Hurricane Sally

I think the question from last Wednesday’s race is do you like it wet or very wet?   I was looking at some of the facebook comments from the race and someone said “once you put your foulies on and were in the race you didn’t notice the rain”.  I would say that was true unless you were on a J-24 and then you had the continuous drip from the back of the boom on your lap.

Hurricane Sally was passing us to the north and gave us some cooler temps and very nice wind.  Though they predicted some heavy winds, fortunately we had a nice 10 mph breeze from the east giving us some very interesting shifts and rain all evening, but fortunately not heavy enough to impede our progress around the race course.

A big thanks to Warren Collier, Ted Phillips and Will Brown for braving the elements and providing a great race.  I was not surprised that there were 5 boats from the competitive High PHRF fleet.  And the winner of this race was the J-22 helmed by Kyle Meyhoefer.

Despite the weather conditions you can’t keep a new addition to our racing passion at home.  One of our new contestants in the Cruiser fleet was Missy Jaeger in the Hunter 386 and Spencer Gay in his new Hunter 34.  The Low PHRF fleet had a new addition with the J-88 sailed by Mike Stewart and Mike Wroblewski and in the Mid PHRF fleet we had the X95 (Seniorita X) sailed by Juergen Haeberle.  Queen Bee, a Beneteau 386, sailed by Rene Ward was the new boat in the High PHRF fleet. 

We have 5 more races in this series and a reminder that the start of the Cruiser fleet is 6:15 and the rest of the fleets start after 6:30pm.

Upcoming weekend races are Sunday, Sept. 27 will be LARC #2 and Oct. 3-4, will be the Barefoot Open. 
Look forward to seeing you on the race course,   Dana

Find your sailing muse

​Wow, we managed to complete 6 races out of the 10 scheduled.  It has been quite a summer, weather wise.  We had our ups and downs, but we persevered.  RC went out and did the best job possible and sometimes we got lucky and often we did not, but fortunately none of our RC made us suffer.  Occasionally the wind quit in the middle of the race, but RC always found a way finish the race and relieve our suffering. 

This last race cemented Kirk Jockell’s place in the cruiser fleet with 5 first place finishes, while David Wright and Kurt Schurenberg battled it out in the last race with David finishing 8 seconds in front of Kurt securing 2nd place in the series.

It was a top dog battle in the Melges 24 fleet, going into this last race Matt Perry and Lenkeit/Morang were tied.  Brent McKenzie made a great showing by winning this last race but it wasn’t enough to beat Matt Perry for Top Dog status.

Did everyone see the American Beauty sitting on the stern of Renegade, I bet you that was Jeff’s muse.  The Low PHRF fleet was another fleet that the winner of the last race would take the series.  It was a tight battle between Jeff Freeman, John McCarthy and Mike Macleod with Freeman and his muse taking the top spot.

This last race of the Mid PHRF fleet was a battle of the Websters.   If you look at the scores they almost always finish next to each other, you can tell they both have amazing skills.  But in the end the person that won the series was the only person with 2 first places finishes, Jim Kingery.  A very tough fleet and growing with the addition of Walter Addison, David Jackson and Jean-Francois Rivard in their boats. 

The biggest fleet was the High PHRF fleet with 13 boats.  In a fleet this large, you want to win the race but usually sections of the fleet end up competing against those in your competitive group.  If you watched a race, you know the obvious winner was Jonathan Stewart/Bill Quinn on Bill the Cat with 4 first place finishes.  The rest of us felt like we were chasing him all the time (at least I did).  Then came the next group which were the four J-24’s that battled it out each week with Mike Stewart (the Red Baron) floating to the top of the J’s and winning a 2nd place in the series and his protagonist, She-Devil, landed in 3rd place.  But the boat to look out for was Doug Britton and his crew on High Voltage, they made a spectacular showing by winning this last race.  This fleet had quite a few new members this year in Beisner/Postel and Kyle Meyhoefer in J-22’s, Jim Rapp in the Colgate 26 and Robert Beauchamp in the Harmony 22, Gemini Cricket.  

The participation in this series was phenomemal with 39 boats competing on a weekly basis.  This is the most participation of any event all year with any type of boat.  This is also a tribute to the many people that make this work, but especially the boats and their crews that volunteer to forego racing their boat to provide the excellent race committee each week, often a thankless job but always done with competence.  I would also like to commend the officers of the fleet that are behind the scenes making the organization of this usually 20 week event possible.  John McCarthy who is on the phone each week lining up competent RC, Randy Phillips who keeps us organized and makes sure we have all the tools we need to run this many races, Gary Umberger who behind the scenes keeps us financially solvent, Warren Collier our diplomatic leader and David Wright who has been instrumental in increasing the Cruiser fleet participation.  This is definitely a team effort and impossible for one person to do.

​As the summer winds down, we will begin the next set of Wednesday night races.  On Sept 16, we will begin the last round of Wednesday night races, the Encore series.  This will be the first of the 6 races of the Encore series.  Cruiser start will be at 6:15 with all other fleets starting after 6:30.  
 
Congratulations to all participants for your effort and I will see you on the race course,  Dana

Close Competition

Randy Phillips and his team certainly pulled the rabbit out of the hat this race.  It has been exciting having completed our 5th race of this series with only one more race to go.  This has been such a popular series, I noticed we had guests out there tonight.  I saw Jim Chambers in his new boat, Wind Spinner,  haunting the race course while Rene Ward in his boat Queen Bee along with a Viper that followed us around the race course. 
 
We had some good racing this night which will affect the overall standings.   In the Cruiser fleet Sails Call has sailed into the second position overall, while in the High PHRF fleet, the Pussy boat (Bill the Cat) continues in first while his father “the Red Baron” is solidly in second with She-Devil pushing him hard.  
The Mid PHRF fleet has one of the closest races with the battle between Your Move and Perpetual Motion who are tied for the second position.  But this last race of this series will most affect the Low PHRF fleet because Iniki, Renegade and Wave Bye SR are all less than one point away from each other.  This last race should be a lot of fun to watch.  
The Melges 24 fleet in their usual fashion have a tie for first between Fellowship and Rapscallion and then another tie for third between Ex-Kahn and Lamorak.
 
This last race should be an exciting evening.
 
Just a reminder of upcoming events.  The Encore series will begin on Sept 16 and the first race of the Fall LARC series will be this Sunday, Sept 13.
Good luck to everyone,   Dana