For our last regatta of this year, we headed down to Lake Monroe for the Sanford Sailfest Regatta. After the skippers meeting and a short postponement on shore Saturday, we launched the boat and sailed out to the course. It took a little while, but the wind definitely showed up with wind speeds maxing out at around 10-12kts towards the end of the day. The flat conditions on Lake Monroe with some decent pressure made for some fun lake sailing like we are used to having on our home lake, Lake Lanier. Also something that we were used to, was having Lee and Jo Ann Estes, 2 Lake Lanier Sailing Club members, around! It was a surprise to see familiar faces at the skipper’s meeting, and we soon found out they had driven down because Lee was PRO for our course!
True to Team Reddaway form, the weekend began a little hectic. We all arrived in Sanford at different times through different ways. Darby drove down from Atlanta by herself and picked Hannah up from the airport, where we discovered that the trailer lights no longer worked. Wheeler flew in the next morning, which left us girls to rig and tune by ourselves. We needed to totally retune the boat after the forestay breaking at the last regatta. Thank you to Jim White for helping us get the mast up and for his additional help rigging and tuning! After stepping the mast, Hannah left to pick up Wheeler at the airport and Darby and Jim finished rigging and tuning the boat. Speeding through Orlando and Sanford (and all the construction in these 2 cities - the most I had seen in a while) to get back in time for the 1st race was stressful, but we ended up making it...just in time for a postponement!
We got a total of 2 races in on Saturday. The first race was quite long. We think it clocked in at around an hour and fifteen minutes. We had a killer start by the pin and felt like it was going to be a good race. We saw lots of breeze out left and decided to go for it. However, we found ourselves eventually drifting down from those we were sailing next to. Overall, we just felt like we couldn’t point as high as other people on the course. We ended up finishing last, partly due to shiftiness, partly due to poor tactical decisions, and partly due to factors we can’t pin down. It was definitely not our best showing. Afterwards, we discussed whether it’s better to tack in headers or wait a little bit to see if they continue. We tried tacking more quickly whenever we got a shift in the 2nd race and I think it helped.
For the second race, the wind had really picked up! After two generals, we finally got a clean start off. We started by the pin again and got another really good start. We hung left again for the first upwind, but this time we really committed to it. In my opinion, we did a much better job tacking in those 10-15 degree headers which we weren’t really doing during the first race. This helped us round the weather mark in 4th. Downwind we were keeping a good pace with the boats in front of us and were even gaining distance as puffs rolled in. However, a few bad jibes at the downwind caused us to lose our position and we were the 2nd to last boat to the gate. Upwind we felt fast again and thought we had a chance. We sailed off right this time, but got caught on the outside of a 30 degree left shift. We finished 2nd to last. An improvement from the 1st race, but definitely not where we want to be.
Sunday was a drifter for sure. We launched at around 9:30 and floated around until PRO Lee Estes called it a little after noon. Though we were upset the wind never filled, it was a great time to socialize with fellow Lightning sailors and make a few TikToks on the boat (Disclaimer: This was 100% Wheeler’s idea). When we weren’t making videos, we took turns skippering and napping - a very relaxing Sunday for sure. The weather was perfect as well and was a nice escape from the 40 degree temps back in Atlanta, GA and Johnson City, TN. For your viewing pleasure:
Thanks to the Lake Monroe Sailing Association for putting on a great event. Also a big shoutout to Jim and Kim White for housing us, helping us fix our trailer lights on Saturday night, brewery suggestions, and even towing our boat over to a local sailor’s house to be stored over the winter until we’re back in Sanford in January (allowing us to hit the road early). We are not sure what we would have done without them this weekend. We are excited to be back down in Sanford for the New Year's Skegs and Kegs Regatta in January for more sailing and some more escape from the cold!
Thank you to everyone who has kept up with us and our blog posts in 2019. Happy New Year and we hope 2020 brings lots of good things and more sailing for all of you!
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