1998 Mississippi Valley District Championships

or "Do the Carlyle Twist-er"

Matt Burridge

Carlyle Sailing Association, Carlyle, IL, June 12-14

Four years ago Bill Faude jinxed us by saying "it never blows at Carlyle", of course, it virtually blew Perry Lewis off of Bill's boat the next year, and it has done nothing but bluster ever since. Some of this has to do with being in the midwest in spring time and some of is El Nino or the famous "La Flamingo effect" ('97: defined as "strong & hot wind generated from a gathering of sailors at the Pink Flamingo Lounge, corner of Route 127 and 1st Ave. in downtown Carlyle, Illinois").

Anyway, on this Friday afternoon, district measurement started promptly at 2:00pm and continued until the warning came to tie the boats down to the aircraft tie down loops (you think I'm kidding, right?) in the asphalt and head for shelter, NOW! Our cookout expert, Gerry Paoli, had just lit the coals for the cook out and had to dash for the observation building as the 5:15pm squall arrived. Arthur Merdinian confirmed a funnel cloud sighting as he continued to drive towards the harbor (why not turn around?). The storm produced a Hurricane Bob-like squall and about 2" of rain in 20 minutes with 50+ knots over the grounds and a wonderful double rainbow to signal the storm's passage. Very impressive!

After the frontal passage, it looked a lot like the '98 Mid Continent weather pattern of only 6 weeks prior, a regatta on the edge of a cold front, WNW breeze, lowering humidity, bright sunshine and puffy winds.

Saturday had 4 races scheduled and all were fitted in by Ted Beier and his RC team. All races were WL with offset mark and leeward gate. Ted and team did excellent job of truing up the course during the day.

Race #1: Not Good - We had a good start that immediately congealed into a flurry of indecision and "pin balling" between sides of the course. Spending too much time in the confused middle of the beat was clearly not a decisive enough action and we had to scramble like a minnow about to be swallowed to round in the top 5. We must have done something right at the top of the beat because we rounded in 3rd, chasing Moriarty and Chandler Owen from Nashville. There is something distinctly un nerving about chasing your former teammate in another boat. We passed Chan at the gate but couldn't catch Moriarty upwind and watched the Penguin take the gun, with several white boats (Burke, Owen and Cully Ward) mixing it up with John Huhn in his "starting line yellow" 14114, who wound up 5th in his first Districts race. Unfortunately several boats had difficulty handling the 20° shifts, holes and puffs up to 18 knots and went swimming.). Luckily these boats were all righted and everyone was OK.

Race #2 -Sail clean - Better start and better 1st beat, still got there behind Terry Burke, Dan Moriarty and Gerry Paoli. On the second beat we had consolidated on the boats to the right of the beat when we noticed that Rick Bernstein was nicely positioned in a nice puff of 15+ and lift out on the left and was reeling us in like a dead catfish. We left Moriarty in the middle and dove for Rick, to cut our losses, which were really starting to mount up impressively!. As we neared, I knew something was not right and yelled "starboard" once, twice.... and then delivered a resounding "You're NOT GOING TO MAKE IT! In fact, we spun the boat in to a last ditch tack to port to avoid removing his leeward chainplates from his pristine Nickels. Rick acknowledged his foul and performed wheelies while we proceeded to the windward mark. Eventually we stretched out into a 3 minute lead and did not have good vantage point on the order of finishes.

I apologize for not having been more aware of my surroundings but the conditions and situations were pretty all-absorbing in this "in/out/ look out" type boat handling condition. In fact, only after turning my mainsheet end for end over lunch (the cleat had eaten the through the sheathing in just 2 races with all of the adjustments!) did we noticed the wind conditions were changing. One of those for whom conditions changed was Kat Ward who capsized in this race. It was also Kat's first skippering experience for a Districts regatta (on the winning team last year).

We went out a little early for race #3 and realized the shifting conditions were due to formation of cloud streets which were setting up rather nicely between 1,5000' and 2,000' above the lake. On a normal day maybe this wouldn't have effected the wind very much but the humidity was falling quickly and it was a 10 UV rating type of day, lots of sun heating on the water. Each cloud was creating a shadow down draft and a new variable to be managed.

Race #3 - Burridge sandwich - I became a hopeless piece of meat at the mercy of others between Moriarty and Bernstein on the second beat. I was spit out the back and the only recourse was to get lucky, which we did to pass these two, but left William Hoffmeister totally unmolested in the middle right of the second beat. This is the thing you should NEVER DO, leave William, Mandy and JD alone. They blew by us and won the race easily while we were able to hold off Burke and Moriarty who had a very close finish.

Race #4 - "Hello, Stupid: tune for the lulls, boat handle in the puffs, not vice versa. How many times do I have to learn the same lessons???

We changed the set up (mast blocking, jib leads, height of the jib on the wire and wire luff tension) to zero the boat in on peak performance for about 8-10 knots of breeze. As the wind eased into this range, we became very quick upwind. At one point we were behind Burke and Moriarty but played the "cloud shadow side of the gate", and footed through underneath Moriarty while on a long starboard tack out to the left. Dan moaned "are we ever getting out of here?" About 30 seconds after his wail, we hit the velocity and shift, tacked and both crossed Burke. The last beat saw Burke repeating our "exit stage left" at the gate maneuver but it only battered him back to an 8th place finish. The conditions settled into a pleasant replay of the "Henderson Harbor 8-10 knots" which our boat tune really likes and we took the bullet with Moriarty 2nd and Hoffmeister 3rd.

It had been a good day for the Carlyle boats landing 6 of the top 8 positions, after four races: 1. Burridge with 6 pts. 2. Moriarty 10 pts. 3. Hoffmeister 18 pts. 4. Burke 25 pts. 5T Merdinian and Bernstein with 31 pts. .(tie breaker to Merdinian who was skippering his first Districts) and 7T Bob Cotton tied with Toby Heisler, each with 33 pts. The strategies for the next day looked interesting, given the point totals, but that's a story that did not get written.

The district meeting was run in an expedited fashion, electing Herbert Cochran of fleet #274 Memphis our new District Commodore, congratulations! At the party, Gerry Paoli assumed the role of "Fleet #266 Genetic Engineering Officer" as he advised those in attendance with whom they should and should not breed. Clearly he needs to pay more attention to his duties because fleet #266 has had 7 babies in the past 2.5 years!

Dinner was a spectacular prime rib feast and the quarter barrels of ale rolled.

The next day was a little wild seeing the T storm cells light up the TV radar, blow down trees and hearing reports of tornado touch downs between Carlyle and St. Louis. Racing was called off, the event concluded, a bottle of Dr. Jim Sears "private reserve" Champagne consumed, trophies awarded and the event ended.

My team mates Jennifer Aljets and Mike Murphy were exemplary and helped me only panic at the right moments. Thank you for such a great job!! At the end of the event I think we were lucky to have beaten Moriarty (who scored 1-2-3-4 in very tricky conditions), clearly he's a very competitive skipper who is only going to improve as he adjusts to his new boat.

Please plan on racing with us either at next year's Mid Continent or the '99 NAs. Check out our web site (wih pictures) at http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/topflash/ as we prepare for the those events plus the 1998 US Pan Am Trials this October 15-18 at Lake Carlyle, where it always blows.