Lake Eustis, day 1

Lake Eustis

Happy Valentine's Day, all!
The dogs knew something was going on today with all the packing and repeated trips in and out of the house! We were glad to be taking them with us, I think they were happy too.

We arrived at LESC around 2:00 this afternoon, got the boat ready, and watched a couple of Wayfarers try to sail in no wind. It was a beautiful afternoon to be setting up the boat. Calm wind, sunny skies. T-shirt weather in Feb, not bad! We'll see what Mother Nature has in store for us tomorrow! The last few days the forecast has become less good, which means not as warm and maybe too much wind.

Fun, "extravagant" dinner served up at The Troff, a walkable local fave. Only the most romantic for Valentine's! (Can't believe they spell it that way!)
To those of you up north, it's no biggie, but were glad we packed the flannel sheets, blankets and down comforters to keep us warm.

During the night the breeze kicked up and was coming in straight off the lake. Hard to believe but it was strong enough to be jiggling the RV a bit. This is not a sound sleep inducing thing. Then at about daybreak a little rain squall came through, thoughts of packing it in and hitting the road were setting in. After the squall the breeze kicked around to the northwest and it looked a lot like last year. RC did a little postponement since the forecast had the breeze dropping a bit. This proved to be a wise move, an hour or so later we were getting off the dock for a little racing.

In what is not at all wise, we checked in and did some upwind work, a little too much. Not hearing any of the signals, duh, we were upwind in a stiff breeze! Then looking down at the pack of scots and we have the "that looks an awful lot like the start of a sailboat race" horrifying realization. What a great way to start a regatta! So the sail down to the line takes forever, not really but it seems like forever, but we start among the sounds for the Wayfarers sequence. Ugh. Wtf. Dfl by a lot.

Somehow that turned into an eighth after a particularly fun planing spinnaker run.

In the second race we start at the boat thinking the right side is it. Sure of it in fact. This is a good thing. The bad thing was we were a little early and when you are two feet from the RC, well, you know. The iffy thing was we knew we were a tad early so we dipped back, thinking we may be good we start. Then there's that sound, but no flag, now what? Go back, don't go back, go back, d..... We are side by side with David Ames (sailing one of my former boats) and my thoughts return to hitting the right side. I am also thinking he has the same idea so the heck with restarting and we tack to port. Umm, a few minutes later and no one else seems to think this is a good idea. Undeterred we stick with it and hit the right side hard, solidly into Ron territory. It didn't work and we get to the top around tenth with David crossing us by about 200 boat lengths, or so. A couple decent runs later and we finish 6. We'll take that, but for the ocs fears. We had a little delay while waiting for the wayfarers to finish so we cozy up to the boat for some small talk. We manage to work in the question of "gee were there any ocs boats in that last race?" The RC said no, Bonus! Then he commented that had the I flag been up we would be out. I knew that.

The third race was generally lighter except for a fun little plane downwind. It was also getting more Lake Eustis ish, a word? Probably not, but you been here, you know. If not, think about sailing along in 15 knots and seconds later you are in a hole and watching the fleet sail away. We end up with a four so we can't complain.

After three races and one day we have Zeke Horowitz first, David Ames second, Mark Taylor third and so on.

We are battening down for a low in the high thirties Saturday night and wind gusting to 4 on Sunday. See you then.