“A” rigs were the sails chosen by nearly everyone in the 2nd Annual Squaw Island “Offshore” Race held on Sunday. Jonathan Gorbold sailed past Bill Blevins just after they both rounded the windward mark at Squaw Island. He then managing to keep his bow out of the water for the downwind leg and ended up at the finish first. Jonathan stayed out in the lake on the downwind run while Bill hugged the shore line. For Gorbold, this is his second win in the Squaw Island Race. Blevins finished in second this year, closely followed by Jay Niggli who ended up in the third spot.
For one reason or another, many skippers ended up sharing a ride up the lake and back which again this year caused a lot of problems. Controlling multiple racing RC Lasers from one chase boat inevitably caused one skipper to become frustrated by being too far behind and holding up the other skipper on the boat. After two years of learnings, it is clear that it is best for each skipper to be in their own chase boat if they want to be competitive.
The full results from the 2nd Annual Squaw Island Race have been posted.
Keith Calkins posted photos from the race on Picasa.
Thanks again to our race director Keith Calkins (and Joan) for judging the event and also for lending his cooking skills after the race. Another big thank you also goes out from the fleet to our race committee pontoon boat drivers Jay and Jean Gilfus (and Ashley)!
It was a fun event and people were already discussing strategy for next year. (Team racing was even mentioned, where the idea would be that a team of racing skippers would race as a group and share the same chase boat!)
North American Championship News Update
Our last weekend of practice before the big race will be this Sunday at 4 p.m. at the docks in Kershaw Park behind Steamboat Landing. Everything has been going along smoothly and we expect to refine our process a little more this weekend. We will have a short meeting after racing on Sunday at CYC.
Remember, your skill level doesn’t matter with the format we are using because you are always sailing against others of like ability, so please, if you have an RC Laser, come out this Sunday so that the race committee can have as many boats on the line as possible.
Registration is still open for the event.
And finally, by now you all know about the “Deckorations” contest so I won’t mention that again today but I did want to remind everyone that we have Canandaigua RC Laser Fleet 14 shirts available and if you wanted to order one today or tomorrow, they would most likely be here in time to wear for the regatta. Very nice shirts and inexpensive too!
