After well over a decade, the Moore 24 fleet returned to Huntington Lake for its 2023 National Champs. 21 boats from as far as Port Townsend, Seattle and San Diego ventured to the Sierras to this very special spot for many fleets, especially Moore 24s. The event was organized and hosted by Santa Cruz YC, with essential support from the Fresno YC. With a great deal of uncertainty due to the late opening of the campgrounds because of the excessive winter snow melting so late, Syd Moore, Santa Cruz fleet captain, put in enormous and essential effort to get everyone situated. All worked out extremely well as the campgrounds opened up the week of the event.
Huntington Lake provided nice winds throughout the event, albeit slightly lighter than usual, at 5-12 knots. With the thinning of the treelines due to fires several years ago on the upwind shores, the typical scenarios for tactics and strategies that the Huntington "regulars" know well, didn't materialize, and the racers used the entire lake to make their moves. 8 races were sailed over 3 days. Despite a tough race 1, Mooretician skippered by Peter Schoen seemed to be in great form. Joel Turmel on Firefly also started with their drop race, but quickly improved. Rowan Fennel on Paramour, Chris Watts on Watts Moore, Kurt Lahr on Safety Third, and Steve McCarthy on Ruby all showed top 3 promise. Vaughn Seifers on Flying Tiger was super consistent with a 4, 5, 6, but, Mooregasm was consistently in the top 3 with a 1, 3, 1 on day one.
As the regatta continued on day 2, DFZ helmed by Eric Kownacki started to settle in and move up the score sheet with a 6, 2, 3 after a rough day one. Mooregasm continued to sail consistently with a 3, 4, 2 to extend their lead. Firefly, Paramour, Mooretician and DFZ settled into a battle for the remaining top 5 positions. With a solid lead and dropping a 4th going into the final day with two races, Mooregasm needed a top 5 finish to take the regatta. After a rough start, we battled to the tail end of the front pack of 7, but managed to work up to 3rd by the finish to take the win overall, and let the teams battle it out in the last race. Firefly, Paramour and Mooretician started day 3 virtually tied, with DFZ within striking distance. Paramour battled Firefly in a super close final race to finish 1, 2, but Paramour needed to put a boat in between to prevail. DFZ had a great final day with a 2, 3, but Mooretician was able to hang to 4th, with DFZ rounding out the top 5.
This was one of the most competitive Moore 24 regattas ever. 10 different boats posted top 3 finishes during the event! Speed was indeed important, but good starts and tactics could make up for a great deal. The winds were lighter, but arguably more consistent, than normal. Those who have raced at Huntington over the years are very familiar with the upwind strategy of starting low on the line and racing to the left side "to the Boy Scout camp" and playing the shifts up the left shore as the lake narrows. But, starting high on the line and working the right shore proved to be ok and the winning move at times. Our strategy on Mooregasm was to keep it simple - find clear lanes where we could use our height-mode, keep the boat pointed up the lake (lifted tack) and always, always try to line ourselves up for the next puff we could see moving down the lake. Downwind, we focused on being patient, as the puffs would always bring boats behind forward, but if you didn't panic and kept your wits, you'd use those same puffs to extend back out again.
Huntington Lake provided classic lake sailing conditions this time around. Despite some frantic-ness and a few raised voices during boat-handling maneuvers, we did our best to keep our cool, and to remind ourselves that boats with leverage will often look great, but with lake sailing, change is a constant, and more often than not, shifts will come back. Seeking out wind pressure was our primary focus, and crew Ali Fuwat Yuvali used his eyes and intuition to great effect both upwind and downwind. Karl Robrock was fantastic in the cockpit; his tacking technique with the #1 up is absolutely the best there is, and this adds up to many boat-lengths on every best. My wife Sarah Bourdow came out of semi-retirement to handle the bow with ease, as if she'd been racing all year. While Mooregasm wasn't slow, there were many boats with better straight line speed. We made many adjustments throughout the event trying to improve our speed, and did somewhat. However, there seemed to be two modalities, boats that sailed higher/slower and boats that sailed lower/faster. We realized that to continue to succeed, we would need to better position ourselves, relative to other boats, where we could use our ability to point well. This enabled us to overcome several poor starts, including an OCS return, to stay in touch with the lead groups. We will admit that the lake provided some quick comebacks through good luck, but that is always part of the game we play. Thanks to all our fellow Moores for a fantastically competitive regatta. There wasn't a single race under 75 minutes, and that's a ton of concentration, intensity, and energy to expend over 3 days.
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Family