"DSK" wrote in message
.. .
Or at least this past weekend. We went down to the coast on Friday after a
not-fun week of work on several fronts. Just stepping onto the boat was
like renewal.

Our slip neighbor with a 42' ketch had invited me to sail with him in an
annual regatta that takes place this weekend every year, so on Saturday
morning I packed a lunch and met up with him & the rest of the crew. The
first race started out in relatively promising wind, abou 10 ~ 12 but
gusty, and it died down little by little until we were sitting still. The
race course was a short (7/10 mile) windward leg to an inflatable
triangle, then downwind by government marks to Minnesott Pt about 14 miles
down the river.

We set a big nylon drifter and a mizzen staysail and worked hard at
staying in the streaks of wind as it died. The gusts seem to build & stay
steadiest near shore, so we tried to stay close in. For a while we were
far behind the rest of the fleet, expected since the boat probably
outweighed any three of the others put together and is a rather
old-fashioned hull & rig besides. But as the wind died all over, the rest
of the fleet bogged down and parked and we kept ghosting along near shore.

The modern speedsters, including a J-109, two Benny 36.7s, and a Soverel
33, just barely made it to the finish line within the tme limit. We were
about 3/4 of a mile away when the time limit expired.

The next day was the exact opposite... started out with ZERO wind... I'd
have said negative wind if such were possible... and it built slowly to a
nice steady 12 knots. We got in two short round-the-buoy races, carefully
planning the upwind leg and scrambling to get the spinnaker & staysail set
& drawing on the short downwind legs. I don't think we made our handicap
on any of the races but we were close.

The skipper & crew were a great bunch, I have not sailed with any of these
guys before but everybody was part of the team and had a very positive
attitude.... more than one lively sense of humor at work too. The sailing
was great even though we could have used more wind, the company really
made it enjoyable.

Fresh Breezes- Doug King

Did the same thing, one port-to-port to the Canadian side, then two buoy
races on Sunday, lots o' partying in between, and those Canadians do a nice
party. The only sour notes, 2nd places all the way around, worse than
finishing last, IMHO. And a little controversy with the good folks of Essex
phrf. They took away 3 seconds from our rating, and they don't have a J33 in
Essex phrf! In the end it wouldn't have made a difference, we would have
lost the last tie-breaking race by 7 seconds, but the idea is extremely
annoying. And the way they race over there is a little nutty, but it served
the useful purpose of educating folks on our end of the lake. Every year
folks come up with the brilliant suggestion of starting the slow boats
first, and we had a good demonstration of what that looks like on the course
Sunday. One of the slow boats from our end, a Catalina 34 allowed that maybe
it wasn't a good idea after all, what with trying to get out of the way of
the fast boats and the absolute cluster f***s at the roundings. We may have
lost the race due to an idiot that tacked in front of us at the end of the
race, they were so slow coming out of the tack that we might have passed in
front of them instead of ducking them, not even ducking, having to go well
behind them. Gotta love handicap racing. Some of us were discussing the
possibility of North American phrf ratings, there being absolutely no reason
for identical boats to have different ratings in different parts of the
country or from state to state.

John Cairns