LIGHTNINGS IN COLUMBIA

International Lightning Class

Southeastern District Championship 2009 Columbia Sailing Club

April 25-26

Four boats from CYC traveled to Lake Murray, Pierce Barden, John Sawyer, Richard Waldkirch and Paul Whitesides sailing Martha Fisher’s boat.

Columbia is centrally located in the district and has hosted the championship for past two years. 15 boats competed. Next year it is moving to the coast.

This year, lack of wind was the big deal, ironically it had blown hard for days leading up to the weekend, and the forecast was good but …….

Our local band of travelers camped along the lake in a great spot, with Richard’s crew Mickey Southerland taking the award for the most refined accommodation. Mickey’s camping ensemble is truly a thing of beauty. Standing room tent, sleeping cot with duvet’, pillow with special meaning, side table, reading lamp, area rug. He does not have a CD player but just turns the one up in the truck. He is the senior member of the tribe so we don’t say anything about the music.

Paul Whitesides and Martha Fisher have Martha’s grandfather’s boat (George Fisher was a great lightning sailor, and Martha must be genetically pre-positioned because she sails very well.) The boat has big history. Paul put a lot of TLC in the boat this winter it looks great and goes fast.

Saturday started with light wind dropping off mid afternoon to nothing but then coming back up late around 4pm and solid all night, what’s that about? The locals said this was normal, maybe we could race at night? The first race was very bad for team Sawyer we could never break out and all the zephyrs bypassed us. Fortunately the race was discarded for being shortened to only two legs, note to PRO’s, three is the class minimum.

Race two started as the wind was coming back. We noticed more wind on the left side near the dam rounded the first mark 3 or 4 and after five legs finished third. Rum drinks on shore were promised so we all sailed hard for the club. I don’t take beer on the boat so my crew situation was getting a little testy.

Life on the porch overlooking the lake, Mickey’s music in the background, rum drink in hand is not bad, and the breeze was so steady.

Sunday; we have one race in the can so we have a lot to do today. The wind has dropped off but the air feels dryer and colder, good signs. We sailed four races today, race 2 &3 in 6-8 mph wind, team Sawyer did well finishing 2 and 1. So we are at a total of 6 points and no one near. Race 4 we are dreading, wind has dropped to 3mph and is looking to go to nothing. We finished 12^th. Lesson learned, minimize tacks, and don’t sail out on the corner chasing wind certainly when you are in first place. Basically we sailed far right into better wind on the downwind leg but the wind filled in from the left and lifted the fleet to the mark. The RC shorten course to a very short third leg weather mark. End of story.

Wind was again on the lake so race five was sailed. We rounded back in the fleet at the first mark probably due to thinking about race 4. Got our heads back on the downwind runs and got in good pressure and in phase with the wind shifts arriving 3^rd at last bottom mark with Paul and Martha close behind. Pierce leading the race and Terry Tyner in second both were out of range so we worked with Paul, maintained a lose cover and finished 3^rd. We both actually closed on the leaders.

Race 4 put us in second with Terry Tyner from Columbia winning. The Wilmington boats were very competitive with all four boats finishing in the top six places. Good sailing.

John Sawyer

See the results here.

SILVER AND MASTERS COUNTDOWN

CYC sailors have been busy picking up silver at various regattas. Chip Till along with Paul Whitesides, Becky Nygren , Emily Aspland and Matias Heinrich took first in the J24 class at Charleston Raceweek - good job guys. Results here.

Laser Sailors already have 2 district events under their belts. In Beaufort , SC Martin Willard took 2nd and Glenn Walker took 4th place. Results and photos here. At Lake Norman Martin picked up another 2nd place trophy. Results on the D12 website here.

On another note the Laser Masters NA's are less than a month away. 63 sailors are already pre-registered and we have quite an international flavor. Check the Website here to see who's coming. A big thank you in advance to all those who are volunteering their time, effort and expertise to run this event.

TEAM CF TAKES 2ND IN CLASS AT BVI SPRING REGATTA

Team Cape Fear holds their heads quite high after the fifth and final race of the BVI Spring Regatta. Skipper Tom, with first mate Rhett Hissam at his side, helmed the S/V Abbey to a decisive first place finish (...bullet, number one, ahead of everyone else, numero uno ...yes, not hard to tell we've already hit the refreshment tent) sealing our second place class finish. Not even the local team on Saga Boy could keep up with us today. Mr. Chill put us at the boat end at the start so close to the RC that we could smell the jerk chicken cooking down below. With a 20 degree starboard lift at the start we had the fleet pinned for the first 10 minutes of the race. Although there were some doubts as to our complete understand of the CSA (Caribbean Sailing Assoc.) rating system, our stopwatches toward the end of the race hinted that we'd somehow pleased the wind gods today.

At the post race debrief, we considered possible positive influences over the boat's performance. There was serious consideration given to Will Brown the human whisker pole, Mary's lucky coffee stained hat, Kim the boom girl, draining of the water in all tanks, the S/V Abbey's ability to scream downwind (even out of the Puerto Rican sandwich - you had to be there...), Tom's expectation of open (very open) channels of communication , or maybe it was just the mushroom tea over at the Bomba Shack... naaaa....

We're pretty pumped right now, and pretty into the refreshment... Best to all. And honestly, we'd recommend this event to anyone who's been down here. We've really had a blast...




Best Regards,

THOMAS E HISSAM

TEAM CAPE FEAR BVI PART 3

Team Cape Fear holds their heads a bit higher at the end of today's racing. This was mainly due to the "Committee" agreeing to the correct course (with the assistance of the our "mashing" the GPS button and establishing an MOB at the Start/Finish line). Two more races today. After day one, we entered the day in 3rd of 15 boats in the Bareboat B catagory 3rd not 4th for protest threw out the 3rd place man for 28.1, not sailing the proper course. Once again we were on the Norman Island course with the possibility of 8 different courses.

The wind vacillated from 80 to 110, Cowen skippered today driving with Tip Chill calling great tactics (well assisted by lots and lots of input from the rest of the team). We started both races on starboard, the first one 1/3 down the line. The second 8 seconds late at the committee boat windward of the fleet.

Race one was around a windward mark leaving it to starboard, then leeward mark then finish. Even though we did not get the shore lifter that others in the fleet profited from, we came in 4th. We went for clean air especially since there are so many 50 and 51.5 in the class that like to roll us. We had a great downwind and leeward rounding.

The second race was around the windward mark, Pelican Island and Flannigan island. We managed to stay in clean air, had a bit of quick tack and back at the windward mark, then kept the others at bay. This was the course where we lost the committee boat location yesterday, so we let the GPS wisely point the way.... That let us lay the line perfectly and take a #2 place.

Saba Boy is out front having picked up 2 more bullets, but we have second overall in our grasp. We'll just see if we can hang on to it in tomorrow's final races.


BTW, boat name is ABBEY and pictures can be found at YachtShots.com


Best Regards,

THOMAS E HISSAM

Team Cape Fear does the BVI Spring Regatta

Part 1

We got here on Sunday, and took the 39.3 Beneteau Cyclades from Road Town to Nanny Cay. The Race from Nanny Cay to Bitter End was some 25 nm. The wind was from the East about 110 and blew 15-23. We were only 4 on the boat, Chip Till, his friend Kim, Will (Duke Student that crews on Mary Harrison's Tartan) and I. A 50 footer was on port tack at the boat and caused some consternation, buy we had a good start and pointed well. The rain was intermittent. The only snag we had was negotiating the current between Peter and Salt Island in a header in the rain. That cost us. The rest was uneventful going around Cooper and all the Dog Islands leaving them to starboard. We took 6 of 12, about 30 minutes out of first.

The next day were some dinghy races at Bitter End. We represented the USA in the Nation's Cup. It was light wind (8-10) and we are big boyz. I did the Laser and finished in the middle, Chip and Will almost sunk the Hobie Wave, althought they had great starts.

The race back to Nanny Cay was great! Chip put us in the right place to shut hte door on 3 - 50 footers. It was most downwind. We took 4 of 11. Believe it or not, after adjustments, we finished 4th. 20 seconds out of 3rd to a 47 ft, 1 minute out of 2nd to a 50 ft and 1:30 out of first.

We decided to get serious now. Finally took the anchor off the bow and stowed it below along with 200 ft of heavy chain. Perhaps we will be more bow up downwind. Mary Harrison and Bob Cowan are here now and the race begins soon.



Best Regards,

THOMAS E HISSAM

Part 2
First day BVI Spring Regatta, Team Cape Fear holds their heads relatively high finishing 2 races with a second and a seventh (out of 15 Bareboat B Class boats) possibly putting us in third place overall. That latter finish being due to the thought process which goes something like, hey we can't find the RC boat but we know the fleet in front of us knows exactly where it is so we'll follow them... That, of course, is followed by that uncomfortable feeling that comes when they all tack away to where you thought you outa be going in the first place... But hey, that's racing in paradise. By the way, racing in bareboat class isn't necessarily the screaming and yelling, gnashing of teeth, fiberglass crunching type thing we're used to on Tuesday evenings in Banks Channel. Today we raced up and down Drake Channel in the first race and then circled around a couple of islands and select rocks in the second. We're racing Tom Hissam's Beneteau 39.3 out of the Tortola Moorings fleet. Tom's crew for the regatta is made up of locals Mary Harrison, Chip Till, Kimberly Booker and Bob Cowen. We've pulled in Duke University's Will Brown for his giant brain capacity (along with his long arms which makes him the perfect human "bearing out pole" for the headsail). We'd write more now but we need to head off to the refreshment tent and on to some good Caribbean food.

Best Regards,


Tom Hissam

Results