Wickford Regatta 2022
505 American Section Webmaster
Once again, if you didn’t come to Wickford you missed a great event with plenty of wind, good competition and RC work, and a great Saturday night party.
We had 9 boats, with new team Paul Taylor and Sol Marini sailing Paul’s new ride which is Ethan’s old boat. Mike Breton and Ben Ricci showed up in the old blue Waterat which looks like it’s running just fine. Ted Bjerregard and Matt Hersey made the oft-discussed but never-previously-executed water delivery from Bristol (a not insignificant sail). Peter and John stole the keys to Keith’s boat while their own sails across the ocean blue, and Duane and Russell Miller (the only one to actually bother to travel to the event) grabbed Mark Linker’s boat as Duane's is container mates with Peter and John’s.
On Saturday, the Wickford breeze machine made us wait an entire hour before the sun came out and we were trapping up and down and sometimes raking pretty deep. Team Ingalls was the chosen rabbit for race 1 and broke their starboard trap line about 2 minutes before the gun but still performed rabbit duties with aplomb – you don’t need your starboard trap line to be the rabbit on port! Craig and Mike led early but somehow Keith and Dave got by and stretched a bit in race one. Craig and Mike took their revenge in race 2 going wire to wire with Kivney and Gordon just behind. It looked like Craig and Mike would repeat when Tom and Gordon, having been in last, first passed Keith and Dave who were doing circles for a pretty dopey foul and then nipped Craig and Mike on the line with another great run. After day 1, the top three were nearly deadlocked with another deadlock among the next three and the rest close as well.
Saturday’s party featured magnificent tales of yore from Kivney until John Dunlea had to go meet the Crown Prince of Kuwait for a combined polo match and ecstasy rave. When you talk about A-list jet setters you don’t get far without talking about John.
Apparently all of Kivney’s memories knocked something loose because once Craig and Mike flushed them out of the start lineup, they went right and never looked back, sealing a walkaway race win to take the series lead, with Team Ingalls rebounding with a 2 in front of Keith/Dave and Craig/Mike. Craig and Mike punched right back in race 5 over the Ingalls’s, and Kivney and Gordon had a shocker. Peter and John started to figure out Keith’s boat and courteously cost Keith/Dave a valuable point by staying in 3rd down the run. With a race or two to go, Craig and Mike looked solid while Keith/Dave and Tom/Gordon were locked together and the breeze getting shaky indeed.
Sometimes being the rabbit is the best thing in the world. Sometimes the rabbit’s two minutes behind a minute into the race. Craig and Mike sealed the deal with another W, the Ingalls got the record stuck on 2, and Peter and John had a repeat 3. All of Keith and Dave’s magic pixie dust was used up and they never dug their way out of the rabbit hole (see what I did there), leaving Tom and Gordon 2nd overall.
Though we had good (not great) Region One attendance, it was plainly lame to have zero support from other regions. Most of the boats at Wickford had travelled to multiple regattas in other districts throughout the last year, and it’s lame that that commitment doesn’t get reciprocated – especially when our regattas almost always have good breeze. EVERY RACE in this regatta had at least some wire running. You all have a chance to redeem yourselves on this front at the Sakonnet Regatta on July 9 & 10 - Sakonnet 505 Regatta (theclubspot.com)