CWB WOOD REGATTA The 1996 Wooden Open One Design (WOOD) Regatta was a great success - good winds and a great turnout. And probably no one enjoyed it more than the first-time racers. One of them, Beverly Marshall, a Sail NOW! graduate and CWB volunteer, took the time to share her experience. September 27 and 28, 1996: Great day, sunny weather up to 70 degrees. Judy Schwan, Ken McMillen and I chose our boat anticipating being at the helm, racing. This will be a first time experience for me having to know the course and the flags. Meg and Dick were each taking a Beetle Cat. Though we would have liked to race in their group, we settled on a Blanchard Jr. At the skippers' meeting Vern Velez maps our course: from the red nun north to the green navigation can by Gasworks and then south to the two orange buoys by Chandler's Cove. Groups A and B will go twice around the course, staying out of the speed lanes. Group C (the smaller boats) will go only once around but must circumnavigate the speed lanes once before heading down the lake, thereby creating a little loop within their bigger loop. As we head out the wind is dying, so the committee boat raises the postponement flag, red and white stripes, for a 10-minute wait.
Judy takes the helm first as we watch for our flags with some confusion. We see the white and blue for the Group A and then their red flag, which is our five-minute flag. We miss the noflag period of one minute so when we see the red flag we are not sure whether or not togo.We see a couple boats from our group go across so Judy follows suit. We are safely across. (I first met Judy during sailing lessons at CWB and we've had some great boating times since then, taking intermediate lessons at Seattle Sailing Association, joining Seattle Women's Sailing Association, taking a couple of excursions to the San Juans through SWSA, and volunteering at CWB at the July Boat Festival and the '95 WOOD Regatta. Judy now enjoys teaching new students at the Center.) She heads upwind, tacking and reading the course very well, observing the other boats tacking from the east side of the lake. We deduce that, yes, this is how we are to avoid the speed lanes, one of those things you discover along the course by watching the others. The wind is picking up as we round the west side of the speed lanes. We head to the green can where we will jibe, then it's my turn at the helm. I start out on a beam reach following Harvey Nobe in the Friendship sloop Amie with her tanbark sails. This is especially fun for me being in my first race along with Harvey who, two summers earlier, was my main instructor
when I was in Sail NOW!. I managed to sail with Harvey a few Tuesday evenings in a row and enjoyed his sense of humor and easy style of teaching. We round the two south buoys and head upwind again. We are behind Harvey and we decide to try a starboard tack away from Harvey's course, but we loose wind on that tack. We go back to port tack and pick up speed. Following the headers and lifts north, we soon pull ahead of Harvey in his gaff-rigged boat. We need to return to starboard tack to make it around the west side of the speed lane. Maneuvering past a motor boat we are still leading. When we tack back to make it around the cans, we make it past the first one, but can't pinch by the second one. We fall off and loose some headway going into this tack by not bringing it all the way through. I'm heading too close to the wind for a few seconds. Finally we get the momentum back by falling off but, by then, Harvey passes us by quite a few boat lengths. I discover part of the excitement of racing is also one of the hazards. Losing track of what our boat needed to be doing for a few seconds while eying the other racers left us in their dust. I head to the green marker and Judy takes over running downwind. Ken does the last leg to cross the finish line. Now that the wind is blowing very nicely, Vern calls a second race of once around the
You just never know who or what you're going to find on a Lake Union regatta course, but (from left to right) the Friendship sloop, Flying Dutchman, El Toro and Pelican all managed to make room for this unique "entry" in the WOOD Regatta. - Beverly Marshall photo 4