Regatta Notebook

  A rough day sailing is still better than a good day at the office and a rough regatta weekend in Florida during the winter months is better than a weekend in Illinois.  I thought Eric was crazy when he first suggested we borrow a Flying Scot and race at the Tampa Regatta at Davis Island Yacht Club.  Sarah and I took our first introductory lesson with him and joined the club just this past season.   After taking lessons and earning our US Sailing Certification, we were allowed to borrow Blue Eyes and practice most Wednesday nights on the weekends.  He had invited us to crew for him at the Egyptian Regatta at Carlyle and we continued to develop our sailing skills every week at CLSA.  Our most notable highlight was the day we won the start during the starting clinic against so many experienced racers.  We were getting better, but in no way did we think we were ready to compete by ourselves against top Florida talent.   Er...

  Regatta: Tampa Regatta 2021. Crew: Rick Wojnar. Finishing Place: 10th out of 20 boats racing. Tampa has become my favorite travel regatta.  This year we finished mid fleet but the score card doesn't represent how well we sailed.  We broke a vang fuse in the last 1/4 of the first upwind leg of the first.  Rick is a strong dude and just shredded the thing with one big arm pull.   We had great upwind boat speed and would round the first mark in third, but we'd get destroyed on the second upwind in big wind and drop to the back of the fleet because we didn't have a vang.  This is so incredibly frustrating because we wanted to break out and start winning trophies during these Florida District races and quit screwing ourselves with avoidable mistakes.  I feel Rick and I together are a very strong team and we have the boat speed and boat handling to compete with these guys if we could avoid mistakes.   We'd finish 12th after passing some boat...