The weekend of May 13-14 marked the annual voyage to Pymatuning for the Spring Classic.  My team this year consisted of Laurie Synowiec and Kate Loper.  We had sailed together at Devil's Lake last year and had a great time. This year, we sailed my dad's Lippincott (10638).  It is a great Pond boat and with a new mast, we liked our chances.  As usual, everything on my dad's boat worked great.  It is particularly nice to just go out and sail and not worry about catastrophe. Upon arrival on Friday night (1:AM), we proceeded to rig the boat and have cocktails with old friends.  Before we knew it, it was 3 and we needed some rest! Saturday morning was beautiful with a light westerly breeze.  I've sailed at Pymatuning a bit, and this seemed to be the predominant direction.  Left generally pays, but you have to look for the big righty every once in a while. The breezed picked up after lunch.  In fact, it was blowing the dog off the chain by the end of the day.  Sailing the Lippincott makes for some interesting times in the breeze.  You do everything in your power not to wipe out!  We managed to keep the boat rolling and did incredibly well. Our cocktail hour got held up a little.  We were involved in a protest, which is never fun.  At the risk of writing something not nice, I'll just say that everything was disallowed and we were winning after the first day with a 2,1,6.

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Sunday was a bit colder, but with similar conditions.  We had a great time the night before, so we were a bit slow to get the boat in the water and get to the sailing area.  After a few General Recalls, we started clean.  We rounded the top mark somewhere in the 8-10 range and proceeded to pass boats.  The second beat was awesome as we played the middle and beat a lot of boats.  We ended up 2nd in that race which put us in great position for the regatta.  We didn't write any of the scores down on Sat night.....after all it is the Spring Classic.  We knew that we had a few points on Jed Dodge, but he left Sunday Morning?!?!  Next in line was Jack Elfman (who had won 3 of the four races!) and then Sean Fidler.  We figured/estimated that if we finished in the top 10, we'd win regardless of what they did.  So after the start, we found ourselves close to 10 at the top mark.  Again, we ground down some of the competitors and ended up 4th in the race and won the regatta by like 7-10 points.  It was a great weekend all around. Laurie did a superb job in just her 2nd regatta since knee surgery.  Kate is a great middle crew and knows how and when to make us laugh.  It was great to see all of our friends and it reinforced the fact that Lightning sailing is fun and extremely competitive. 1st     Skip, Laurie, Kate 2nd    Sean Fidler, Jo Jones, Eric Wolfe 3rd     Jack Elfman 4th     Bill Faude, Ernie, Becky Starck 5th     Jeff Hagman, Billy Thomas, Lexy Cherry