First time racin'!
Posted: Mon Dec 04, 2006 4:59 pmWell kids, this weekend The Red Witch and I had our first experience with racing. It was fun, but I obviously have a lot more to learn!
Every year around this time, the Lake Monroe Sailing Association puts on The Kettle Cup, a regatta that is a fund raiser for the local Salvation Army. It's a 2 day event. Saturday morning, we had 15 boats registered. There were 5 Catalina 22s, so they had their own fleet. Two other 5-boat fleets were put together with other similar boats. I was the only Daysailer, and I was put with a Sanibel 17, a Precision 18, and 3 other boats of similar type/size.
When we got on the lake around noon, there was very little wind, and we ran two races in that, barely. The course was a simple start/finish line and an upwind mark about a half mile away. Go to the mark, go around, and come back. Easy, right? Not when there's no wind!
Then, suddenly it picked up to 15-20 knots, and things got exciting! That third race was like work!
Yesterday morning, there was zero wind, and dense fog. We waited a while, then the committee decided to go out anyway. We sat there in the fog for 2 hours, then it cleared up, but still hardly any wind. We started a race anyway, and it took two hours to complete a race that should have taken 20 minutes! Needless to say, they called it off after that.
So, anyway, even though the conditions were less than favorable, it was a nice warm December weekend on the water, I learned a few things about racing (I really need to study up on what all those flags mean!), and we raised about $800 for the S.A. Not bad at all!
The guy in the Sanibel took a few pictures of us cooling our heels in the fog - I'll post them to the gallery.
- Tim
Every year around this time, the Lake Monroe Sailing Association puts on The Kettle Cup, a regatta that is a fund raiser for the local Salvation Army. It's a 2 day event. Saturday morning, we had 15 boats registered. There were 5 Catalina 22s, so they had their own fleet. Two other 5-boat fleets were put together with other similar boats. I was the only Daysailer, and I was put with a Sanibel 17, a Precision 18, and 3 other boats of similar type/size.
When we got on the lake around noon, there was very little wind, and we ran two races in that, barely. The course was a simple start/finish line and an upwind mark about a half mile away. Go to the mark, go around, and come back. Easy, right? Not when there's no wind!
Then, suddenly it picked up to 15-20 knots, and things got exciting! That third race was like work!
Yesterday morning, there was zero wind, and dense fog. We waited a while, then the committee decided to go out anyway. We sat there in the fog for 2 hours, then it cleared up, but still hardly any wind. We started a race anyway, and it took two hours to complete a race that should have taken 20 minutes! Needless to say, they called it off after that.
So, anyway, even though the conditions were less than favorable, it was a nice warm December weekend on the water, I learned a few things about racing (I really need to study up on what all those flags mean!), and we raised about $800 for the S.A. Not bad at all!
The guy in the Sanibel took a few pictures of us cooling our heels in the fog - I'll post them to the gallery.
- Tim
