J24 Class District 8

Life in the middle of the pack or the 2008 Easter Regatta

By Ryan Hamm

Squid #1656

The 2008 Easter Regatta was held this past weekend on Beautiful Lake Murray at the newly constructed Columbia Sailing Club.  Boats starting showing up as contractors were clearing out there equipment on Thursday.  The facilities were superb and the members were rightfully proud.  The launching went well with the club obviously having plenty of experience doing this year after year.  Friday sailing was in tough lake conditions with race one starting with the wind direction changing several times during the race inverting the fleet some and then correcting it.  Some might have thought it was too fluky but when looking at the results 5 of the top 6 in this race finished top 5 in the entire event.  I finished 13^th in that one and 12^th for the regatta so, it seems consistent.  The race committee tried to get another race in and got off a start.  Boats desperately tried to get to the first mark and most failed.  After about 35 minutes only one boat had made the first mark and was unable to get to the offset.  The race committee abandoned the race and everyone was thankful and went in for the Low country boil and many took part in the game of “flipcup” that was organized by the crew on “Squid”.  It went much of the night.

The following morning our crew had a little harder time getting up but we got to the race course and were happy to see a better breeze.  Racing got going early and the breeze stayed out of the same general direction.  After the first 3 races the wind died for a little while but filled in nicely and the race committee was happy to give us 5 good races for the day.  We were more competitive most of the day thinking we just might have figured this J24 stuff out.  Race 5 brought us back to reality when we for some reason took the opposite side of the course than had worked so well the other 4 races.  But we were able to move up to 11^th with a couple top 10 finishes.  Team Tarheel driven by Scott Griffin was best on the course this day with no finish worse than 6^th and 2 wins.  Tony Parker on Bangor Packet kept it interesting with a solid day.  Not too far behind was the crew with Patrick Wilson and Nate Vilardebo (Nate Dog to many of you).  They were from last years winning team of Jesus Lizard who won last year and represented the US in the Pan Am Games.  They sailed on Rush.  This night had a good southern BBQ with all the fixins with the unending kegs of beer. 

Day 3 brought on cooler temps with stronger breeze.  Team Tarheel started the day with a pretty good lead but they left open the door with a 10^th in the deciding race.  But Tony Parker was unable to get in with a 3^rd and 6^th on the day.  Coming in 3 points short of victory.  Patrick and Nate were able to hold onto 3^rd edging Skip Dieball by one point.  We were back of the fleet trying to fight our way out of a paper bag.  We were able to get 12^th place on my first traveling J24 regatta.  We thought we had dropped even more after a hard day in big wind shifts that caught us on the wrong side all morning long.  Overall there were 4 boats from Charleston.  I was glad to see Marteen Zongee, Jim Smith and Tom Mackin, and Chris Hamilton all get to this well run event.  Hopefully you will see more of the Charleston contingent in the future.  Hopefully some of you will look at coning to Charleston Race Week in a few weeks.  For more info go to www.charlestonraceweek.com/ . 

Thanks to all that put on such a great event at the Columbia Sailing Club.  For full results go to http://columbiasailingclub.org/easter/.  I think a good time was had by all.  I am looking forward to trying again next year and maybe even breaking into the top 10.

Sincerely,
Ryan