Back to School Regatta
September 7-8, 2002
Ponchartrain Yacht Club

Wet & windy, very windy.  Seventy-one boats came to Lake Ponchartrain with hopes of the weather clearing up enough to sail.  The wind and rain let up enough to convince the Race Committee to send them out. 

Race one started in a nice 12-15 knot shifty north breeze and died out halfway through the race then picked back up to about 15 knots by the finish.  Bishop and Todd Edwards duked it out in the first race, staying within two or three boatlengths of each other until a fourth of the way down the last leg, when Todd capsized and gave Bishop the win.  A strom Friday night left a nice mark on Andrew's Sunfish, and fearful that he was taking on water, he started the first race and sailed straight back to the club.

Race two was a workout, when a squall came through during the race with an initial blow of near 40 knots!  Two of the Flying Scots flipped, half of the Vanguard wiped out, more than half of the Laser fleet turned over and half of the Sunfish fleet capsized.  Bishop won the race - or so it appeared...    About 10 boatlengths from the finish, the Race Committee abandoned the race to assist in the cleanup of the carnage left out on the race course.

Sunday's conditions were steady enough to get two races off, but that's not to say it was any easier.  20-25 knot offshore breezes tested the equipment through the day's two races.  Kippy got caught up trying to depower his rig during the sequence and missed the start of race two, while Todd sailed for two minutes and decided that the nausea he was feeling was real enough to withraw from Sunday's races.  Bill Betts, from New Jersey's Smokerise Sailing Club, also pulled out of the last race.   Through all of this, Fred Eagan and crew Johnny White were not going to give up.  They never flipped, they kept sailing in those conditions, and thier persistence paid.  Finishing each race, while the other competitors couldn't, was enough to earn them second overall!

Results: