Shaking Off the Winter Rust
The Sea Bags Sailing team was back on the road for another regatta the first weekend of May. This time, we were participating in the J-Daze regatta in Canandaigua, New York. Unlike the majority of our races on the ocean, this time we sailed on a lake.
Coming from our last regatta on the ocean in Florida, to a race in upstate New York on a lake, we knew the conditions would be very different. On a lake, there are no tides or currents. That’s a whole dimension of sailing that is removed. On this lake the wind comes over the hills and drops down onto the narrow lake creating tricky changes in velocity and direction. It’s not uncommon on a lake to see 30 to 50 degree shifts in the breeze, which makes for very challenging conditions to call tactics. It also means that you can sometimes go from the back of the pack to the front of the fleet. To make things even more interesting, some of the puffs moved down the lake as puffs often do and some just seemed to sit there. In those times when we were not racing, we studied those puffs to better anticipate what might happen during the race.
We left Maine quite early on Friday. When we arrived in New York, our teammate, Joy, and her husband, had already started rigging the boat. We had stored the boat in New York and had a lot of work done on it over the winter. Going into the weekend we had checklists for our checklists to make sure we had everything we needed and that our equipment was where it needed to be. Thanks to Joy’s help, we were able to get the mast up on the boat and put everything together in time to do some practice racing.
The regatta had 17 boats and 6 races in total, five of which were completed on Saturday, and one long light-air race on Sunday. Boreas, skippered by Finn Hadlock, a Maine boat, finished with top honors and 12 total points. Following the 4th place boat, and all within three points of each other, were Elle, Ice Cube, Oz, and then the Sea Bags Women's Sailing Team. The top boats were always at the top of the fleet no matter how the conditions changed – from quite windy and shifty to light and shifty. Lake sailing at its best! It was a regatta to shake off the winter rust, and shake it off, we did.
When the weekend came to a close, we ended in 8th place out of 17 boats, just one point away from 6th place and three points back from the 5th place boat. We were really hoping for a top 5 finish, and we were so close. The next boat behind us was 13 points back, representing a bit of separation between the top and bottom halves of the fleet. We were happy with our improvement across the last three races of the regatta (finishing in 6th, 5th, and 4th) and pleased to be decidedly in the top half of the fleet.
Like with any regatta, the team came home with notable takeaways. As all sailors know, the start of the race is the most challenging and most important. This regatta had many races with general recalls. That means we went through the five-minute countdown to the start and at "Go!" many boats were already over the starting line ahead of the gun. The race committee had to call all boats back to start over. It was a little frustrating, but we thought of it as an excellent opportunity to practice our starting routine. We have been working on this routine, so this extra start training is sure to impact the rest of our season.
Overall, the team communicated very well, and everyone really did a great job in their positions on the boat. We hope to continue to build on this experience all season, and we can't wait to do it again.