St Croix Sailing Club Labor Day Regatta

Over the Labor Day weekend, my father and I competed in the annual Labor Day Regatta hosted by the St. Croix Sailing Club. Over the last few years the club has really blossomed with Tuesday and Thursday racing. A few years ago several club members started a youth sailing school, which has done very well for itself.

Anyways in the interests of promoting a friendly rivalry, the Lake City Yacht Club and the St. Croix Sailing Club both host home and visiting events. From what I understand, the racers in Hudson head down the Mississippi to Lake City over memorial weekend and then the Lake City crowd comes up for Labor Day, which pretty cool if you ask me.

This year there we were proud to help sponsor the regatta, and we decided it would also be fun to race our Hunter 29.5. The two days of racing proved to be complete contrasts. Saturday was... well.. windless. We spent about two and a half hours drifting the tranquil upper St. Croix river along with about 18 other boats. Eventually, we were able to get two races off, which was tough, being that we were the only "cruising" boat in the entire fleet. We were able to keep out of last place in both races, but keeping the boat moving in dying wind was challenging at times. That night featured a large catered dinner and a raffle so large it was essentially ensured nobody went home empty handed.
Sunday we awoke to a cool, brisk morning, with calls for breeze. Oh boy did it blow! Interestingly enough, we were the only doublehanded boat in the fleet, and even with a reef, the boat was overpowered. We started the first race that day, the only boat reefed, and watched the majority of the boats struggling to stay upright with full crews. It was great because it helped us keep up, although downwind we had trouble staying with the pace. There were a few deathrolls from boats that elected to use their spinnakers. We were able to gain one place over our last two finishes, a third out of five in our fleet. The second race saw several boats reefed, by which point we had to double reef (since we were light on crew). Our last race we finished third, three long, hard upwinds, followed by four rather quick downwinds. We were reaching over seven knots with a partially furled genoa, and a double reefed main! Needless to say we were exhausted by the finish.

The Labor Day race was a blast to sail. I particularly enjoyed seeing members of the Lake City Yacht Club in Hudson, with their boats. It would be great to see even more boats next year. A quick thanks to Ken Tennant for organizing the event.

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