Sunday March 16, 2003

Here’s the bit on the St. Patty’s Day Regatta. It was, generally speaking, a great day of sailing. Our timing was absolutely extraordinary. When I got home at about 2:30PM it just poured like hell. That would not have been much fun on the lake. Anyway, here’s the deal:

St. Patty’s Day Regatta, Surprise Lake, Milton, WA March 16, 2003

The weather that we have been having for the last week to 10 days has been, to say the least, not exactly the "best in the west." We’ve had downpours, sun breaks, light rain all day and nite, etc., etc., etc. Problem’s been that we’ve been having one front after the other parading across our Great North West. As I tell my friends back East, "We fiddle around with the weather here for a while and then send it your way."

Well, today, Sunday March 16, 2003 could very well end up with what we’ve been having for the past 10 days. However, yesterday, the ubiquitous weatherman was announcing his scientific prognostications backed up with all of his gorgeous maps with the Doppler radar and the positions of the jet stream so forth and so on. What was predicted and let’s face it, at best, it’s only an educated guess, was that Sunday would be halfway decent. The guess was that we’d have broken sun in the morning with rain and temps in the mid 50’s in the afternoon. Well, guess what? That’s exactly how it turned out.

This morning, Sunday March 16, 2003 I was up and about at about 6:30AM to get my gear together and pack it into the car. Since Howard Rasmussen and I live only five minutes away from each other, we double up on transportation. So this time I picked Howard up at his place at about 7:30PM. We had sun breaks and broken clouds as we headed for Surprise Lake. We were on our way to have breakfast with the other skippers at Noel’s Restaurant, near the lake. However, we stopped at the lake first to put the oars in our gear box so that Jesse Touhey would have them when he arrived from Port Angeles(120 miles one way). Now that’s dedication. Thanx for doing the mark placing, Jesse.

Just as we got to the lake Jesse arrived at the same time. It was now 8AM. Jesse didn’t go to breakfast. He elected to put out the marks etc. while we were at breakfast. We got back to the lake at about 9:10AM. The marks were all out and the skippers started to set up their boats.

Present for the regatta were Jesse Touhey, Port Angeles, Bud Pell, Poulsbo, Harry Lange, Enumclaw, Joe Brohan, University Place and Howard Rasmussen, University Place and Art Smith, Tacoma who was the RD. Some of us started to sail some practice races. It was at this time that of all people to show up was Jerry Brower from Everett. Jerry hasn’t sailed down at our lake for the last three years. It was great having Jerry sailing with our group.

We did not start sailing until about 10:20AM. At this time we had sun breaks with winds from the South, Southwest and East at about 1-4mph. It was sort of flukey at times. There were times that we’d be on one tack with a good breeze and the next thing we know we’re automatically on a reverse tack. This happened more than a few times. It was more prevalent during the early hours, but as we approached noon the winds started to pick up in intensity. We soon found ourselves with breezes of 5-9mph with gust as high as 15-20mph. This, needless to say, made for some very interesting sailing.

It was about 12:30PM that we had sailed 11 heats and ended the regatta. Up to this point, we had been most fortunate not to be rained on. However, as we started to pack up our gear it started to sprinkle and even hailed a bit. The gods were with us and we were able to sail and not get rained out. After all of the gear was rounded up and the boat put away we headed for the Tav to discuss the regatta, figure the scoring and count our blessings that we did not get rained out.

Also we are to give credit where credit is due, so, Art, you did a great job as Rd and thanx a lot for rounding up the marks when the regatta was done.

As generally happens when the boats have been in moth balls for about three months, there are those little problems that rear their ugly heads. In this instant Jerry Brower and Bud Pell both had winch problems. Jerry had one DNS and one DNF. Bud had one DNS.

While we were sailing, who should show up but Ken Pawlicki. Ken did not have a boat when he arrived at the lake, but left with one. Ken bought Jerry Brower’s Orange Crate. Now that Ken now has his own boat (he rented the club’s boat last year) I’m sure that we’ll be seeing more of him this year on the lake.

Generally speaking, placing was fairly close for the top three skippers.

Place Points

1 Jerry Brower 12

2 Jesse Touhey 20

3 Joe Brohan 21

4 Howard Rasmussen 31

5 Harry Lange 33

6 Bud Pell 51

Note the one point spread between me, Joe Brohan, and Jesse Touhey. That was all as a result of going below a mark, proceeding to foul Jesse when attempting to round the mark and then to cap it all off, hitting the mark when rounding it. Wow! 720’s don’t help one single bit. Of course, then, I could excuse that by the heavy gusting winds we were getting at the time. But no one else had a problem did they, Joe? You just screwed up, fella, face it.

Joe Brohan

A word about next week’s regatta to be held by SMYC at Coulon Park, Renton. The regatta coming up is Seattle Cup Spring I. Everyone, please make an effort to attend SMYC’s first regatta of the season. The more we have on the water the more fun had by all. JB

Art Sortland: Art; Thought you might read this with interest and amusement when I described my attempting to round a mark. Joe B.

Detailed race results will be posted in the near future, Harry.

Last time this page was updated: Thursday, March 20, 2003