We arrived Wednesday afternoon to a beautiful breeze over the lake that invited a number of boats out to practice before the racing was to start on Thursday. For those that had their crews ready, sailing was the best idea. But there were a number of boats who's crew hadn't arrived or they had last minute maintenance they wanted to do on their boats. Not a good idea - the heat index had to be over 100 on the blacktop parking area. It was brutal - in any other environment people would not have showed up. But this is the ILYA Championships and there was too much excitement in the air to be squelched by the sauna hot and humid air.

 

55  E-scows owners completed registration and were ready to go on Thursday. Unfortunately when Thursday came they were left sitting until 4:00 PM when the racing was officially cancelled. Oh, the lake had plenty of waves, just not a one created by a breath of air. Worse yet, Wednesday's hot and humid was just a warm up for the real thing on Thursday.  At the Tex Mex party that evening the talk was all about the forecast of good winds on Friday, 10-20 was often heard and was a welcome thought.

 

Friday was a difficult SE wind direction and the 10-20 ended up being more like 5-10 and that is being very generous - may be the leaders saw that velocity but the back of the fleet lumped along in 4-7. It was hard.

 

The winds started the day swinging 20-30 degrees and the first start was a pile up at the starboard end of the line where there was more pressure - General recall. On the second start there was a shift to the port end with breeze which spread the boats along the whole line since the right side for the course had looked good during the most of the time we had been out sailing. 

 

In the first race Matt Peterson V-27 was first around followed by Frank Davenport I-333, Tobin Tornehl V-511, Bill Burns V-25 and Mark Unicome GL-11. And while they sailed strong, three more good sailors were making their move on the next two legs: Sam Rogers M-42 moved from 8th to 2nd, Rob Evans went from 11th to 3rd, and Derek Packard M-87 liked his 5th at the second upwind mark better the his 12th the first time up. Derek is new to E-scows this year after having a very successful taste of the asymmetrical spinnaker in the Melges-17 class. Near the end of the race it was Evans following Rogers around the same leeward gate mark the last time down. Both boats stayed on starboard toward the point. When Rogers tacked so did Evans and he was able to slowly work up on Rogers. Eventually Rogers tacked away and Evans waited a bit longer for some new breeze ahead before tacking. The next time they met Evans could cross Rogers and then a tacking dual began with Evans holding Rogers off for the win. Unicome was 3rd followed by Dick Moran X-17, Petterson V-27, Packard M-87. The first race was a Windward 2 1/2 and the winner took 52 minutes to get around.

 

The fleet went in after the first race because of a threatening thunder storm and all 100 boats from both the E and MC fleet craned out. Things cleared up enough to send us out again about 1:00 with the hope of 2 races. The committee was struggling with a an uncooperative wind that was moving left faster than they could reset. The race got off with boats at the leeward end most pleased with themselves, especially Jeff Solum M-12 and Sam Rogers (M-42) who jumped into the lead rouonding the top mark 1 and 2, followed by Jon Schloesser J-80, Brian Porter I-49, Will Graves V-74. The East side of the SE course continued to payout up and down the course.  Peterson M-87 slowly moved up going from 7th to 6th to 3rd and holding that place until the finish. Rogers got by Solum for the win and Solum held off Peterson. Graves was 5th. Augie Barkow V-37 was off the radar at the first mark, and he clearly passed the most boats to end up 5th at the finish.

 

Unfortunately, another thunderstorm system was approaching and the fleets were sent in for the day.

 

Tomorrows forecast is not too promising with light winds and more rain. Hopefully the race committee can find a wind to get the all important third race in so the regatta is official.