(Youngstown, NY)- “For those unfamiliar, the Lake Yacht Racing
Association (LYRA) has been around since the 1880s. Over that span,
they have hosted annual regattas at various clubs throughout the LYRA
area, which encompasses Lake Ontario, eastern Lake Erie and surrounding
waters. One of the beauties of the LYRA Annual Regatta is that it moves
every year to a different host club. This means the flavor of the
event changes with the venue, adding interest and variety. The makeup
of the fleets varies also, as the location impacts those attendees
beyond the regulars who go every year regardless of venue. This year
the Sodus Bay Yacht Club in Sodus Bay, NY hosted and it was one of the
most enjoyable LYRAs we have yet been to.I was telling my son Tim that there are two types of regattas these days, it was his first LYRA so he was not sure what I meant until he experienced it for himself. Mostly we have been doing the major events where the racing is the most important thing, and frankly sometimes, the shoreside activity can be pretty lame. On the other hand, you have regattas such as the LYRA, where the racing is maybe half of the reason people attend. It becomes an old home week where you see all of your friends, visit places where you sailed as a kid, and generally have a good time. The shoreside activity is not lame; it sure wasn’t in Sodus Point this year. There tend to be many more stories created at LYRAs than at your typical championship regatta.
SBYC did a fine job this year, mostly because of their hospitality and welcoming attitude. A smile and willingness to assist can cover up for the inevitable shortcomings that come with any event; the bigger clubs would do well to keep that in mind. The location in a small summer resort town just added to the fun as you could easily walk to the various establishments within a few blocks of the clubs for meals, supplies, nightlife, etc. It appeared that maybe the bars in town were a little too convenient judging by the look on the faces of some of the sailors each morning.
Next year LYRA moves the regatta to Whitby YC on the north shore of Lake Ontario, and then the following year to Rochester, where RYC and GYC will jointly host. If you have not been to an LYRA before you are missing good racing and good fun. Your crew will thank you for it.” Thanks for this contribution from Don Finkle.
My First LYRA- by Tim Finkle
“I’m not sure why I never did a LYRA in the past. Possibly, because the Level Regatta was always the week before or maybe I just wasn’t invited? I’d always heard stories about it (mostly the parties) and hoped that I’d have a chance to attend at some point. When Jim Egloff mentioned that he might want to take the J/88 down to Sodus, I thought that it would be a good opportunity. I’d done a lot of J/70 big fleet one-design regattas over the past two years, so a “big” boat PHRF regatta sounded different and fun. It was also an opportunity to crew instead of drive and really get a better sense of what the J/88 can do on the race course.
Before registering for the regatta, we needed to get an updated PHRF certificate and see what rating we’d be given. The original PHRF number when the boat came out was 87, however we sailed at 81 last season on Lake Ontario due to the 6 second “protect the fleet” penalty. Now, one year later, we expected the number might stay the same or even go up a bit given we had some data to work with. I was a bit surprised to find out that we actually dropped down to an 80 PHRF number…ouch. I won’t get into all of that now, but it just meant that we would need to sail well to compete at that number.
We were placed in PHRF 1 with all the fastest PHRF boats including a J/124, C&C 115, two Beneteau 36.7’s, and two J/35’s. This meant that we would be the smallest and technically the slowest in the fleet and although the boats owed us time, it also meant that we would have some challenges to deal with. In a one-design regatta, you know if you are going fast or not because the boats should be equal. That is not the case in PHRF. Also, tactics change from one design to PHRF and at times it can be frustrating because your plan often gets foiled when a bigger faster boat sails right past you or from under you or over top of you. In other words, you get dictated more than you might care for. We knew that upwind we would have some issues holding lanes, sailing as high or fast as some of the bigger boats with their genoas. We knew that some conditions would favor us and some would favor them. It was about staying patient, especially upwind, and staying close enough at the windward mark in order to catch them downwind. We were also the only asymmetrical spinnaker out there which meant our downwind angles would be quite different.
Luckily, we had a good crew with Jim Egloff driving, Kris Werner calling tactics, Justin Hays trimming (both from Quantum Sails Rochester), Nick Egloff on bow and myself trimming main. We felt that our boat handling would be above average, our boat and sails were new, and we had done our preparations to be ready to race. My Dad told me before the regatta that in PHRF “every dog has its day” and it’s a long regatta so just make sure you do well when the conditions favor your boat and when they don’t, try to minimize the damage.
Day 1 was extremely tricky as the light breeze hit pretty much every degree on the compass and the courses weren’t always square. In both races, we battled back from tough spots and ended up winning both of them, one boat for boat and the other finishing second over the line but correcting to first over Wind Chill, the B36.7. We saw that our downwind speed was excellent in the light air and we passed a bunch of boats on those legs. We held our own upwind but with the small jib compared to genoas on other boats but our weapon was the big asym kite downwind.
Day two called for big breeze and we were licking our chops to see what the boat could do. A WNW wind brought big waves and wind speed in the upper teens to 20 knots. We debated for a bit on the boat whether to use the big or small kite, but in the end Kris made the call to go with the smaller one knowing that we only had 5 people aboard, it would be a long day, and we could maneuver better. As it turned out, the breeze filled in even stronger and we’d have been tripping over ourselves with the A2 spinnaker. We got three really solid races in and got better as the day went on finishing the day with a 2-1-1. The last race sticks out because we lead wire to wire and had some amazing surfing/planing rides down the waves. Jim did an excellent job driving through the waves and we saw our speed increase upwind as the day went on. Downwind, we sailed the boat like a big J/70 and worked the waves and breeze to speeds in the 12-14 knot range. It was a fun day to say the least.
The last day was light and very shifty. We knew we had a close battle going with “Wind Chill” and with only a 5 point lead going into the day anything could happen. They sailed an excellent final day winning both races. We had a throw out after 6 races, so we knew that we needed just one solid race to secure the win. We had a second in the first race and dropped a 4th in the last race to hold on.
Overall, the J/88 performed well and held its own against much bigger boats. We ended up winning our PHRF 1 fleet and finishing 3rd overall after combining all PHRF fleets. It is a testament to the design that it can be a great one design boat, a PHRF boat, or simply a day sailing boat. In fact, our delivery crew raved about how well the boat sailed when they delivered it from Youngstown to Sodus.
So, in the end, LYRA was a success on the water and ashore as Dad’s article points out. Sodus Bay YC did a fine job hosting and we will be back the next time LYRA rolls through town. Thanks to the organizers and race committees who worked hard to put on a great regatta! Also, congrats to all the other division winners who take home those really cool classic perpetual trophies. We rarely see those kinds of trophies at regatta anymore, just one more neat thing about LYRA. My favorite part was looking at all the name plates from years and years ago and recognizing names and boats from when I was a kid.” Sailing photo credits- Don Finkle/ RCR Yachts. For more LYRA at Sodus Bay YC sailing information.
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