High Sierra Regatta Report
Chris Simenstad
Hello District 24,
Seven ILCA sailors, all full rigs, sailed in last weekend's High Sierra Regatta. The fleet was split between four D-24 sailors (Al, Marcel, Schmidty, and myself) and three from District 25, including father and son sailors Robert and Sam Suddath, first timers at this event. Ernie was also registered but fell ill (and fittingly gave his luxury lodging reservation to an Aero sailor). Other regular sailors were absent, one reason being the North American Championships were at Cabrillo Beach the same weekend. So, it was a small but tight fleet.
This regatta is one of the best in our District. The high altitude lake is long and narrow with a dam at its western end, and most days a moderate thermal westerly comes up mid-morning. More than a dozen small boat fleets showed up this year, the Day Sailers the largest with seventeen boats, and when checking in, the Fresno Yacht Club issues commemorative cocktail glasses. It's a fun scene with great racing.
Five races were scheduled, and the three on Saturday were classic Huntington, with sunny skies, roughly 8-12 knots of breeze--enough to hike much of the time, but not so much that you could become complacent and forget to look for pressure. When going downwind, staying in the wind required a "swivel head" to keep looking back to see where the puffs were rolling down the lake.
All races on both days were variations of a yo-yo type: double windward-leewards, the second leeward mark being #8 at lake's easternmost end with a short upwind leg to the finish.
Al dominated Saturday's three races. I got second place and Marcel third in races #1 and #3. In race #2 Marcel and I sailed into a hole by the shore of the fire-ruined Boy Scout camp at the end of the first beat. We watched Sam and Schmidty tack out to avoid the trap and get lifted right past us, and they got second and third place, respectively.
Things changed Sunday due to monsoonal moisture. Race Committee was concerned that a "Mono" would develop, and that we'd face big easterly gusts and potential danger from thunderstorms. Despite cloud cover, the first race offered enough westerly breeze to keep us moving. Al won race #4, with me coming in second, and Marcel third.
Due to changing conditions, race #5 was challenging, and in the end, very frustrating. The westerly puffs began to narrow, and as the race went on, dissipate. Strategy became much harder to predict, and this dislodged Al's supremacy. If my memory serves (please offer corrections), Marcel was first to round the mark at the end of windward leg #1, but got passed by Schmidty and me on the downwind leg, and Schmidty won the second beat.
As we made the final run to the bottom of the lake, the breeze slowed and died, and we floated to mark #8 in glassy conditions, surrounded by a few Aeros and some doublehanded dinghies. Marcel showed extreme focus and rounded the mark first. Al, now last, hit the mark and did his circles. After another twenty minutes of floating, RC's discussion of a potential abandonment squawking on people's VHF radios, Schmidty called it quits and fell off his boat (twice) trying to paddle in. Marcel got within striking distance of the finish, and then RC made its call: racing abandoned for all fleets.
The awards ceremony was held in a light rain. Al won the regatta, I got second, Marcel third, and Sam fourth.
Overall, a great regatta experience. Each evening people got together to exchange food and laughs, Marcel's family and friends filling out the social scene and making sure we talked about things unrelated to sailing. On Saturday night, his friends Kim and Ted shared a half gallon of vanilla ice cream and a pan of brownies, which set a new kind of standard for a camping regatta. One note to our District Secretary: when invited for dinner at other sailors' campsites, show up with two things at a minimum, a cup and a chair.
Al Sargent
1) AI coaching briefs
I used AI (Claude) to create a regatta brief for High Sierra. I based it on notes from my last four regattas, as well as the 2025 and 2023 editions of the High Sierra Regatta, plus this year's sailing instructions. It was really helpful for picking out patterns of what I'm doing well and not well. If you use Granola for your regatta note-taking, you can connect Granola to Claude using MCP to make this quicker.
Here's the prompt:
Analyze these regatta and clinic notes and help me prepare for this weekend's High Sierra Regatta. Look for recurring patterns. Then, in detail, highlight what skills I need to continue to do, what mistakes to avoid, and what habits and techniques I need to continue to build.
Sources to use (Let me know if you cannot access):
[Several links to notes]
Attached are this year's sailing instructions.
2) Mainsheet management
A fast windward mark rounding gets you away from boats behind, but it depends on a fast mainsheet drop, and thus an untangled mainsheet. I found that the best time to clean the mainsheet is in a tactically obvious and comfortable part of the beat or reach. Tactically obvious = in a lift, good lane, not trying to determine if headed or lifted, or how long to dig into a header. Comfortable = no one approaching on the opposite tack.
Seems obvious, but during Worlds, I almost hit Mark Lyttle (ILCA class president) twice as he was crossing me and I was untangling the mainsheet. Thankfully, I was on starboard both times; had I been on port, it could have been a problem!
3) Puff aggressiveness or timidity
It's not just enough to see puffs; it's crucial to see how aggressive or timid they are. Do they move down the course fast (aggressive) or slowly (timid)? That implies how much you invest in catching them.
For example, at Master Worlds in Athens, in a Meltemi (puffy offshore northerly gradient wind), the puffs were aggressive: if you saw a puff on the seawall, you could bet that it would eventually get to you 200m away. You can invest distance, knowing they'll eventually reach out. On day 2 of High Sierra this year, when we had the Mono breeze (an easterly associated with a weak weather system) fighting the thermal westerly, the puffs were timid; you'd see them hanging out but not moving down the course. I once invested distance in trying to catch a puff, but it never arrived, so you had to track the puff to make sure it wasn't just hanging out in one spot.
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Tucker Strasser
Al,Thanks for looping me in. And congrats.Hard to believe it takes an AI query to know “start at the committee, hold your lane, tack at Boy Scout camp’, and ‘don’t tangle your mainsheet’, but you Bay Area people and your AI….Sounds like a blast. We’re headed up tomorrow for Huntington Lake Melges 15 races and camping. Thanks much for your pointers. Especially the chair and cup.Next year… we definitely should rally our SoCal crowd.
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Marcel Sloane
Marcel Sloane
REM | Revel Environmental Manufacturing, Inc.
960-B Detroit Ave | Concord, CA 94518
Off: 925-676-4736 | Mob: 925-858-8005