The 3rd and final race of the 2016 Commodore’s Cup was held on Saturday, October 22. Due to the extreme wind conditions, several captains in the fleet chose to remain ashore for safety reasons. Four boats checked in at Johnson’s Point to race at 1 pm; Gerhard Hergenhan and Dan Blue in their J22’s, Yvonne Short in the Hunter 22, and Gerry Van Wageningen in the Flying Scot. All the captains were carrying extra crew onboard. Wind conditions were reported from the start line at 12 gusting to 16; however Paul Kirst reported gusts to 21 from the other end of the lake.

We  have created a new "Links" category, "Internet Image Portfolio" for any member who has a shared image account like "Photobucket", "Facebook", "Flickr", "Google+ Photos", "Google Direct", etc. Ben Benjamin has offered to share his "Google Direct" account showing, as of today, two of the SLSC races. You will find them on the site at this address: Internet Image Portfolios.

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The fluky winds of Lake Auman again tested the resolve of the sailors in Saturday’s second of three Commodore Cup races. Six of the largest boats showed up to race. Now that the water is too cold for a dunking, the smaller capsizable boats typically don’t race.

Winds were predicted to be 6 mph, which would have been fine for sailing. And the winds actually started out close to that until the starting horn blew and then we all sat there on the starting line looking for even the slightest movement of air. At some point during the two hour race the wind came from every possible direction, even though it was predicted to be from the northeast. Because of these variations, positions changed drastically from one mark to the other.

Yvonne Short in her Hunter 22, who gave us all a good spanking in the first cup race, had a contentious start and then fell into a hole (got becalmed) along with a couple of other boats on their way to the first mark but got close to the first group by the second mark. The wind shifts and availability of wind favored the boats which were already in the lead which were Dan Blue and Gerhard Hergenhahn in their J-22’s and Paul Kirst in a Hunter 216.

Paul and Dan ended up almost neck and neck approaching the finish with Dan crossing first by 5 seconds (over a race of 90 minutes!). Dan received line honors and placed third in corrected time. Paul won by 26 seconds in corrected time. The Commodores Cup race is a special race in which crossing first receives an award with another award for winning in corrected time. Since it is a series of three races the winners of the cups will not be decided until the final race next week Saturday, October 22nd. The start will be from Johnson’s Point at 1 PM.

Paul Kirst

The first race in the Commodore Cup series was held on Saturday, October 1. Different from last week’s race, this race had gusty but sufficient wind (5-7 mph). The start from Johnson’s Point with the nine participating sailing boats was not easy with the constantly changing wind directions. Yvonne Short with her Hunter 22 and Gerry Van Wageningen with his Flying Scot took directly distance from the group. Gerry sailed the Flying Scot by himself without a crew and did very well, which is remarkable under the wind conditions of the day. However, the Hunter 22 of Yvonne was too fast for him. She finished first with 3 minutes ahead of the Flying Scot and more than 6 minutes ahead of the rest of the boats. An excellent performance!
The next race of the Commodore Cup series will be held next week Saturday, October 8 at 1 PM starting from Johnson’s Point.