77 boats showed for this year's Spring Fever at Lake Hartwell in Georgia. With 16 F18s this regatta served as the Southern Area Championships for our class and the competition showed up in force.
Friday & Sunday were light 2-5 knots, very spotty conditions, typical lake sailing.
Saturday started out light but in the first race as we rounded the windward mark in 2nd the wind clocked and piped up to about 13 knots leading for an exciting spinnaker/jib reaching drag race around the course with Alex Shafer as the rest of the fleet sat struggling to get around the windward mark, but it wasn't long before regatta winner Nigel Pitt caught back up and was nipping at our heels, we managed to hold him off for the only time we would beat him the entire regatta, though we came VERY close in one other race.
It's tough to be consistent in these conditions and we were were all over the place with two 2nds, two 4ths, a 9th, 10th, and a 12th. We had great starts most of the time but sometimes didn't find that first shift / puff and in those conditions it's very hard to claw back.
After Saturday's racing Nigel Pitt was clearly in the lead with Mike Krantz, Alex Shafer, Karl Langfield, Dave Ingram, and us all somewhere in the top 6, it was anyone's guess as to where. At dinner we were all comparing what we thought our scores were and no one could figure out for sure what the order was, this built some excitement but definitely made everyone a little tense Sunday morning as we rigged our boats.
The RC informed us that they would not tell us the final scores incase we didn't get any racing in and they were the final results. However, despite the late wind the previous two days, the wind filled in just enough for 1 race.
Brendon and I were ready to race and just like our competitors knew that we could end up anywhere from 2-6 depending on how we did in this race. We had a mediocre start but felt a bit slow running with the pack to the left. Really wanting to tack out right with a few boats but pinned in by a couple windward boats, we suffered as the pack in front of us tacked away, we wanted to lead them back but the boats to windward didn't tack until it was way too late. The race just went downhill from there as we struggled to get through the parade of boats but it seemed like there was a speedbump everywhere we went. Rounding the leeward mark in 10th to find ourselves with 9 boats directly in front of us we tacked off and then made the decision to tack back on the inside into the middle of the course. As if we hadn't enough go wrong in this race, we really felt like we shot ourselves in the foot on this one. By the finish we lost two more boats and overall ended up loosing to David Ingram in 5th place by 1 point! To make matters worse loosing to the Ingrams meant we had lost a bet that Dave had with Jake Kohl, sorry Jake!
Krantz and Langfield sailed really well the last race with Krantz winning by a large margin to set them into 2nd, Langfield into a tie with Alex Shafer for 2nd with Shafer winning the tiebreaker, Dave Ingram in 5th and then us in 6th. As mentioned before, Nigel Pitt ran away with the regatta for the win.
I can't remember the scores past that but i'm sure them and pictures will be up on Twinhulls.com and Waltercooperphoto.com soon.
While we were a bit dissapointed to be shot out of the back of the lead group we learned a lot as we almost never get to sail in light shifty conditions making the trip totally worth it, not to mention the awesome food, parties, and the amazing Southern hospitality shown to us by Nigel & Tammy, and everyone else. The RC, led by Wick Smith did an excellent job of getting races off in challenging conditions. I asked Wick on the water on Friday if he missed racing and he said yea but then we both agreed that in those conditions the pontoon boat's engine was much more enjoyable.
We look forward to going back next year!
Brendon and I will be on the water Sunday with our new North Sails jib and spinnaker. Trevor Burd and I will be getting some practice in for our next event, the Tybee in May.
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