This past weekend Kevin Clark and I packed up Flying Scot 5566 and headed down to Lake Norman just northwest of Charlotte for an annual stop on the Flying Scot circuit, the Great 48 regatta. Due to work commitments we were not able to get on the road early enough to arrive in time for the clinic hosted on Friday afternoon by Dieball Sailing’s Paul Abdullah. The clinic was a mixture of both on the water and off the water coaching. Paul plans to get the video of the clinic up on the internet for everyone’s benefit. We arrived at the club just in time to see hull numbers 1 and 2 heading out for a photo shoot in a really nice late afternoon breeze.

The day one schedule was relaxed allowing some teams to arrive in the morning with the skipper’s meeting not until 11:00 with the first race starting at 13:00. There were 43 boats in all registered for the event. We arrived at the club surprised to see a nice 8-10 knot breeze. As the morning wore on the breeze died and at the time of the skipper’s meeting there was barely anything left. But after a short on the water postponement the breeze filled in and we got going.

Race 1 saw a heavily favored pin end and a huge pile up at the pin. We noticed that we could easily lay the weather mark from a quarter of the way up the line from the pin, so we decided to start to weather of the major crowd and tack at the gun. We got clean but two boats were able to roll us up the “beat” as they were able to press down on us. We lost one more boat with a bad drop at the rounding and got edged by Paul Abdullah at the finish to finish 5^th.

Race 2 saw us tangled up in congestion at the start. We once again learned our lesson that a good start is crucial in these bigger fleets. At one point in this race Kevin said that he only counted six boats. I was surprised and ask if was sure. When he looked backward to confirm the count, I clued in that we had some work to do (remember 43 boats!). We ended up digging our way back to 12^th.

Race 3 saw us again having another rough start, but we were able to get clear quickly and were in touch with the leaders up the first beat and down the run, probably in the mid-to-high single digits. Up the middle beat, we thought that we saw more breeze up the left side of the course. Well the right came in hard and we were back in the mid-teens. Once again, we were able to dig back to finish in 10^th.

Team Aras/Wake winning race 3. Photo credit to Doug Collings

Saturday evening LNYC hosted a great BBQ with beer donated by Layline and Mad Sails. This was a great opportunity to catch up with friends from other clubs and meet new ones.

We arrived at the club early on Sunday for the 9:30 first gun and were surprised to see solid breeze again.

Race 4 was setting up for a slightly favored boat end start (we thought). With about 2 min. to go we saw the breeze go hard right and headed down to the pin, expecting another pile up. To our surprise, no one else was down there. We had a great start by ourselves, carried on for a little bit into more pressure and tacked. Looking at the entire fleet in the window of the main was a good way to start the morning. Peter Beam (LNYC), who was sailing lights-out on Sunday found a little shift in the top right corner to sneak around the weather mark in first, but we were right there. On the last run, we were able to jib inside Peter and round first. We sailed a nice last beat to win the race!

5566 leading in race 4. Photo credit to Doug Collings

Race 5 was a tough one for a lot of the leaders in the event. Most of the top boats were favoring the pin end, but shortly after the start the right came in hard, and we were all getting the shovels out. We ended up with another 10^th.

Congratulations to John Aras (AYC) and our very own John Wake (FBYC) who finished 1^st with 15 points and Paul Abdullah who finished 2^nd with 21 points. Peter Beam’s strong 2, 1 on Sunday moved him up to 3^rd for the event.

This was the first time I had ever been to LNYC. This is a great club, with great facilities and would highly recommend Scot sailors make this a stop on their travel schedule. It is hard to argue with a 43 boat fleet! Granted it is lake sailing but the conditions for this regatta were great. Maybe we did get a little lucky with the wind! Mark your calendars now for the Fall 48, also hosted by LNYC, for November 3 and 4. 5566 is planning on being there!

I would also encourage all FBYC Scot sailors to travel to the Capital District Regatta, May 19-20 at Susquehanna Yacht Club. I know there is a Spring Series event at FBYC this weekend, but if we don’t support other club’s events it is hard to expect people to travel to FBYC for the AOD regatta.