Surprise's Log Day Sailer 11750: Arlington Yacht Club Regatta- part I

May 04, 2009

Arlington Yacht Club Regatta- part I

Once again, we traveled to Arlington Yacht Club for their annual regatta. Once again it was a great time.
We arrived about 2 minutes after the GPS predicted we would, at 6:04pm.
Did the usual Friday night arrival ritual - say hi, park the boat, disconnect the truck, move it out of the way, get a beer, chat, register, have a beer, rig the boat, have a beer, relax, have a beer, snacks, head to hotel.

The next morning, we got to the club, got breakfast, finished rigging the boat, went to the competitor's meeting. Our first race got kicked off about 11:26am.
Winds were out of the south at 10-15. course was two windwards, two leewards, with a gate and offset mark.

I don't remember much about this race, but we were a close fleet and we were in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd places during the course of the race. At the end of the race, however, we ended up 2nd.

The second race, was more eventful. Coming to the first leeward mark rounding we were close to A.K. we entered the three boat length mark and established an overlap to his port side. He called we had no room to round, and I hoped that he would sail to his mark so I could just follow. He was sailing above the mark. I replied that was true, but he needed to sail to his mark. Not out of any rules, just because it was not profitable to miss the mark when you are ahead, and I didn't want him to make me miss the mark any more than I was going to. He headed up, and I knew we wouldn't be able to follow behind. I luffed up to port, tacked, bore off and rounded the mark. As we came up to closehauled, I saw that AK had dropped his spinnaker sheet over his bow, and was not moving very fast. We were able to pass him during that incident, only becasue(as he admitted later) he got preoccupiedwith fxing sometihng that could have waited. We held on to first place for the rest of that race.

We headed into the club for lunch and learned that some strong T-storms were coming. We pulled the boats, and got them ready for heavy weather.
The storm arrived justafter we finished putting the boats away. A white squall coame across the lake, drenching everything and blowing 60kt winds. We watched it from the safety of the clubhouse and spent the rest of the evening socializing.