A traditional treat I reserve each visit is the sleep quarters at the BoatHouse which was originally quarters for crews working industries on Lake Michigan. The ‘barge” was beached and made a VRBO “motel” now. It’s quaint, quiet, seethes with history and ghosts and is made of varnished wood floors, walls and ceilings. It’s so antiquated that there was barely enough electric current to charge my instruments!

The weather this year was knot-so-fabulous, starting with light wind on practice Thursday, building to maybe 8 to 12mph on Friday, regatta day 1, with a complex chop and 2 foot swells all boats found tricky to negotiate. Invisible currents mattered a lot. I have experienced such a scenario before, but it takes hours for me to tune the rig and steer with precision through those conditions whereas the local skippers re-learn it in one race; thus, I am accustomed to being out-sailed on the first race each time! The escalating wind and waves required rig tightening between races among other adjustments. After three races, the wind quit and that was the end of the first day. We finished the first race bottom third, second race mid-fleet, and third raced top third; gratifying improvements each time.

Saturday did knot exist; no nothing other than we were visited by lots of small nasty black flies (unknown if they swim out to bite people or drop from the heavens, or just magically evolve from thin air a mile or so from the shore!).

This regatta was my first exposure to the newer race management technology I have read about but not personally witnessed heretofore; called “Bots”.  These are clever orange donut-shaped rings having an electric trolling motor inside and controlled remotely from the Flag boat.  Once towed to the start area, they are directed to position themselves here-and-there to form the racecourse.  They offer perfectly square starting lines, and theoretically always-square-race courses (but not in practice), and easy-to-see turn marks, all of which lack anchors and lines so there’s nothing to snag passing boats.  Also, these require much less human effort-sweat (but no less management-stress-sweat!) free of the need to reset heavy anchors.  They are easy on the hands and return home by themselves when instructed (better than your kids).  That said, not all on earth is perfect; they cost about six thousand $ apiece, so they are rather prohibitive for small clubs/events, and unfortunately limited on occasion (and by model, I suppose) by excess wind and waves as we saw on day 3.

Sunday, the third and last day of competition offered much larger swells and a winds 15mph to over 20.  We kept using our 155% genoa with success and were fourth in line toward the weather mark.  However, the Raced Committee decided a wind shift required a course realignment and announced that decision to all via radio BUT the damn BOTS were unable to achieve proper positions because of the heavy wind and increasing waves so the race was abandoned just before any boats reached the top mark.  As one competitor said, “It's hard to not take that personally.”  Thereafter, the wind vanished, the rain poured and we, the boat in and out, everything was soaked, and I became chilled.  As we bobbed around waiting for more wind, we were visited by a Wren (House-type, I think) which perched on a lifeline to rest a minute.  We were also passed by butterflies predicting abandonment of the rest of the event.
I don’t know where I finished overall, and I don’t really care as I will return for the next CCR (Lake Erie next time) if at all possible.