	10
5015	Frank Gerry	Marianne Gerry	Clinton Lake	6	5	2	1	5	19
5419	Carrie Carpenter	Harry Carpenter	Eagle Creek	3	4	5	5	3	20
5551	Chris Wright	John Wright	Sheridan Shores	8	1	7	3	2	21
5150	Larry Klick	Jacob Meldman	Medicine Lake	7	6	1	4	7	25
5897	Ben Williams	Deb Aronson	Clinton Lake	5	3	11 (ret)	8	4	31
5631	Eric Bussell	Bryan Hunt	Clinton Lake	1	10	10	6	6	33
4278	Geoff Endris	Patrick Endris	Eagle Creek	4	9	4	7	9	33
3951	Jeff Gilman	Brett Eickenberg	Sheridan Shores	9	7	8	10	8	42
5395	Jack Marwick	Janet Marwick	Delavan	10	8	6	9	10	43