Last weekend I had the chance to sail in the 2025 Corn Coast Regatta. I had such a great time that I had to jot down my thoughts before they fade. This post is mostly for (future) me. We’ll return to our regularly scheduled programming in a future post. I have a post on Zarr performance cooking.
First, some context: in August I attended the Saylorville Yatch Club Sailing School Adult Small Boat class. This is a 3-day course that mixes some time in the classroom learning the theory and jargon (so much jargon!) with a bunch of time on the water. I had a bit of experience from sailing on summer weekends with my family growing up, but I wanted to learn more before going out on my own.
We were thrown in on the deep end, thanks to how breezy Saturday and Sunday. Too breezy for sailors as green as us, as it turns out. At least we got to practice capsize recovery a bunch.
Our instructor, Nick, was great. He’s knowledgeable, passionate about sailing, and invested in our success. If you’re near the area and at all interested in sailing, I’d recommend taking the course (and other clubs offer their own courses).
After the course, Nick was extremely generous. He invited us out for the Wednesday night beer can races the Yatch Club hosts, on his Melges 24. This was quite the step up from the Precision 185 we sailed during the class.
I hadn’t done any racing before and was immediately hooked. During the races, I was mostly just rail meat (“hiking” out on the lifelines to keep the boat from heeling over as we go upwind) and tried to not get in the way. But afterwards Nick was adamant about everyone getting to try the other jobs on the boat. Trimming the spinnaker (a very big sail that’s exclusively used going downwind) was awesome. There aren’t any winches on the Melges 24, so you directly feel the wind powering the boat when you’re flying the spinnaker.
Which brings us to last weekend. Nick was looking for some people to crew during the regatta, and we ended with Nick (driving), me (hiking upwind and flying the spin downwind), and a few other sailing school alumni on the boat. We started early on Saturday, rigging the special black carbon fiber sails Nick uses for regattas.
After a quick captains’ meeting we launched the boat and got ready to sail. Saturday was a series of short-distance buoy races. We ended up getting four races in, and our boat took second in each race to a Viper 640 sailed by a very experienced and talented father / son crew1. A couple of races came down to the wire, and we might have won the third race if I hadn’t messed up our last gybe by grabbing the spinnaker sheet on the wrong side of the block and fouling everything up. Oops.
Sunday was the distance race. We started in about the middle of the lake, sailed a very wet 2 – 2.5 miles upwind (southeast) to the Saylorville Dam, followed by a long 4 – 5 mile downwind leg to the bridge on the north side of the lake, and finished with a ~2 mile leg to the end. The wind really picked up on Sunday, blowing ~15 kts with gusts up to 20–25 kts. As we neared the upwind mark, we had some discussions about whether or not to fly the spinnaker. That’s a lot of wind for a crew as inexperienced as we were (we’d only had one practice and the previous days’ races together). We took our time rounding the mark and eventually decided to set it. Nick took things easy on us, and overall things went well. We about went over twice (probably my fault; I was exhausted by the time we got 1/2 down the course) but our jib trimmer bailed us out both times just like we talked about in our pre-race talk. It sounds like even the Viper went over, so I don’t feel too bad.
Our team had really gelled by the end of the regatta. Crossing the finish line in first place was exhilarating. The official results aren’t posted yet, but we think we got first even after adjusting for the PHRF ratings.
I haven’t yet purchased (another) boat, but the Melges 15 and 19 both look fun (my poor old Honda CRV doesn’t have the towing capacity for a 24, alas). Regardless of what boat I’m on, I’m looking forward to spending more time on the water.
After the race we were all chatting about boats we’d sailed up. When I mentioned I’d sailed a Nimble 30 that my dad and grandpa had built, Kim (the father crewing on the Viper) asked where they’d built that. Turns out he had also built one, and had visited my dad and grandpa’s while they were working on it. Small world! ↩︎
