Both Team SEACATS F18's arrived in Hartwell GA by Thursday March 24th to do a little warm up sailing.  The weather was warm with a gentle 5-10knot breeze on the lake.  David and I (Jake) teamed up to do a little one on one racing with David Ingram from Florida (a Team Seacats friend and talented I20 and F18 sailor).  The warm up went pretty well although it was a little short lived.  We didn't get launched until later in the day but it was enough for us to make sure that Team Seacats I was set up properly.  We've recently been modifying the downhaul system for the mainsail and hadn't had a chance to try it out yet.

Three tons of F18s showed up by Friday morning (16 boats) as we all registered for the event.  Jeff Price ran a skippers meeting where a few sailors asked the other sailors for permission to swap out crew due to the complications of racing a three day weekend and the close date proximity of the Tiger Worlds in Santa Barbra, CA.   Two different teams were losing a sailor who was departing Sunday to make it to the Tiger Worlds.

photo credit: Jeremy King of the Hartwell Sun

We launched on time Friday morning ready for a 1pm start...but the wind proved fickle.  At least is was a warm 72 degrees as the sun shone down on us in shorts and t-shirts while we waited.  Finally, a little breeze built enough to get a sequence started.  Shortly after entering the F18 sequence, the wind started to lose the little bit of encouragement it had but there was still barely enough to move around.  As the horn and flags signaled the beginning of our 5 minute count down Chris and I, on Team Seacats I, reviewed our start strategy for the middle of the line and said we weren't going to get stuck near the committee boat during the start.  Things get REALLY crowded there and we knew this fleet would be aggressive.  With a little over 1 minute from the start a miraculous hole opened and we both thought "Wow!" a great hole for a start at the committee boat and we shot for it while completely throwing out our whole game plan!  As suddenly as that hole had appeared, it disappeared and we found ourselves trapped on the course side of the start line on top of several boats.  YIKES!  We're over early as the start horn blasted.  Now in traffic headed for the first mark, we had to tack a couple of times to get enough room to turn the boat around so we can duck under the start line and start properly.  We're in last place now after only 2 minutes of racing!  The trip to A mark was slow and painful but pretty uneventful.  We managed to pass a couple of boats before we got to A mark but were still a considerable distance away from the front of the pack where Alex Shafer lead.  Most of the boats had chosen to go down the left side of the course.  We saw David Ingram choose the opposite side and both Chris and I felt this would be a wide choice given our position.  5 minutes later after traveling half of the course down to C-mark, the right side played well and we were in 2nd place chasing Ingram!  However, as quickly as we had gained a top spot, we lost it as both Ingram and us sailed into a small area with no wind.  The boats behind us saw this and gybed away and we were passed by most of the fleet at that point.  We struggled to get around C-mark with the tail end of the fleet and ended up finishing far back in the pack.  Unfortunately, David and Cary were also OCS (On Course Side) at the start but they didn't realize it, didn't return to start properly, and were DSQ's (Disqualified) from the race.

Saturday morning saw another light air beginning.  Chris and I finally felt good about our starting position with 1 minute to go (we stuck with our strategy this time!) when a competitor's boat quickly positioned himself in front of us leaving us no maneuvering option to avoid running into his sterns.  Not exactly sure of the rules in this situation (we are researching to avoid this in the future) we agreed to do a penalty turn on the first upwind leg.  That was going to be very painful in this light air.  We still managed a good start but were 3/4 up the course before we finally had the room to perform our 360 penalty turn.  Unfortunately, by then, the wind had slackened even more and the turn really took forever!  We struggled to recover maintaining tight focus on the slight breeze (some might say molecular motion) and came back for a 6th place finish after being as deep as 12th.

We parked out on the water for over an hour while waiting for the wind to come back.  It finally did in a moderate 5 to 10 range ... which is a weak spot for Chris and I because we are 66lbs over minimum crew weight leaving us a bit underpowered in this wind range.  We still took the opportunity to test and try to see how we could gain more speed but we found ourselves struggling to stay out the back of the pack for the rest of the races on Saturday.  David and Cary sailed a pretty good day on Saturday and were more competitive.

We were graced with not only decent breeze on Sunday that filled in as the day went on.  A sports photographer, Jeremy King from the Hartwell Sun Newspaper came back out on a boat with Mr. Ernie and took some incredible shots of the action on Sunday.  The wind started out in our vulnerable 5-10 range but both Team Seacats boats were getting terrific starts at the front of the pack and in clear air.  At least for Chris and I, this has been a weakness in the past.  David and Cary held their slight lead over us and beat us holding a decent 10th place finish.  The wind started to build for the last race on Sunday and Chris and I finally got back into a competitive range and had a decent finish in the last race before the regatta was over.  At least we had an opportunity to feel quick again!  We have a lot of work to do to try and get faster and compensate for our crew weight while sailing in the 5-10 range.  Below are a bunch of photos courtesy of Mr. Jeremy King.  He has a ton more and says that he has over 2.1 Gigabytes of photos taken over the weekend!  Please contact me here if you would like information regarding how to contact Jeremy.

photo credits: Jeremy King of the Hartwell Sun

photo credits: Jeremy King of the Hartwell Sun

    
photo credits: Jeremy King of the Hartwell Sun

photo credits: Jeremy King of the Hartwell Sun

F18 fleet results: