Awesome weekend on and off the water. THANK YOU Sydnie for beating the drum and keeping us all up to speed on the available camp sites and overall shoreside details. After an ominous drive through a few burn zones approaching the lake, we arrived to a full lake with nice afternoon breeze blowing Fri afternoon. We missed the practice session Fri but Joel Turmel filled us in on the breeze variations up the lake possibly due to the burn areas up the lake. After setting up camp at Rancheria we enjoyed the warm evening with a campfire cooked dinner and a few drinks to shake off the drive.
Sat am breeze filled on schedule and we managed to get 3 nice races in the middle to upper #1 range. We noticed a few #2s in the fleet which may have been faster in Race 2 and 3 but hard to say. Breeze was puffy and very shifty at the top of the lake.Sunny and warm so sailing in shorts and teeshirts- Magic
Top boat of the day was the mighty Rainbow Kitten Surprise (despite us feeding several stiff drinks to Scott fri night!). Top three boats within 2 points and the top 8 boats within 7 points.
Sunday showed signs of change to come with a little lighter fill in the morning and big grey thunder clouds over the bottom of the lake. We managed to get one good race off in the mid to low range of the #1.
We managed to draw even with the Rainbow Kitten Surprise so the second race would be all on.
Second race started in light breeze and fleet managed to get up to the weather mark and half way back down the lake before the wind shut down completely. Firefly had a solid beat to round well in the lead but first to run out of wind on the way back down the lake. We had a bad start and well back from the front at the weather mark. Scott covered us up the beat well ahead but we got bow even with them as the wind died on the run. The fleet spread out across the lake on the leading edge of the old breeze. Other fleets showed the new breeze coming down the lake at us to make us finish the run up wind. Was not clear if the new breeze would be from the left or the right so all bets were off until it settled in. We bet on the left and came out in the top three for the balance of the race. Scott came back into it from the right and finished just behind us. Great racing and we got very lucky in the end with the full roll of the dice.
Thanks to my crew, John Stewart, Keith Stahnke and Toby Ingrey for keeping the Flying Circus up to speed and in phase.
I am relatively new to the Moore fleet starting in 2007 but did have the honor and pleasure of crossing tacks with Joel on the 55. I hope that the fleet will continue to honor Joel by making the trek up the mountain to enjoy High Sierra Regatta for years to come.
William Erkelens
Flying Circus #11
