Kerr Lake Sailing Club

at Steele Creek Marina, Kerr Lake, NC

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Updated on 6/30/2001

For those sailors who longed for a good (read: stiff), steady breeze, with intermittent gusts, June 3rd was your day. The wind started out blowing pretty much from the NNW at around 16 knots, but it never was steady enough to feel very confident about where it was coming from, at times gusting to 20 knots out of the West, and at times sliding back up to the North. Starting at the "G" buoy, the upwind leg carried the short distance into Sailboat Cove, where we turned and reached to the "H" buoy, and reached back to the "G" buoy. Ron Williams and his Row Boat, John Swansey and his red S2, the elusive Mike Ferrell with Mibote, and Brant Sprunger's Tacks Break answered the gun.

Due to wind shifts, the upwind leg had few tacks, with most boats reaching the windward mark after making one tack, but all of the boats did a fair amount of showing off their bottom paint en route. Tacks Break made the mark first, with Row Boat in close pursuit. The wind on the first reaching leg was generally behind the beam, but the Westerly gusts would push the apparent wind just ahead of the beam. Not to miss an opportunity to out-nerve the rest of the fleet, Row Boat launched her chute, struggling to stay on her feet in the gusts. After half the leg, they decided that what little (if any) advantage they had garnered was not worth the fight, they doused the chute and settled into 2nd place for the second turn. The Red S2, finding itself in more of its element, was showing amazing speed on the reach, while Mike Ferrell and his light-air boat wrestled their way around the course. On the second reaching leg, the apparent wind, at least to my surprise, was no further behind the beam than on the previous leg. Row Boat once again sprang forth with her chute, and once again retired it with little to show for its efforts. After the next windward leg, the course was supposed to be a downwind run to the finish. Tacks Break held a fairly comfortable lead at the last turn, and elected to ride it in sans chute, feeling all along that it was only floating toward the finish line. Row Boat once again aired out her spinnaker, and once again the wind shifts rendered it useless. John Swansey's red S2 improved thoughout the race, eventually correcting over Mibote.

The second race was to be run over the same course as the first, with the wind now more pronounced out of the West. At one minute before the start, a fairly sustained gust blowing spray off the wave crests wrecked havoc with the fleet's starting plans. Most competitors were happy to just get across the line within a minute of the starting gun. Mibote missed one of the guns, and found itself at the line thinking there was five more minutes as the rest of the fleet slipped away. This proved disastrous for them. The rest of the race was pretty much like the first, although Row Boat became more selective about which legs to use the chute. This kept him in closer contact with the lead, and probably accounted for his better time in the second race. John Swansey's red S2 improved his time by almost two minutes, picking up another third place for the day.

This marks the end of the Spring series, the Fall series begins July 29. See you there.

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Arf!