WOW!!! What a regatta the 2013 Rose Cup was for our BYC crew.
Traveling to Sheboygan Wisconsin, skipper Christophe Killian, middle Harrison Vandervort, bow Jack Martin, and chaperone Rob Vandervort, represented the Balboa Yacht Club admirably as one of two teams that competed on the Lake Michigan against other teams from around the nation, including the previous Rose Cup Champions, Will Holz and crew.
We arrived late Tuesday night after leaving school earlier that day, and were glad to be off for the summer. It was great to have a host family to arrive to at 1:00 AM with a bed for the night and breakfast in the morning making a great way to start Wednesday, the first practice day.
Upon arriving at the Sheboygan Yacht Club, we were all eager to get sailing the boat of the regatta, the Elliot 6 meter (m). These boats were really quite a treat because they were the boats sailed in the 2012 Olympic games for the Women’s Match Racing competition. The first practice day provided a nice 12-15kts, a good warm-up getting to know the raw mechanics of the boat like where all the halyards are, how to rig everything properly, where to sit and who’s doing what and when. The second practice day was a little lighter in the 5-10 kt. range giving us the perfect opportunity to fine tune our boat handling and smooth out any remaining kinks. After practice that day with Dave Perry, one of the best Match racers and teachers in the sport, and Sally Barkow, one of the Olympians who sailed these boats, the Opening Ceremony took place officially opening the regatta, which meant game-face time. So we went to bed a little earlier, and woke up rested the next morning, excited about our first races of the regatta.
Checking the wind forecast from our host family’s, the Lambert’s, house, we became a little worried about the 26kt. prediction, so we packed our gear and left for what was to be an interesting day of racing. After we rigged our Elliot 6m a little intimidated by the powerful wind and found ourselves on the lake/small ocean, the wind started gusting up to 35kts. (and I’m convinced a couple 40 kt. puffs too) creating a lot of problems and a lot of thrilling experiences in our boat as we planed over waves and all sat behind the mainsheet to keep the bow out of the water. The Race Committee (RC) finally called it too windy to have fair races, so we went in and waited for the to die off a bit. All the locals said, “If you don’t like the weather, wait ten minutes and it will change.”
Finally the wind made it down to about 20kts., and progressively died to around 13kts. Our first race started with a scare as we split off the line on the wrong the side of a left shift, but we steadily made gains winning our first race against Harrison Hawk and crew. For the second, we were up against the other BYC team, Ryan Davidson, Brando Folkman, and Greg Kent. Careful, not to find ourselves on the wrong side of another shift, we started with a solid lead after excellent prestart maneuvering steadily holding off Ryan, Brando, and Greg, who seemed to always be a boat length closer after each split due to their great boat speed. After two more races, we finished the day with four wins out of four races, and boy were we excited.
The second day brought its fair share of interesting surprises as we went out and tried to sail in fog so thick it you couldn’t see from the RC boat to the pin end of the starting line. Well, we started a race and went upwind in search of the windward mark until we caught up with the match ahead of us, and someone on another boat decided that they’d passed the mark and set their kite, so naturally all the other boats did. It was quite a spectacle, as we found the windward mark about two minutes later downwind of us. The RC once again had to cancel the racing and bring all of us back in to wait for the fog to clear. So to pass the time some of the more innovative sailors (myself) began a jenga game with the subway sandwich boxes in which our lunches had come. Finally after, two hours of waiting, the RC sent us back out to race in a comfortable 10kts. We lost our first race against Buckstaff, won our next, just rolling over the opponent in the last ten feet for the win, and finished our round robin strong with a final win against Holz in the last match leaving us 6 and 1 tied for first with Buckstaff. The RC unfortunately had to cut the quarterfinals due to all of the waiting for wind, and moved right on into the semi-finals where we faced Holz and the Buckstaff team faced Ryan and the crew for the best of three races.
By this time, the wind had considerably dropped off barely reaching the 4kt. marker making a difficult time for the mark set boats, as they diligently scrambled to keep a square and fair course for the competitors.
Sometimes, the ball doesn’t roll your way, and it certainly didn’t roll to us as we started both of our races with an unlucky left shift immediately putting us behind. But we did not give up, initiating an intense tacking duel in the first race with six or seven consecutive tacks and in the second race getting gutsy desperately taking one last high risk maneuver at Holz unfortunately drawing the short stick and a double penalty for ourselves. We learned from it, patted ourselves on the back for putting up the best fight we could in such fluky conditions and moved on looking forward to the petit-final on Sunday where we would race Ryan, Brando, and Greg.
I must say, after four days with the same guys on a boat, you really have to love the sport, enjoy being around the people you sail with, and have someone who knows how to ease the tension, and our bow guy, Jack couldn’t have done a better job, mentally preparing us all for the final day of racing against the other BYC team. We began the day floating in absolutely 0kts. for two hours before moving to a local spot known for a little more pressure, where finally we started our last races of the regatta. Beginning with a fantastic prestart, we couldn’t hold on to our lead, losing the first race, and raring to come back for the second one. Once again, we had an awesome prestart with some truly great match racing all along the windward and leeward legs coming within 10 feet of Ryan, Greg, and Brando at the finish. I know we were disappointed, yet simultaneously thrilled that we put up such a great match race to determine the BYC Governor’s Cup challenger. At the awards ceremony, Andy Rose helped hand out the trophies to the top four teams, us in fourth, Ryan, Brando, and Greg, in third, the Holz team in second, and Buckstaff from San Francisco winning the Rose Cup. At the end, our team was honored with the Nick Scandone Sportsmanship Award, and for those who remember his Corinthian spirit, I speak for our team when I say it was truly the best part of our regatta to be recognized as representing the character and integrity he embodied on and off the water.
Thank you to Paul and Diane Lambert for hosting us in Sheboygan providing us all the comforts of home; thank you to all of the sponsors of the regatta for enabling such an event to happen as well as Sail-Sheboygan and Sheboygan Yacht Club for providing the amazing boats and venue; thank you Rob, Dad, for keeping us teens safe; and most importantly, thank you to the BYC Maritime Sciences and Seamanship Foundation as well as the Balboa Yacht Club and all of the members for helping us do the thing we all love to do, sail.
Submitted by Harrison Vandervort