Sailors set bearings on national regatta
Connor Needham and Mitchell Clark concentrating on finding boat speed in a dying breeze on Lake Pontchartrain as they competed against high school sailors from across the country at an invitational regatta in New Orleans, November 13-15.
On Friday, November 13 Mitchell Clark and Connor Needham traveled to New Orleans to compete in the annual Interscholastic Sailing Association Great Oaks High School Invitational Regatta. It’s a two-day event for schools from around the country.
A total of 27 teams attended from such states as Florida, Texas, Wisconsin, Rhode Island, Georgia, Massachusetts, the US Virgin Islands and even Kansas (that’s right, a high school sailing team from Kansas!). Mitchell and Connor were the only representatives from the Mid-Atlantic Scholastic Sailing Association district.
When the boys arrived at the Southern Yacht Club in New Orleans on Saturday morning they were confronted with a nearly non-existent breeze. By 10 a.m. the breeze started to appear as little dark patches on Lake Pontchartrain so the signal to launch was given. The teams readied their boats and made their way out to the course that was set up just offshore in front of the clubhouse.
The Southern Yacht Club was completely destroyed by hurricane Katrina. During the news coverage of Katrina there was footage and photos showing a large building engulfed in flames and completely surrounded by the flood waters. That was the Southern Yacht Club. The new clubhouse is spectacular and sits on pylons with the active floors raised ten feet above the grade.
The teams were randomly divided into red and green fleets for the day. Mitchell and Connor were in the red fleet and would be in the second start of each round of races. This allowed them to study the green division’s tactics during the start and through the first few tacks.
The race committee set out a windward-leeward course and began sending the fleets off around the course. After each race the teams returned to a float that had been anchored next to the course to rotate boats with other teams. In this way there would be no advantage to one boat being better or worse than another.
Mitchell and Connor sailed really well in the light air scoring three second place finishes for the races they were able to run on Saturday. That consistency placed them first in the red fleet at the end of the day, way out ahead in points from the second- place boat and only one point behind the green fleet’s first-place boat. It was a great day for the pair.
Saturday evening one of the club members invited all of the competitors and their coaches home for a little southern hospitality. The food was great; shrimp gumbo, jambalaya and bread pudding with a sweet sauce for dessert. The boys were living large.
On Sunday the top halves of the red and green fleets were selected and combined into a gold fleet with the bottom halves making up the silver fleet. Unfortunately for the top teams, after the split was made the scores from the previous day’s racing were erased. The teams would be starting from scratch.
Once again the breeze was very light — just barely above 3 knots — it was going to be another trying day. Mitchell and Connor immediately found their groove from the previous day and finished the first race with another second. In the next race they were again with the front runners and finished fourth.
Other teams had very inconsistent finishes during those two races, making for unusual gaps in scoring. The Shelter Islanders were sitting in first place with less than half the points of the second-place team.
Right after the last boat finished race two the wind completely died and the teams returned to the float to wait for the breeze to fill in. If there was ever a time to chant for no more wind this was it. If the breeze didn’t come back the Island team would be the champs.
An hour of waiting went by before we spotted a patch of breeze expanding in front of us and heading our way. Racing could resume. During the third race the boys got in a little situation at the windward mark causing one of the competitors to hail protest at them. Mitchell and Connor were sure they had not fouled the other boat and there was a witness who would back them up. They continued on without doing their penalty turns, confident that the protest would be thrown out.
They were over the starting line early in the next race so they had to return to duck the line before continuing up the course. Things went from bad to worse as they got called over early again in a subsequent race and then another team protested them during the eighth race of the day.
All told, the race committee was able to get off nine races before sending the fleet in for the day at around 4 p.m. It was an hour before the first protest hearing could be heard. Unfortunately the witness for the Island team had a flight to catch. The hearing came down to one team’s word against the other’s; the Islanders lost the protest and were disqualified from that race.
They then lost the second protest hearing as well and were hit with a double whammy points-wise. There would be no celebrating for the boys that day and no trophy to bring back home to the Island.
Still all in all it was great showing for the two boys; they almost sailed away with the championship.
