2010 Great White Northern Interlake Championship - Traverse City, MI

Interlake Great White Northern Championships,  West Grand Traverse Bay, GTYC, Traverse City, MI.  July 26-7.

It was a perfect weekend for racing Interlakes. 

Sat started with 6 knots and a sea-breeze gradually building to 15 knots from the North.  This brought small oscillations and a gradually building waves to 1.5 ft.  If you didn't have a race that was in your sweet spot then you just don't have one!  Fortunately I hooked up with an old buddy, Jason Masseroni, who is a great gear shifter.  Jason hadn't sailed dinghies for a couple of years and said how good it was to get back into it (J has been doing the PHRF thing).  He even enjoyed the full on hiking races 3-5 brought us on sat.  J realized that he was out of shape, but loving it.  Of course we all enjoy being successful, and our score line Sat read 1-1-2-1.  We raced against changing boats at the front as the wind and waves increased.  Thank you Dieball Sailing for making sails that could handle the broad range of conditions and are easy to trim.  It made it much easier to keep our eyes out of the boat, and the Karma calm while we fell right back into our old form of chatter & fun. 

Dinner was great.  It was a potluck with fleet member (and former Chef) Louis Rodriguez cooking chicken, burgers and made a fabulous batch of beans.  You know, the kind with 7 or 8 or 200 different beans all mixed together and cooked all day in a crock pot.  Well, I think they were good.  I missed out.  They were snarfed up fast, and then for whole night and next day I had to listen to everyone tell me how good they where.  I get no lov'n! I also got no lov'n on the cut throat Bocci match either!!

So Sunday it was payback time.  Conditions had changed totally.  Wind was from the SSE  (off shore/no fetch/flat water) a puffy/patchy 3-10 with 20+ degree shifts.  In other words: "Shift to the left-shift to the right-wind up-wind down-fight fight Fight."  Talk about gear shifting.  After nailing R1 we were OCS on R2 when what looked to be a perfect drifter start got "hit" with a 3.5 knot puff and we had no place to go on our "perfect" start but over.  After restarting J gave me the same reports as the previous day: "we are faster" or "faster & higher(lower running) (thanks again Skip, Ernie & Rick).  It gave us the confidence to sail smart and not gamble.  Racing in 3-7 knots we able to take the final bullet for a 1-1-1-2-1-1-1 series. 

Congratulations to the other winners: Dick Hirtrieter-Master's Champion (using Dieball Designs); Champion Jr. Team: Ryan Geiser with Christien & Emilee Geiger (using Dieball Designs) and best Jr. Skipper (with adult crew), Clark Phelps.

Bob Sagan