Regatta Report by JJ Johnson

In February, Kurt called me to see if I could sail with him at Spring Fever 2008 in March. Sounded like fun, I already had the time off, and Brad was busy with Easter family stuff. So, I agreed, and we left in separate vehicles for Hartwell, GA on Thursday, March 20. I took our camper, and Kurt towed the boat behind his Suburban with Penny, Carly, and Cole onboard for company. You see, this was going to be a Korte spring break family vacation to Florida, but Kurt, (crafty as he is) looked for a regatta to sail on the way. Lo and behold, Spring Fever!

Hartwell Lake is on the SC/GA border and is 914 miles from southern Wisconsin. We both pulled into the Milltown Campground (the Spring Fever staging area) on Friday at 7pm. Spring Fever is designed to be a three day event, but if you can't make one of the days, they average the scores that you actually sail and apply them to the races you miss. There is a small penalty for those boats that don't race all three days, but if you sail well, you can overcome the small deficit.

Weather Saturday, sunny, 75, at 10-15. Perfect. There were 73 boats competing, with the F18 and H16 fleets as the largest. There were 7 I-20s. Friday's races, which we missed, had already begun to shake out the front runners and the crews were already figuring out who to beat. We came in cold on Saturday, not knowing who was ahead in the points, but knowing that we had to make the boat go fast. We got a great start on race 1 (the F18s and I-20s started together), and never looked back. We finished a full three minutes ahead of the next 20. The second place boat, Jake Cole gave us a nice laugh as he sailed up to us and asked if we has gone twice around the course. ACACF. We feigned confusion, thinking that he was kidding, but he persisted, and we realized he wasn't kidding. We tried to convince him that we did actually sail the whole course, and I'm not sure he believed us. (fortunately, we had our GPS tracker onboard if this came to a protest) He said that he was so focused on covering the other 20s that he never paid any attention to us.

Kurt and JJ lead the fleet

Race two, we started well again, and with boatspeed and some good course management, we grabbed another bullet. Two for two so far. Going for three in a row. (I think Jake now knew that we were the real thing). We messed up the start, DFL in fact. During the race, I went for a brief swim when double trapped, the wind quit, I hit the water and my trap released. I grabbed the shroud, Kurt grabbed me, and I scrambled back onboard. Not a stellar performance, but we managed a third. We figured that was OK, based on our poor start and the fact that I was a 170 pound sea anchor for several moments. We came back strong in race 4 with another bullet, and another 3rd on race 5. Saturday's totals, 1,1,3,1,3. That put us in the lead going into Sunday, with Wick Smith, Trey Brown, and Jake Cole, all within 7 points of us. Wick was 2.5 points behind us, and Trey was 3.5 behind. We knew we had to sail well on Sunday to hold our slim lead.

Sunday started out colder, in the low 60s with a 10-12 mph breeze, forecast to die out by afternoon. We got a terrible start, in irons actually, and again left the line DFL. But, we tacked off to port immediately to avoid the gas, passed almost the entire fleet the and rounded A in third place behind Wick and Trey. The second time down to C, we were stuck behind Trey off our starboard bow, and Alex and Nigel on their Infusion on our port bow, with another 20 chasing us from behind. We had good boatspeed on Trey, and were sailing much deeper, but there wasn't any opening to gybe. No room to roll him, no air below him...trapped. But we managed to hang with him and Wick, and posted another third. Now, with the points converging together for the top three boats (with us in the lead by 1.5 points), we knew that the last race would make or break our trophy. The RC took a very long time to reset the course in shifting and dying wind, and decided to start the entire 73 boat fleet with one gun. We ghosted off the line, with Wick slightly in front and leeward of us. The wind was down below 5 now, and we knew that accidentally ending up in irons would probably deal a fatal blow to our points. So we focused on keeping her moving, and slowly passed Wick. We were leading all 72 other boats, and almost to A when the RC abandoned the race.

CRAW takes the hardware back home to the snow and ice.

Next year, if you want to break the winter doldrums, you should definitely consider this regatta!

The scores are posted here.

JJ