LASERS NEED A SONG.

Wayfarer dinghy is popular in England, Canada, Michigan, and a fleet  at Lake Eustis Sailing Club in Eustis, Florida and also popular as a beach cruisning dinghy.

This group has a song!

The only racing class that I know that has their own song.

"Wayfarer, wayfarer, finest dinghy ever seen.
Wayfarer, weather fair.  really makes me feel so keen.
Do wake up from your lazy sleep
Sail your Wayfarer out on the deep.
Wayfarer, wayfarer, finest dinghy ever seen."

Verses repated in Danish, Dutch, and French/

If you come to Eustis, I can find someone to sing it for you.

I don't think the Lasers should be out done by this little grouip of boats. 
SONG WRITERS GET BUSY   ---  We have 200,000 boats somewhere!

LASER SAILORS PLAY WITH THE BOAT

To increase your comfort with the boat, play with it.  Turn it over.  Sit on the high side.  Swim around it.  Walk around the mast.  Sail backwards.  Sail double or more.  Check out the crazy stuff on YouTube.

BUT be careful.  Don't overstep your ability or do it where you can't rescue yourself.
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LASERS ROW IN THE RAIN

 LASERS ROW IN THE RAIN

This is not about Laser sailing, but I have sailed a Laser in these waters.  The rowing in the rain part is about a few years ago, when I was working as an MD at the Key West VA Clinic.   They had recently moved into part of the Old Key West Navy Hospital in Key West and I lived on Stock Island next to the water.  The hospital was on the other side of Cow Key Channel about a ½ mile away. 

For a week I rowed over in my 16 foot St. Lawrence Skiff.  –(Thanks to the model boat folks for the picture of their model that is very similar to my boat.)  I would row into a little harbor and tie up to the dock at the enlisted men's barracks and walk a ¼ of a block to our offices.  I did that for a week just to be able to say I was the only doctor in the USA that rowed to work.  The Navy MDs  and the VA were just getting used to working in the same area, so after a week I drove my car over so my use of the little harbor would not become an issue.

One morning about 7:30 as I was rowing away from home and going west. I am looking east at some big black clouds coming from the east.  (Wind is KW mostly from the east—some Bermuda high thing.) OK, it is only about a half mile to row.  Go a little faster.   Now I am in Cow Key Channel and almost to the little harbor and the rain drops start to fall.   In the Keys the little thunder storms just rain hard for a few minutes and then move on-- and I am right by the bridge that goes from Stock Island over to Key West.   Row under the bridge.  Now it is raining pretty hard, but not on me.  I am under the bridge… only one problem, the tide is coming in and I have to keep rowing to stay under the bridge. 

OK, move over to the edge of the channel where the current is less.  Yes, but now I look over to the shore about 10 feet away --- 7 or 8 homeless folks sleeping under the bridge on the 15 feet of dry land under the bridge.  They are all asleep.  Some with the little pile of the only possessions they have in the world.

I meet these folks around town often.  Most have mental or just drug problems.  No problem, but you don’t want to have long conversations because it can get pretty weird.   I hope they keep sleeping.

So I keep rowing and they keep sleeping.  How long is all this going to go on?

It is still raining pretty hard and I notice the eddy behind one of the support posts and row into the eddy.  Now the eddy is holding me against the current and I just need to steer enough to stay in the eddy. 

My friends on shore begin to stir and the time is almost 8 AM.  Time for me to show up for work.  So I row out into the rain which is now letting up.  Into the harbor and tie up to the dock and over to the Clinic – only a little damp.

So rowing in the rain can be an extra adventure.  I recommend it.  Take something to bail with.  Forget the umbrella unless have a passenger or want to use it as a sail.  No, I changed my mind—take the umbrella.  Maybe an anchor for under the bridge?  Nice to have lunch along just in case.

Maybe you had a good adventure rowing in the rain.

LASERS "WOW"

Sam had a good day on Saturday and here is a little WOW (Words of Wisdom) on that day that he won two of the three races.  I still have the "rowing in the rain" story coming up, but this is already put together. Really nothing new-- but what happened. 

WOW…  We had some big right shifts and you had to be sure you were taking that long task first (starboard) and working to the right carefully.  Delay going to the lay line for the windward mark.  You can approach it, but tack before you get there.

Sail fast – that is “bow down” with windward and leeward telltales flowing, boat flat or windward heel.  Sail trimmed into 6 to 8 inches between the boom blocks and if you are sitting out to hold the boat down, then two block.  Check what the boats near you are doing and how they are moving.  If you have a boat to leeward you can see easily, work on sailing faster than they are.  If you can see shore in front of them, then try and be “making trees”...  seeing for shore in front of them as you move faster.   Or just to increase you angle to them … bow down a little more … a little different trim.  Work at going fast – that make your tactics smarter.  If you get in a really light wind spot, heel to leeward and weight forward.  Get the roll tacks working.  It takes the curse out of tacking to much with the short wind shifts.  Try to link the areas of dark water together.   If the roll tacks are a problem and you don’t live close for sailing practice, then get some practice in before, after the races or after lunch.

The fun is not necessarily winning, but sailing better.

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LASERS SAIL ROB'S RADICAL ROUTE

Several weeks ago Rob put in two extra marks on our windward leeward course to give us some reaches and ponts of mandatory gybes.

On the diagram W is the windward mark.

1 is a beam reach.

A is a gybe mark.

2 is a broad reach.

B is a gybe mark.

3 is a broad reach

P is the pin mark of the starting line. Leave it to port.

4 is a run.

L is the leeward mark.

5 is the beat to the finish.

When the wind is up it is an exciting course.  Slide to the back of the cockpit to get the bow up and over the waves and then gybe at the gybe marks.  Then one more gybe before the leeward mark.

You might want to try it.  Yes, it may tend to be the parade of the old triangle course, but adds the excitement of the reaches.

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LASERS HELP EACH OTHER.

Several weeks ago I saw a new way to help get a boat up.  The lake we sail on is about 10 to 12 feet deep with very sticky mud in the bottom.

.  Vince had turned over with the mast stuck in the mud and the boat to windward so the force of the wind was pushing the mast in deeper.  Vince was not able to right the boat and what we have done in the past was for a second person to turn over his boat nearby and swim over to the first boat and then two people pulling on the centerboard usually could right the boat.  Then the two get in the righted boat and chase the second boat down and right that one.   Sam sailed around trying to think of some other way to help and then settled for waiting for the ‘big boys” (Dave and Rob) to come.   Dave arrived and tried a couple of things (wind is blowing pretty good) then he got Vince up to the bow of Vince’s boat and told him to hold his bow and grab Dave’s traveler line at the stern as he sailed by. Then Dave sailed by closehauled just to windward of the bow of Vince's boat.  Vince grabbed to traveler rope and hung on.  The bow was pulled around to windward so the wind was blowing the boat away from the mast stuck in the bottom.   It worked. Vince and the wind righted the boat.  Not too much mud on the sail and everyone well and happy.

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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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