President’s Day Cup – A First!

Hi Everyone,

Quaboag Pond sure does surprise us with ice sometimes…it hit 70 in Antarctica this week, no ice in almost all of Europe, flooding wet ice in Sweden, and nothing to the North of us.

And it was VERY good ice. I loved Bob’s statement, "When it’s the only ice, it’s a 10!" I also really appreciated Bob reporting on the ice Friday and re-confirming Saturday that conditions were good. We had ICE. We had wind!

Since T our race chair is still across the pond, I volunteered to run a regatta. Since both very experienced and brand new racers had a great time on Lake Winnepesaukee a few weeks ago, I wanted to keep the momentum and interest going. There was some back and forth on what to call this regatta and, ultimately, I said, "We will call it the President’s Day Regatta." Done.

We are challenged by Quaboag given it’s not the biggest pond out there, but I asked Eben to set the windmark and was glad when the wind shifted slightly to the right so we could get a bit longer course by moving the leeward mark a bit to the left… A smaller course made for more tacking, but that’s good practice too.

Running my first ice boating regatta for NEIYA, let’s say I got to feel…well…..very Presidential. The skipper meeting started on time, 11 skippers signed up to race, I announced racing would start at 10:30 am, and the flag dropped at 10:29.

My boat is out of commission and so are my ribs (long story), so I really enjoyed observing the racers’ style and techniques. Jeff Kent got faster and faster with each race stretching out his lead every leg and in every race. Three races, three bullets. He makes it look so easy!

Most of the tangling was between Bill (who sticks his leg out at the leeward mark rounding!?), Eben (who does the same!?), Matt Knowles (you should have stayed cause the wind came back), and Rick Bishop who much prefers bigger breeze. Scott Valentine was duking it out with returning racer Jack Ericcson…and a big sorry to Randy Rice who could not find the pond so he missed the first three races. Based on his other scores he would have been tops on the leader board…Lastly, congratulations to Ed Demerest in "Splinter DN/1914"…It’s an older boat and Ed is really getting good with his starts and seems to really enjoy this new thing called racing. Maybe he will find something at the next swap meet…

Jeff had his drone up for the 4th race and hopefully he will share some video of the racing…

We completed 7 races including a 45 minute break for lunch. I am not a tyrant…

Here are the scores.. And T is coming back tomorrow so I will graciously hand back the reigns of power. To all, thank you for letting me feel presidential yesterday.

Think more ice,

Karen Binder DN 5630

Bob S. stated that the cruisers would all be mindful of the racing and that was really really appreciated. Thank you!