LASERS LIKE LAKE EUSTIS

  Lasers like Lake Eustis

A response to the Tillerman challenge, My Favorite Place to Sail.

It is in Florida.

Lasers sail all year long about every other weekend, Saturday and Sunday, 10 AM to till noon.

We have fresh water lake about 3 miles by 5 miles in size and plenty of room for five fleets to sail.( MC scows, Flying Scots, Wayfarers,  struggling C scows,  and struggling A cats)   The “youth foundation” has Optis, Laser, and 420 sail boats that sail every Saturday from September to May and then take the Summer off.   With the fresh water we don’t have to wash everything off after sailing.

Our location is central Florida.  North and South and East and West.  If we have a hurricane, there is no Storm surge and the intensity is greatly reduced by the time it reaches us.  Average high temperature in our coldest month, January, is 68.6 and the average high temp in our hottest month, July, is 91.1.

There are about 140 members of the Lake Eustis Sailing Club with all the classes counted, so it is not hard to know everyone after a little bit.  The club house has a large dining room for catered dinners at regatta time, toilets, showers, a small kitchen, no bar and no restaurant.  There are picnic tables in the shade of the cypress trees next to the club house with a view of the lake, the two launching ramps and the T dock for the MC, Flying Scots and Wayfarers.  Favorite views from the picnic tables are the coming and going of the sailboats--- both good and bad, as well as the sunsets with gorgeous color changes across the lake and sky.

There are three 100 foot sand beaches and the Lasers launch off the North beach and have a five or ten minute sail to their own race course that is usually south of the club.  The Laser fleet is a branch of the “youth foundation“ and has short windward leeward races with a three minute starting sequence.  If the wind is up we may have a race finish in ten minutes.  That fixes things so that if you have fallen behind, never fear a new race starts pretty soon and we get a lot of practice starting.  If the kids (youth) sail a radial, a 4.7 or a 420, we take time and give them corrected time.  When the adults do that because of the high wind, then no time allowance for them because we are all going at ‘hull speed”.  We have a couple of youth that can win is the full rigs.   Because we have our own course, we don’t have to wait for other boats to finish or start.  In the two hours we usually have four to seven races depending on wind velocity.   If anyone wants to race longer we have a deal with the “bigger boats” that we can go and sail with the Wayfarers on a long course at noon.

We have 5 to 15 Lasers racing.  All good friends. A few that win most of the races, but they are pleased when somebody else sails well enough to win one.  Back on shore after the races there is always good talk about who ought to have done better and how.  Then if you want to sail better we can loan you the books on how to sail your Laser.  The DVDs we also loan out.  Then Sam has his http://howtosailthelaser. blogspot.com and if you want to know who was sailing on any day, how they did, and something GOOD about them =  http://lakeeustislaserfleet.blogspot.com

We are happy to have you come and sail with us or happy to have you not come.  We have people from France, Hungary, Spain, Columbia, Brazil, and Canada as well as Indiana, Ohio and New York that sail with us regularly or occasionally.

Wednesday afternoons or evenings (Daylight Saving time) and Sunday afternoons we have an invitation out to others, “come and sail a Laser” No real racing.  Depends on who comes.  We usually use a spare Laser and the youth foundation boats.  If you haven’t sailed a Laser I usually start you off with a 4.7 rig so you can get used to moving around in the boat without much sail area.  We follow along in motor boat or another Laser depending and who and what kind of wind and weather.

If you want more experience with bigger waves, the sea breeze and bad tasting waster then a two hour drive to Melbourne on the east coast or to St Pete and Clearwater on the west coast.

Eustis is residential city of about 16,000 people with good restaurants, a small legitimate theater, and a museum with the center of town a mile south of the sailing club.

The lake is inhabited by alligators, but they have learned to stay away from the sailing club and they do not eat small sailboats.

For some reason the water skiers and jet skis are not popular on the lake.  Occasional bass boats are seen fishing along the shore running on their little electric trolling motor then they can be seen going at 50 miles an hour to other side where they fish very slowly again. An occasional pontoon boat crosses the lake.  So at the present time we have most of the lake just for sailing.

If you stop by and didn’t bring your Laser, we will loan you one so you can check the lake out for yourself.

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