Governor's Cup regatta, October 14, Elephant Butte Lake

The Governor's Cup began Saturday, October 13, 2007, with lots of wind, limiting the boats that competed. We were at Heron Lake that day, working on the marina. Without crew, and with the heavy conditions that had been forecast, and with so much yet to be fixed on the boat, sailing in the regatta wasn't a good option for us. Saturday night late we came down to Butte. Sunday morning we launched Black Magic.

This day there wasn't much wind at all. We had a nice bit of breeze as we left the boat ramp near the Marina del Sur, but as we reached Rattlesnake Island the breeze faded away to nearly nothing, leaving us unable to make the first race until the first boats were nearly finished. We started, but then came back and took a "DNF" (did not finish) so as not to hold everyone else up. The one B fleet boat in that race, a Catalina 22, gave up on the extremely light winds and motored back to the start/finish line. We then participated, loosely speaking, in two more, loosely speaking, races, so to speak. Winds were very light and very variable. During the third race, the beat turned into a run (well, in slow motion) for a while. But, then, they say, that on average, the winds are perfect.

Our sailing was not the best and the boat still needs work. We managed to keep the boat moving and recover from some mistakes (I even recovered a topping lift that had decided to take a trip up the mast), but competitively we didn't do at all well.