Team Heine-Collins win 2022 Mayor’s Cup at Lake Townsend Yacht Club, N.C.
By Uwe and Nancy Collins – W11338
Lake Townsend is a beautiful small lake located northeast of Greensboro, N.C. Their big annual regatta is the Mayor’s Cup, which historically has been run on the first weekend in June. This changed in recent years due to schedule disruptions caused by COVID. But year, we went back to the original schedule.
June weather in North Carolina can be unpredictable, ranging from very pleasant 70s up to brutally humid mid and upper 90s. This year we were fortunate. The week before the regatta, it had been very hot, but the pattern changed to a northeast breeze with temperatures comfortable in the low to mid 80s. The length of the lake is oriented such that southwest or northeast breezes have a good fetch free of turbulence.
The forecast wind was light with a gradual shift to the right both days. The wind turned out to be better than forecast, but the shifts were back and forth, not persistent. Ken Butler, a club member who has sailed Wayfarers and also pilots sailplanes, mentioned to me the wind up high was completely different than the surface wind. I checked Windy.com and, sure enough, the wind at 10,000 feet was in the exact opposite direction. This sets up ripples and oscillations between the different layers of air that we see as shifts down below.
Race committee, headed by PRO Alan Backus, did a great job setting up the course and managing the races through the shifts. A few times he had to put up the AP during a start sequence when a bad shift would affect the starting line. But he resisted the urge to keep changing the course. This was a good call because the wind would invariably come back to where it was.
There were three fleets and an open class. The Flying Scots were the largest fleet with 11 boats and, therefore, competing for the Mayor’s Cup. The second largest fleet was the Wayfarers with eight boats, competing for the Bryan Cup. High school students were sailing five 420s and four boats sailed in the open class.
With the good breeze (I think around 7-10 kt much of the time), RC opted to add a fourth race on Saturday. The Wayfarers enjoyed some great competitive sailing with many lead changes. At the end of Saturday’s races the top three boats had scores of 7, 8 and 9 points with AnnMarie Covington and Gareth Ferguson in the lead, Pete Thorn and Jeanne Alamby in second, and Nancy and me in third.
Sunday morning the pressure was on!
The nail biting continued!
Race six was again very close. We were inside of Pete at the weather mark and Pete had to go wide to avoid some congestion of Flying Scots, who got stalled by a sudden shift to the left while rounding. We kept our lead and won. Now, after six races, we were tied for first with Pete. AnnMarie was only one point behind us.
It would all come down to the final race.
Ali Kishbaugh and Mike Sigmund took first place in the last race. We managed a second and, with that position, we moved up to first in the Wayfarer fleet and were the recipients of the LTYC Bryan Cup for the second year in a row.
Stay tuned for the upcomingregatta report!