June 10-11
East Coast jetters organized at West River Sailing Club this past
weekend for the Dave Irey Memorial. Its hard to believe that we could face a
fourth straight week of heavy air sailing on the Chesapeake, but that's what
we got. Saturday dawned cool and blowy, and with Thomas Point Light
registering puffs to 33 kts, jet racing was called off at the skippers
meeting. All the better, as a signficant portion of the fleet used the
time for naps, repairs or playing Ultimate, and it was a mighty perky fleet
that showed up on Sunday morning.
While the weather had moderated a great deal, there were still big
puffs rolling through -- perhaps not 20 knots, but certainly close to that.
Racing was inside the river, working North toward the mouth of Rhode
River. Classic stuff - channeled puffs coming from the left out of West River,
from the right out of Rhode River, big wind at the bottom of the course,
light and freaky at the top, plus the added fun of crossing at least one and
sometimes two channels on the way up and down. Lots of passing lanes,
lots of shifting gears, a sufficiency of power boats, and reacceleration at
a premium.
While long races in nutsy conditions gave an advantage to those with
long West River experience -- explaining the Dirk and Gary scores -- there
was a good deal of action right behind. First -- James McKenna and Kate
Erklauer have been teaming up on Tuesday nights, but on the weekends they are
now beating each other up for silver. Second -- that Randy Bruns score
ain't exactly Randy, its an opti sailor named RJ Bay with Randy sitting
shotgun -- he is now into his second regatta. He and Randy led two of the three
races in the final approach to the first windward mark. The Kennedy boys are
also showing something - their transom -- on a regular basis. Last week
they won a race, and its apparent from a distance that they are sailing with
confidence. (Eds. Note: if they pop the kite in a blow, get out of the
way, they are Fast). It was good to see Michael Kelly out after a long
hiatus; and it was great to have the Smiths down for the second straight
weekend. We swear that it doesn't always blow here!
- Dirk Schwenk
Pictures (None Yet)
|
|
Race |
||||||
|
Place |
Sail |
Skipper |
Crew |
1 |
2 |
3 |
Total |
|
1 |
1137 |
D. Schwenk |
S. Schwenk |
1 |
1 |
1 |
3 |
|
2 |
1140 |
J. McKenna |
P. McKenna |
4 |
3 |
2 |
9 |
|
3 |
1130 |
K. Erklauer |
M. Scharrenbroich |
3 |
4 |
6 |
13 |
|
4 |
1126 |
RJ Bay |
R. Bruns |
6 |
5 |
3 |
14 |
|
5 |
1048 |
C. Kennedy |
Send Name |
5 |
6 |
4 |
15 |
|
6 |
1144 |
G. Mentesana |
C. Mentesana |
2 |
2 |
DNS |
16 |
|
7 |
1151 |
C. Smith |
J. Smith |
DNS |
7 |
5 |
24 |
|
8 |
604 |
M. Kelly |
Send Name |
7 |
8 |
DNS |
27 |
|
9 |
983 |
D. Kennedy |
Send Name |
8 |
9 |
DNS |
29 |
|
10 |
433 |
K. Mehrof |
Send Name |
DNS |
DNS |
DNS |
36 |
|
10 |
737 |
J. Saunders |
Send Name |
DNS |
DNS |
DNS |
36 |
Results Posted 6/21/06
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