News / Articles

CAPTAIN’S QUARTERS REGATTA 2024

Paul Latour

CAPTAIN’S QUARTERS REGATTA 2024

Summary: Started with QUIET, finished with LOUD!

Plus, first ever publication of symptoms and treatment of the dreadful “Mariner’s Pocket-Picked” Disease.

This regatta dates back to 1972, first orchestrated by and still championed by the Captain’s Quarters Marina, Bar & Grill in Prospect, Kentucky, on the south bank of the Ohio river.

My visits began fourteen years ago, initially to reciprocate for the Louisville sailors

who came to the PPYC Equalizer regatta; now the visit has become a mission of its own. The Louisville sailors are gracious and industrious, the venue eye-candy, the up-actions exceed the-downs, the sailing conditions variable, the race strategies obfuscated by significant local-knowledge often illogical and all co-mingled with floating logs and whatever's…not unlike the river races of Nashville, plus the even bigger frequent barge traffic.

Consistently, I am the only out-of-state attendee. Our arrival is always greeted with salutes, open slippage, “glad you’re here and here’s a beer” greetings.

The Captain’s Quarters is worth the visit; two bars, live music, good food, lots of waiters and waitresses, good service (including directly to the visiting boats), wide-open view of the Ohio and the many many boats. There are boat slips in front of the restaurant and lots of lawn chairs from which spectators can watch the regatta unfolding. Also, the C-Quarters has a large tourist/wedding/conference motor-yacht parked in front plus enough spaces for competitors to tie to; all this lends itself to vigorous socialization and fellowship among the boaters before and after the races.

Louisville’s local S2 racer and boat-fixer magician, Micky, shares my distain over careless landfilling of old-but-worthy S2’s so he captures all he can and has successfully rehabilitated hulls time and again, so Louisville has a fleet of thirteen S2-7.9, maybe the largest in the country now. The 7.9 boat works just right on the Ohio river and small lake environments, just as it has in Nashville.

We have raced the Quarters both as a handicap PHRF boat or as a one-design S2-7.9; this year was the latter with eight boats, the most ever S2.
Sharing the course with a total of 22 boats from 20-ft to 36-ft, especially having separate starts, makes for busy and sometimes tricky mark roundings (test question: which boat determines the diameter of the three boat length circle around marks?). There have been over 40 boats attending this regatta on occasion and the interest is returning. The range of racing expertise ranges from life-long to novice. I have won this event once or twice, earned mostly seconds or thirds so I was hoping to improving that history.

Saturday started adversely and quiet with a wind forecast of 5mph, which last only an hour pre-race then fizzled to nothing at all; no races.

Oh well, not all on earth is perfect!

So, we instead visited an old exquisite Louisville neighborhood having a large number of red-brick and other antique homes of wonderful architecture, the St. Jame’s Court neighborhood, which hosts the largest tented arts & crafts show in the US; 600 participants! I was compelled to acquire an energetic photograph of what else in Louisville, Derby racing horses at a finishing moment which, to my eye, resembled the energy and dynamics of crew and racing sailboats in close quarters (you’d have to see to understand)! So, the day ended a success capped by a waterfront dinner and wine; life was good even without the wind!

Sunday shaped up nicely with a wind direction that allowed perfect windward-leeward courses, save one slightly reaching leg, and allowed five races. The starting line was a bit too close to the shoreline for my comfort to do a starboard start at the favored pin. The local boys started that way anyway also because the wind along the shore hugs the parked towboats which provided a starboard lift and almost enough to fetch the upwind mark; but not quite. So, most of my starts were at the opposite flag-boat unfavored end, some second tier, one tense but successful third tier, held my lane or tacked to the mid-river puffs and prevailed. The gusts were about 20mph on occasion prompting downsizing the foresail to the 105% and we again prevailed.

During pre-race practice, we observed that a downwind mark rounding would be optimized by a “jibe-set” spinnaker hoist maneuver onto port tack because the mark was set worryingly proximal (for we visitors) to remnant abandoned dock pillions so a standard hoist could potentially be troubled by such obstructions should a goof occur (which happens rarely, of course). To his credit, my foredeck man, Chris, mastered the maneuver immediately and our every jibe-hoist was rapid and effective.

Noteworthy, the last leg of the last race required some skillful maneuvering to recover from second-back-to-first but our sailing was imperiled by an unexpected below-the-belt handicap; I developed and now describe the hitherto unnamed “Mariner’s Pocket-Picked Disease”! My padded pants have (had) rear pockets and the right one unfolded and became entrapped into the spinnaker turn block marked by symptoms: 1. that the sail was totally un-trimmable and 2. I myself was trapped and unable to move across the boat! Treatment: the matter was resolved by a judicious knife-blade surgical excision of the picked pocket. But alas, we were unable to make up for time lost and suffered the second place.
(I’ve replicated the problem using the other pocket for the photograph).

Ultimately, we finished the event with 1,1,1,1,2 so took away the local trophy and are now automatically expected to return next year and I can hardly wait!

My sincere thank you to Chris Dupont and to Angela and Chris Balliet of Holland, MI who delivered the boat to Louisville for me and stuck-around to crew with us. We were slightly undermanned but loud achievers none-the-less. Go Captain’s Quarters Regatta and all it’s people!

Return to Previous Page