As my granddaughter was visiting us last weekend I chose not to go racing but, while she was asleep on Sunday afternoon, I walked down to the dock to take some photos of Fleet 17 racing.
When I arrived all the Sunfish were pulled up on the beach and there appeared to be a lengthy meeting being held in that gazebo. I later discovered that this was a discussion about the previous race, the first race of the day. One of the novices had asked a question and that had triggered a detailed debrief by some of the fleet leaders about wind and strategy and boat handling. Nobody seemed to mind that this informal sail training was cutting into time allotted for racing.
I took a few shots of the start of the next race. The wind was blowing off that beach more or less directly towards me which, given the geography of the lake, necessitated a reaching start. Could have been in either direction but the decision was made to start towards the left from my vantage point. This shot was probably about 20 seconds before the start. The red flag in the foreground is the near end of the start line.
The next shot was taken as close as I could judge to the actual start. Did everybody return to the correct side of the start line? Who knows? There's another red flag over there somewhere but I never saw it.
And they're off. What's the right strategy? Time will tell. There may be an advantage in being at the windward (far) end of the line but that side of the lake is more in the shadow of the trees. Roll the dice. Take your chances.
After sailing round a couple of buoys down the left end of the lake, the fleet passes me again on its way to the one buoy in the right end of the lake. The local hotshot, Derek Jackson, (2nd place in the Sunfish Midwinters this year and a candidate for president of the US Sunfish Class) was way ahead. This shot is of the next pack.
And here come the finishers. Crossing the line in third place, can it be, it can't be, yes it is, the sailor formerly known as Whippersnapper, Son #1 or Litoralis.
I used to race myself with this fleet when we first moved to the USA. There's a certain attraction to this style of laid-back casual racing -- especially when it's almost on your doorstep. Even if the standard of race management wasn't high, the quality of racing at the front of the fleet was excellent. But after a few years, frustration with sailing on such a small lake and a wish to return to my roots in Laser sailing led me to new pastures.
I didn't go racing myself last weekend. Here's the reason. Cutest Granddaughter In The World having a bath in a storage container on my barbecue table.
5 comments:
OK Maybe cutest equal... but she looks like she will make a sailor, like my grand-daughter. Enjoyed the blog! Jerryseadog.
What a fun sequence of photos and words, hope it does get windier sometimes though!
Ah, that was nice...a post in prose. Readable with a 5th grade education, interesting, had pictures...just my speed.
Very very cute granddaughter, worth missing a day of sailing.
It does get a little bit windier...but never on Sunday mornings in the summer when there is racing.
I must have made those margaritas too strong. Litoralis seems to be unaware that he was racing in the afternoon, not the morning. (The fleet switched from morning to afternoon racing for the first time this season because of a belief that the winds are more likely to be stronger in the afternoon).
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