2007 Finn Nationals - Gull Lake, Michigan

The weekend was wonderful with the exception of the wind...which was pretty non-existant throughout the Midwest. But this is Pleasantville, USA and you don't necessarily need the wind in order to have fun.

Jon Vandermolen and his team at GLYC did a great job of making sure everything that he could take care of was handled with precision, including the fully stocked bar they set up to greet the sailors upon arrival of Saturday's racing!

In the end, Andy Casey won the Nationals showing amazing consistency in very trying winds. Second went to Geoff Ewenson, with Don Jesberg 3rd, Andy Kern 4th and Tad Springer 5th. Winning 2 of the 4 races was Darrell Peck who had to carry a DNF from race 2.

I am sure the Finn sailors will be back. The hospitality of Jon and his team have made this event legendary!

Finn US Nationals
Gull Lake, Michigan
Skip Dieball

Pleasantville, USA....that's what Gull Lake is!! It is always great to come back and see our friends from Star sailing and what a treat to have them host the Finn Nationals!

I'm back coaching Geoff Ewenson. He's been jet-setting all over the world sailing his Finn and doing great. We are hoping that he continues progress here at Gull Lake as he eyes up the Olympic Trials in October.

The racing starts tomorrow and runs through Sunday. Today is a practice day and I hope to post some observations, but the wind is incredibly light (none), so we are waiting to see what happens.

Stay tuned for stories....at least we'll report shore-side antics.

Lake Erie Districts - 2007
Cleveland Yachting Club

The Lake Erie District as some really cool spots to sail, CYC being one of them. Situated on a small island in the middle of the Rocky River, it is easy to get in/out to Lake Erie for some great sailing.

For the Quantum Team, this years event provided the perfect "test" to getting 1049 up to speed and we used every opportunity to tune and fine-tune.

The racing on Saturday started out perfect. Nice waves, nice wind and a good "open water" speed test with small-ish wind shifts. Throughout the day, however, the breeze tapered off and the light and lump set in.

Kyle Finefrock was on fire. He didn't make many mistakes and took advantage of some good opportunities and capitalized. Kyle had Ben Mercer and Sarah Paisley on board to help him....they sailed great! Ernie Dieball made his LE District debut in 3995 with Mike Stark and Rick Rothenbuhler and finished an impressive 2nd. Their speed was a good benchmark for my team (Karl Felger and Ryanne Gallangher) to test 1049.

We had our ups and downs, but used this great event to learn. And learn we did.

We found out that we were on pace when the wind was up and mast loaded. When the wind died down below 10 knots, we felt good on port tack, but really bad on starboard tack. As the day progressed our observations were heightened.

We got back on to the dock with a 6, 17, 10, which wasn't what we had planned on. The 17 was due mainly to a main halyard problem at the start (main was down in the boat at the gun!) and the 10 was probably better than we deserved due to the misfortunes of many rounding the wrong mark.

Once on shore, we check all settings. Our rake was spot on with the tuning numbers, but we noticed that the boom was much higher. So we raked back 2". We measured diamonds and found that one side was much tighter than the other....odd because when I tuned the mast in the comfort of the sail loft, it seemed symmetric. So, we popped off all the diamonds and the mast was bent slightly in a reverse "C". This all correlated with our on-the-water observations. Fortunately for us CYC has a few trees that have been used for many-a-mast. It took us 10 minutes to get it straight, tuned and back on the boat.

Interestingly too, we found that our mast step was higher in one corner than the other, forcing the mast to "load" differently from one tack to the other. We filed the mast step and got it right.

Sunday brought great speed and better scores for 1049. Still not perfect, but again great opportunities to test, tune and experiment against many of the best sailors in the class.

We had an amazing weekend of fun and learning at CYC. Thanks to them and to the LE District sailors for their hard work in making Districts a good time.

Thistle 1049

June 2nd marked the end of Project #1, which is Thistle 1049. I sailed it in the Cattail Regatta at Jolly Roger Sailing Club and the boat set up really nice. To help, my brother sailed 3995 in the same event. We had a bit of time to do some straight lining and the boats were pretty equal, which made me happy. Happier still, Karl Felger and I won the Cattail with a 1,1,2. Successful first outing.

This coming weekend is the Lake Erie Districts. I hope to be able to produce some "sailing" pictures to round out this Blog.

"We all need the Clowns to make us smile..."

Bruce Goldsmith

1936-2007

Bruce Goldsmith
1936-2007

Sailors all over the world lost a friend yesterday with the Passing of Bruce Goldsmith. How do you describe the indescribable? Somehow, "You had to be there" comes closest.

Bruce won World Championships, North American Championships, National Championships and 2 Pan American Games Gold medals. He was second in the 1972 Olympic Trials to Buddy Melges.

His legend far exceeds the time he spent in sailing alone. But in a sport where sailors spend many an evening around boat parks discussing the greatest ever, Bruce stands in a very small group.

Those who have a heavy heart today, might want to train your mind's eye and fill in the blank:
Bruce is:___________

Two-time Lightning World Champion.
1960 Thistle Class National Champion.
Winning the Soling practice race at the 1972 Olympics by 5 minutes.
Late.
Missing a third crew.
Almost a leg ahead.
Sailing another blue boat called Snoopy.
Winning a North American title while not considering pouring out the case of beer someone hid under his foredeck.
Crossing the fleet on Port from the pin.
Setting up the model boat races.
Giving away 9 used jibs on the lawn.
Reinforcing a broken mast with a butter knife.
Winning another Pan American Games Medal.
Launched.

Yesterday, I tried to describe Bruce to my wife, who isn't an active sailor. I told her that you could take the 5 best sailors in the world in any era, put them on a starting line and he could (after leaving his boat in the water the three previous nights) beat any of them. She said, "Wow…and you were friends with him?" I paused awhile, considering how terrible simply changing one word from 'are' feels right now. "We all were" I said.

We all were.

Because he encouraged us. He hung out with us. He helped us get faster. He asked us to come along. He came along when we asked him. He finished in front of us but he made sure we never felt beaten.

He was the Bruin.

And today is just the first day of the forever when he'll be remembered.

by: Bill Faude