WOODLAWN  SAILING  CLUB

SAN ANTONIO,  TEXAS

Notice Of Race

After a lot of hype from the Pirates of Woodlawn, the weekend finally arrived to see if they could live up to their own press clippings.

In a word the answer is, yes.

Things looked a bit grim on Friday as the closer we got to San Antonio, the worse the weather got. We decided to stop about 40 miles this side of the city for a break before getting into town and going to the lake for practice. The cold front had come to Houston in the morning but was still very much shorts and T shirt temps so that is how I left town. However, the cold part stayed around San Antonio. We about froze to death when we got out of the car.

After a quick stop we went on to the lake for afternoon check-in and practice. First things first, lose the shorts and get the jeans on, and a sweater.

After picking up the “booty” from Red (almost a) Beard, in the form of organizer Eric Gregory, it was down to the lake to see if the old Victoria would still float. Good news, it does. This weekend was also going to be my next test for my DSS radio system as I have discovered a couple of simple tricks that seem to have given me the range necessary to get around most courses.

We got in a good number of practice starts and 1 lap races to see that everything was in order. My boat was sailing quite well so I was feeling pretty good about my prospects of meeting my primary goal of not finishing last.

The Woodlawn folks looked to have done a great job of lining up raffle prizes as the prize table was loaded to overflowing and with a lot of very nice stuff too.

Outside they had erected a nice big tent for the competitors pit area and naturally enough for this group there was a good supply of the beverage of your choice. If you have never been to this facility before you need to go. A nice permanent clubhouse, a set of docks that easily gets you out to launch depth and a big floating barge for the race control area. And a little something extra for this event, some kind of floating lilies that were set on grabbing hold of your keel if you got too close.

Practice ended and many of those who got there early went out for an evening of Mexican food and I am sure a few “beverages”.

Saturday morning dawned a little cooler than has been normal for the last while but the skies had cleared completely and it looked to be a fine day for the event.

After a bit of morning practice the official festivities started up.

First came the welcome from none other than the spirit if Cap’n Jack Sparrow in the form a be-costumed Ray Seta accompanied by his trusty side kick (referred in this context as his “first mutt”) JK. You can see a picture of Ray in full regalia in our photo gallery.

Next, event organizer Eric Gregory laid out the ground rules for the overall event and introduced his capable team; Race Scorer Extraordinaire Nelda Tallman and Regatta Director John Oliveira. I will mention that a great number of other folks contributed to keeping the facility running all weekend, keeping two rescue boats on the lake all day, both days, supplying great lunches and breakfast and just generally helping it all run smoothly.

John’s style being RD is easy to describe. He is in charge; he is direct and does his best to give everyone as many good races as possible. Throughout the weekend he routinely called course changes right up to the clock starting and seemed to call it right most every time.

The course consisted of a large number of markers spread all over the lake. And the start line generally had three different options built into it so that allowed John a lot of options and he was excellent at choosing the right ones.

We had pretty decent winds all day. They died late in the afternoon but we had a good day of racing in by then and no-one really complained at calling the day because of the lack of wind when we actually got there.

This was another taste of the Odd/Even race format. I won’t explain it all here, it is actually quite simple, but it ends up that you will race with almost everyone at some point in the weekend. It also means that each heat is scored as its own race so there are a lot close scores throughout the field.

There were a lot of good races throughout the day. Charles Sudduth is close in all the races but seems to excel in the light wind ones and runs away from everyone. Ron Stephanz was almost the same and seemed to have an edge in the higher wind races. Ray Seta and JK were just there all the time and consistently in the top five.

The rest of us? We had a great day with racing all the way through the fleet in each race.

I should mention that the Friday lilies were kept from the course all day thanks to the continuous and diligent work from the two rescue boats. There might have been the odd errant leaf but for the most part everyone was able to sail weed free.

For me, this was maybe one of my best days of racing ever. I’ll have to look at the race scores when they are posted but I know I had a couple of 2nds and a 3^rd and most of the rest of my races were mid-pack. I had one or so where I got out of sequence and had to fight back but even those were fun because I was able to recover a good bit of what I had given away. I ended up 10^th overall at the end of Day One just behind my fellow Houston competitor Phil Geren. Needless to say, I was feeling pretty good.

Once we had our boats packed away for the night, the first round of raffle drawing took place at the Clubhouse. A lot of nice prizes were handed out and the Raffle Director kept it all pretty entertaining.

Once the raffle was over it was time to eat. For this event, the members of Les Lacs Yacht Club from the Dallas area decided to host a Chili Cook-off. Each of them concocted their favorite blend and submitted it to a panel of “well qualified” chili connoisseurs in the form of Ron Stephanz (Alabama), Tom Kerns (New Jersey) and Bruce Pyles (Washington State). Once they had extracted their samples for judging everyone else descended on the tables and came away having eaten very well. There was a lot of very good food and chili temperatures were at all levels from mild to flaming hot. Certainly a great way to end a fine day of sailing

Sunday morning, read the above. A little shy on wind at first but after a very short delay it filled in nicely and gave us a great variety of wind conditions and directions and kept RD John on his toes to call the best course. It was the norm for the day to have a different windward mark on the second lap of the race just to keep the racing competitive.

As the day went by we had a couple of different winners but lurking right behind them were that same cast of players mentioned before. As is usually the case, some of have occasional brilliance but the good sailors are just always there, race in and race out.

For me, this was my day of being humbled. I got my wires (the ones in my head not the ones in the boat) crossed up and missed the first race. Oh well, my boat was still sailing well so I could let that be one of my drops and recover that way. Except that my rudder servo decided to take a hike two races later so I lost two good scoring chances and that dropped me to 13^th over all at the end of the event. Still, the rest of the races were fun and well raced so I came away with a real good experience for the weekend.

Other big pluses were the almost complete lack of contentious lake side bickering. In virtually every case folks took their penalties like they are supposed to or else rationalized it with the protester and everyone sailed on. No shore side protests, no BS last second moves, just a bunch of real good racing.

After the last race the raffle drawings continued, I said they had a lot of prizes, with everything from small parts through some very nice decorative items all the way up to full radio sets and a complete Victoria kit.

And then the awards.

The total final scores and places will be posted shortly but the results had a tie for first place between Charles Sudduth and Ron Stephanz with Ron getting the nod on most first place finishes, 8 to 5. Third place was a narrow one point victory for JK over his “best bud” Ray Seta. So the Black Pearl was vanquished.

A word about the trophies. Everyone got a very nice plaque that was hand-crafted by Bob Piper. They are very nicely done and worthy of a space on your wall or in your trophy case. As well Bob made up larger plaques for places 4^th through 10^th in the same style. Great work Bob!!!

And the top three places each got a very nice trophy, again hand-crafted but this time by Ray Mireles with three parallel sets of sails made from some exotic wood. Very unique and very worthy of a place of honor on your trophy shelf.

In addition the club made a large wall plaque that will be the perpetual trophy for this event. It feature a full length half-hull of a Victoria, surrounded by plaques that will be engraved with the winner’s names each year and hang on the clubhouse “hull of fame” wall. So Ron has the honor of being the first to be engraved.

Long winded but a long weekend of sailing. Congratulations to everyone who helped organize, everyone who helped run and everyone who competed in a completely enjoyable event. I can think of at least one other class that could take some lessons around the etiquette of competing in an event such as this. Even the RD had a good time.

-Barry Fox
Victoria 553