Corsica

[cboltonh20]

Mike Love and I showed up about 1 pm on Friday to see mostly cloudy skies and dropping temps.  Mike went for a solo sail after rigging while I drank a beer, gathered firewood, and reserved my energies for race day.  Mike finally made it back after going all the way out to the Chester River; he thought there might be paddling involved getting back but was able to slowly sail all the way home.  The potluck dinner was great as usual, highlighted by a cooler full of raw oysters.  I was a good boy and had less than 12…My firemaking skills were rewarded with a great fire and good stories being passed around, before a great night of chilly air/ warm sleeping bag happiness.

Saturday dawned very gray but only light winds.  Pretty small overall turnout with just two As, 4 Windmills, and 7 Comets.  With the NE wind direction, the RC had the whole fleet move out to the Chester River.  I think this was due to a great extent to the RCs desire to give the As a long course.  I think the club really went out of their way to treat us nicely even though we only had two boats.  

I got a good lead on the first start, and kept it all the way around the 1 mile course in mostly light air with on and off trap time.  However, I forgot that you had to honor the downwind gate on the way to the finish, and by the time I had figured that out and rewound the course, Mike had come through for the win.  The next start saw more wind, and Mike ate me up upwind.  My A2 is still a work in progress, and both the downhaul and mainsheet ran out of room in the increased wind, and my attempts at footing didn’t seem to work.  I got further behind after snagging the windward mark anchor line, which came out much further than I expected.  Mike stopped and waited for me “ just to make things interesting” as he told me later.  Wasn’t interesting enough as he got another win by a couple of boat lengths.  The third race had nice wind again, and I gave up trying to foot and just worked hard on trying to feather up as little as possible.  This seemed to work a lot better, and I was aided by Mike over standing the mark by quite a bit.  I got some more distance back downwind, and finally got a win.  The next race saw more good wind, and my pinching strategy worked again.  Maybe it helped that Mike fell off once (but made a great recovery), and also found that long anchor line himself.  I returned the favor by waiting for him,  but was careful to take off before he got too close :-)  I was already thinking about the fifth and deciding race as I crossed the line, only to hear the RC tell me to go home.  A little surprising since it was before 3 pm, but old fart me wasn’t too upset to go in and warm up.  Mike felt the same, especially after his mid-race dunking.  Overall it was a good day of light to medium sailing, with mostly flat water.

We looked at the forecast for Sunday and saw rain and 20 with gusts to 35, easy decision to break down and pack up before dinner.  And oh boy, what a dinner.  Fried chicken and crabcakes, with the raw oysters making a second appearance.  Live bluegrass music from a local father-daughter combo ( very good in my opinion).  Trophies were very nice laser-engraved wooden plaques, with 1st for me based on winner of the last race tiebreaker, and a 2nd for Mike. The joke was on me, though, as somehow in the dim light of the evening, the trophies got switched and I got home to show off my trophy only to see “2nd”.  Well done Mike, you earned the first, too :-) 

Some heavy rain on the way home but dry when I got there, and stayed dry long enough to unload and put the boat away.  A great one day event, and I think the Oct date works great, except for the occasional hurricane.  Hopefully a bigger crowd next year.

[David Nees]

Good report. I enjoyed reading it. 

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "West River Catamaran Racing Association" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to WRCRA+un...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/WRCRA/1955168609.2593385.1760403770092%40mail.yahoo.com.

--

  David Nees

"Creating new worlds one story at a time"