Stamford Yacht Club and the Storm Trysail Club with Riverside Yacht Club hosted three regattas on three successive weekends. The Vineyard Race, The Valeur-Jensen Stamford Denmark Race and the Long Island Sound Championships all had beautiful September weather. And sandwiched in there on the middle Saturday, 9/12, was Larchmont Yacht Club’s Edlu Race, a short distance race traditionally sailed as a warm-up to Block Island Race in the spring.
I have sailed a big handful of Edlu’s, well over ten Vinyard Races, and I have fond memories of Tuborg (“The Golden Beer of Danish Kings”) and those little squares of Danish cheese on the SYC lawn after the Friendship Race. But honestly, I had not sailed these events in quite a while.
Well, an old friend, (“old” as in I’ve known him for a long time…) asked me to race the Denmark and I was shocked by the scratch sheet. Eighty three boats! The day before, Larchmont Yacht Club had run the Edlu, celebrating its 65th running, and they had 65 boats. And then another friend sent in his write up of Argo breaking the Vineyard Race record (again), so I checked on those numbers…… Ninety boats! So that led me to check on the overlap of these events. Was it due to the Redniss Cup, based on if PRO Ray Redniss can run back to back events then those who sail both the Vineyard Race and the Denmark have a shot at the trophy? Surprisingly, that really didn’t explain the numbers as only eleven boats sailed in those two events and only a handful sailed Edlu and Denmark. (Sorry Ray….but somebody has to get those chores done!) Meanwhile, Nick Langone was PRO for Larchmont’s Edlu as well as a co-chair for the Long Island Sound Champs.
So that led us to September 19 and 20 and said Long Island Sound Champs. Now I was hooked to dig deeper…three pretty special weekends in a row, weather-wise. But surely, those 220 odd boats that had sailed the prior two weekends must have soccer games or a wedding or a virtual homecoming to go to? No way was Ray, now going for the PRO trifecta, going to get the same love.
Well maybe there were a few soccer games but, never mind, because another 36 unique boats showed up for the Champs, joined by 5 more who had sailed the Denmark for a 41 boat regatta! That is twice the number that Co-Chair Ty Anderson hosted last year at Riverside! (Ty, racing in Plus One configuration, won the event after winning his class in the Edlu….not very sporting of a Chairman; but, hey, what are you going to do.)
So by rough calculation, that’s 260 individual “big” boats, call it 1,000 to 1,200 people, who competed over these last three weekends. Pretty cool. If we keep that up next year, we’re going to need a lot more of those tiny little cheese squares.
Congratulations to all who sailed and organized. That’s probably another 100 folks..thank you to them especially!
See you on the water!
Publisher
Benjamin V. Cesare
ben@windcheckmagazine.com
