Last evening the committee boat set up a W course in steady 4-5 knot EAST winds and “chilled out” for 45 minutes in the 91F heat while 11 boats rigged and came out to the race area. A W6 course was communicated, with the intention of shortening the course if needed. The windward tetrahedron was set north of Long Island at 142o. I would like to thank Alfie for his assistance on lengthening the start line and Sandy Powell for helping with RC! And as can be expected on Lake George, the winds started to dwindle within 10 minutes of the start and stopped as the start was signaled.
At the start, Wild Thing’s proboscis was clearly over early and in the very light winds had to make a U-turn to clear the line. Unfortunately for the rest of the fleet there was insufficient wind to keep up the momentum generated during the last minute of the start sequence. A lot of boats were knocked backwards by some waves and obscured the mark for over 10 minutes. woot! finally cleared the line some 15+ minutes after the start not only contending with waves but the cluster of boats robbing them of any air movement across their sails. Meanwhile, Vaporize capitalized on the meager power generated by their main and coupled with the lightness of the hull drifted out to the front of the pack followed by Witch Way. About 20 minutes into the “floatathon” a very gentle breeze materialized out of the west. Animal’s spinnaker was first to appear followed by the cluster of J/24s within a few boat lengths.
It took about a minute for the chutes to fully draw but a few minutes later the sight was more in expectation of a sailboat race.
Vaporize, Witch Way, and Wild Thing (nice recovery!) had to wait for the breeze to cross the lake and watched the spinnakers close on them. But the wind steadied in strength and turned the float into a race. Vaporize rounded first, followed by Witch Way, Wild Thing and Animal. As the time was ticking up past the 50-minute mark, the predicted shortened course was signaled. Vaporize carried the lead throughout the race but Witch Way took the win on corrected time.
Congratulations to Alfie and crew for not only their win for the evening but on winning the first half series with just 12 points and taking 4/9 wins!
Complete results on lakegeorgeracing.com. Next week is the start of the second half series of 8 races.