After Many years of Hemming and Hawing, I decided to go to the WurstFest regatta at Canyon Lake, TX. Like so many other things I've waited to do, I come back asking myself "Why, Oh WHY didn't I go to that sooner?"
We left on Friday morning, both of us deciding that we would take Friday off from work. We took the usual three hours to get out of the Hell That Is Houston(HTIS) Traffic and decided that we would go on to Shiner, and see the brewery. We made it there, and enjoyed being told "Not to touch the bleeding copper kettles, unless you want to put an end to all tours, cully." (but said with a Texas accent). We had our four tots of Shiner product, and stopped for lunch at Werner's, where Kathy had a burger and fries. I had a Chicken Fried Chicken sandwich and onion rings. (only in Texas is Fried Chicken called "Chicken Fried Chicken") Nevertheless, it was to die for. We pressed on to towards Lake Canyon and arrived there around 5 pm. We navigated the unfamiliar, yet well thought out roads in the yacht club and soon found ourselves rigging the barky. Soon, we spied friends from Arlington Yacht Club and other friends from the Houston Wednesday Night Portsmouth fleet. "The Vikings must have thought Valhalla to be like this." I mused. We shared a few cold drinks, anecdotes, jokes, and retired to our campsite in the light of the Lake Canyon Yacht Club lighthouse, which shone her 10,000 candlepower benevolence on anyone within its view. Sadly we were just outside the shadow cast by her tower.
Were I were worth my salt, I would have recognized that if we had pitched tent 10 feet closer to the lighthouse we would have been spared the sleazy motel flashing light effect during our stay. However, I grew used to being exposed to the constant blinking of the carbon-xenon lamp affixed to the top of the lighthouse, memorably named after someone whose name I don't remember, but who had the foresight to buy enough land in that area to give those lucky folks there a yacht club in perpetuity. Something which will never be on Clear Lake, Texas.
But I digress.
Proper use of the tent zipper shades made the light little more than an inconvenience. K. had given me a pair of earplugs to wear but didn't have a pair for herself. Sometimes I don't understand her, because she was gratified with the sounds of Texas adolescents throughout the night while I slept. She could have kept the earplugs for herself and let me live with the din. I probably would have slept through it anyway. Lesson: Bring earplugs and to spare when camping with lots of loud young sailors, or any other kind of human being. She later claimed she had less than three hours of sleep the entire weekend, but I doubt it. (I heard her snoring in the tent for quite a while on both nights.)
Saturday morning was foggy. I arose and performed the morning ablutions in the club's facilities. Breakfast consisted of Breakfast Tacos - Sausage and Egg, Egg, or Egg and Potato (no Spam).
The Skippers' meeting was fairly standard, nothing comes to mind from that, except that we were to sail on the same course as the Flying Scots near the lake dam. We had 13 boats in our fleet, the Scots had something near 20.
We launched Surprise and since the light wind was blowing onto the dock, we decided we would paddle away from the dock and raise the sails in the offing.
We sailed down toward the race course and found that the winds were very light and shifty.
We were given a windward-leeward course for the first race, with two weather mark roundings, finishing to windward after two leeward mark roundings. The winds proved so capricious that they shortened course and finished us at the first leeward mark rounding.
We finished third in corrected scoring for that race. Then came the waiting...
I don't like to crab Race Committee, especially since they are all volunteers, but there were a couple of times during the wait that we had some wind. I wish the race committee had been gifted with foresight enough to tell what winds were coming. In retrospect I think we could have started a race then But, hindsight is 20/20 after all and when they did start the second race, I found myself more than ten minutes away from the starting line - Perhaps a hundred yards or so. The astute reader may determine the nature of the winds from that statement.
As it was, we were last off the line, caught on the wrong tack with NO speed.
As we attempted to move "upwind" I recalled what Buddy Brown, the Wednesday Night Race officer in Houston calls such conditions: "It's not a sailboat race, it's a slow painting!"
What wind that filled in tended make for to be reaches without any tactical considerations. All we could do was to try our best to hold with the fleet.
We corrected out at 6th place for that race, which was disappointing, but not unexpected.
We made our slow way back to the marina and after spending time trying to find a place that was not taken by the Flying Scots, we took a place outside the marina and tied up as best we could, trusting that the winds would not work up a strong swell overnight.
We retired to various places in the club, Kathy to the Sunfish fleet and the Arlington Folks, and myself to the Houston sailors. I was very surprised that some fleets got no races off. What a hell. For both the sailors and the RC...
I joined K. at the Sunfish fleets' area and we talked about going to Wurstfest. We had planned to get on the Shuttle bus they offered, but we didn't realize that the bus was waiting on the other side of the club. No one told us, and we missed it.
Sunday we left the dock and knew that the winds would be better. During the first race we never encountered drifting conditions, although the winds came from many different directions and built in strength as we sailed. We caught a couple of lucky puffs, and despite doing silly things like hoisting the spinnaker only to have it back wind on us a few minutes later, we managed to win that race.
The next race, we had winds more to our liking. We had a good start on the line, and were off with good speed, along with the rest of the fleet. But then something happened, but I have no idea what. A couple of tacks later, we found ourselves ahead of the entire fleet, many with boats faster than ours. We rounded the weather mark several boat lengths ahead of the next boat set the spinnaker and kept our lead. All the time we were coming up to the leeward mark I was talking us through the douse. The last thing I wanted to do was to blow such a large lead with a bad takedown.
We rounded leeward mark sucessfully. The next boat behind us was an MC Scow. We fought to stay ahead of him, and as we approached the finish line, he closed with us. A Contender class boat was close behind the scow. The Contender is a small one person boat, built for speed. As we approached the finish line, we saw the Contender not going for the line. I was momentarily concerned since I thought perhaps we might have misread the course. But K. assured me that we were finishing this leg. I kept Surprise close-hauled and pointing and waited as we came up to the finish line. Two horns in quick sucession. The Scow crossed the finishline slightly ahead of us. A blue streak of curses came from the Contender who thought we had two more legs. He bore off, ducked below the line, came back up hard and finished. I heard concilliating sounds coming from the MC Scow. We got first in that race as well.
Overall we got second, since Kevin G. in the Lido-14 had nothing as bad as a 6th place that weekend, and despite how well we did on Sunday, he got first overall with a 1,2,2,2. We had 3,6,1,1.
The really cool thing was that in the a lot of the fleets we had a lot of Houston sailors take top spots.
In Portsmouth - Kevin G. and I - 1st and 2nd
Vanguard-15 - 2nd and 3rd were Katy C. and Tom K.
Sunfish - Ash B. -3rd (A really to tough fleet - Ash is one of the best Sailors around)
After downrigging, paying our repsects and taking leave of the folks, we stopped in New Braunfels for a short time at Wurstfest. Although it could be called just another carnival by the casual onlooker, it really isn't. Things feel authentic there. What Excellent sausage, beer, and potato pancakes! None of it good for the body, but oh, was it soothing to the soul! I hate to say it, but if something like this were held in Houston, it would probably be ruined by vendors selling things that have nothing to do with the theme of the event. I've seen that too many times. Two prime examples of that are the Pasadena Strawberry Festival and the Texas Renaissance Festival.
I digress again.
The music was great was well. We heard some really entertaining yodelers. I wish we could have stayed longer. But time was pressing and we got back on the road and arrived home. We were tired, but happy with the weekend.