Incredibly Close and Very Stressful

Last weekend was the Keuka end of the Home & Home regatta, aka NY State Championships, for E-Scows. Since this is an off year for my E-Scow sailing, this was probably the biggest event of the year for me in E's. The visiting boats gave us I think 13 on the starting line, a pretty good showing. Six races were planned for Saturday and Sunday. But on Saturday morning rain storms and poor wind forecast had most of us believing the whole weekend would be a bust.

But Mother Nature came through. About 1:00 Saturday an interesting little North wind filtered out of the Branchport branch of the lake. The RC drove up the branch a little and set us a nice short course to at least get us sailing. We spent the entire weekend in the branch sailing very similar courses. It was nice. The shores came into play.

By the start of the first race we were sitting high side, sometimes depowering the boat. These conditions are where we excel. George and I seem to have a pretty good feel for each other's sailing. I spent the day working the vang and traveller upwind letting him steer a better race. We outpointed and out raced almost everyone there.

In race 1 we dropped the kite onto the offset mark, picking it up with us. We had to bring it aboard to unwrap the sheet before we could even do our turn. That put us in a hole that took some work to get out of. We recovered to third right behind Rick Turner.

In race 2 we had a stellar start. But Rick had better downwind speed and took the race from us.

In race 3 we fought a close race to come back at the last mark to pass and win. Rick was third.

So we were tied with Rick after day 1 with Mark Turner 3 points behind us. It was setting up to be a 2-boat battle on day 2.

We awoke to little to no air, a good sign on a south thermal lake. The North was beating the south down. We had a scheduled 9:00 start. About 9:00 the wind came up and we started the race about 10:00 in similar conditions and course to Saturday.

Race 1 and 2 we won. I'm fuzzy on the detail at this point. I know we nailed one start and blew another but won both races. Rick had a pair of seconds right behind us. In the first race of the day we were a couple feet beside Rick when his crew flipped out of the boat. He lost half the fleet but had an incredible first downwind to get back to third and beat Bob Cole on the last leg to get back to second.

So going into the last race we needed to be within 2 places of Rick. If he won we had to be third to win the regatta. It was actually a pretty good cushion. We started middle of the line with speed. It was a good start until 10 seconds later we heard our number called on the radio. We were over early. All the placing came into play for the rest of the race. Where was Rick? How many boats do we need to pick up?

Rick rounded the top mark second way behind Bob Cole but not too far in front of us. But we had traffic, and lost of it. We rounded 6th and were forced to gybe out early away from the puff. Rick extended on our pack. We got to 5th by the bottom mark. The gap to 4th was huge. We closed all of it by the top mark. Rick was still in 2nd way behind Bob and we passed to take 4th just after the top mark. It was looking good.

Rick blazed downwind in clean air cutting Bob's lead to nothing. We had to deal with traffic and bad air to fight to stay in 4th 1/3 of a leg behind the leaders. At the bottom mark we slipped to 5th behind Hudsons. We split tacks, worked extremely hard...at this point all of my 47 years of age were beating me into submission. I could not breathe, raise my arms, or think. My vision was closing in at one point. After a small respite I could hike, which I did.

Half way up the last leg we saw a very tight finish up ahead. No idea if Rick won. If he did all this fighting for 4th place was for naught. But we fought our way up and finished a clean 4th. As we crossed the line we asked the RC who won. Rick had won the race with a huge comeback. The disappointment was pretty heavy. We lost the regatta by a point.

But then the RC said we ended up with 8 points, which was confusing. Finishes of 3, 2, 1, 1, 1, 4 gave us 12 points. Rick had 2, 1, 3, 2, 2, 1 for 11 points. About half way in to shore we figured out there must be a throwout race with 6 races. If so, we tie Rick and win the tiebreaker. This was in fact the case. We didn't need to sail the last race. We had the regatta won after 5. If we read the sailing instructions we would have known that.

So race 6 was the most intense in years. The pack boats made a huge difference in the outcome of our race. The amount of work to get 4th was more than any win. And it all didn't mean a thing.

Rick sailed a great regatta. But we did too. We made mistakes, he made mistakes, and in the end we barely prevailed.

It is now late Monday night (on vacation). My pain meds have worn off and I feel my back pain again. I have recovered enough to walk. I finally peed Sunday night about 11 for the first time since Sunday morning so I had rehydrated. My hands are still swollen. My wedding ring won't get even close to my knuckle. My sunburn is easing. I can almost straighten my arms again. I have regained some grip strength, enough to do normal things like squeeze toothpaste onto a brush.

Even in my exhausted condition, it was worth it. That was some of the best sailing we have done in awhile. It makes me want to sail E-Scows more. Or it at least keeps me competitively sailing E-Scows past my youth. I need to get in shape so these weekends don't kill me.

Three weeks until the next E-Scow sailing. MC-Scow sailing next weekend. I should be recovered by then.