I’ve been distracted from sailing for the last few months. I made plans last November to backpack and climb a particularly challenging route to the top of California’s Mt Whitney. At 14,400 plus feet, My Whitney is the highest in the continental US.

I found that the conditioning needed for climbing and the conditioning needed for sailing were at bit at odds if you have limited time to prep as I did. The abs didn’t improve much this spring and my head was on equipment and meals at altitude rather than reviewing rules and visualizing starts.

Three Lasers showed up for Wednesday night racing a week ago. As we were rigging we got to joking around about staying close on the course and I declared that if we were far enough ahead of perpetual handicap winner, John in his Day Sailor, I’d circle back to the second place Laser to keep it interesting.

Over the last few years I’ve been pleased with the improvements the Laser community has allowed; the boat is much easier to sail and adjust.

But, I’m not thrilled with the new centerboard brake. It’s easy to install, it just doesn’t work without a lot of fooling with it. Is it me, or did they just not design it to work?

I have tried it on two of my Lasers and in both cases I’ve had to slightly trim the adjustment holes to allow it to be moved fractionally closer to the board.

Not a home run. We’ll see how it holds up to use over the season.

Jay Livingston

The first tack was a little sloppy, but the breeze was light and the lake was flat so it still felt good. I did a fluid roll up into the second tack, but the roll out of it was late and tepid. The third one was fine, good initiation and nice pull out, but I was headed low and over steered getting up to my course.

QYC May Madness Laser Regatta Results

When you plan a regatta you haven’t the faintest idea what kind of weather you’ll have, so it was with a pretty profound degree of disappointment that the weather for our May Madness Laser regatta began to make its self known out of the long-term forecasts – rain and thunder with moderate to light winds.

Five of us were out playing around in our Lasers a few days ago. The breeze was light, but it never dropped off completely and its direction gave us some good long tacks and runs to work out our spring fumbles. I warmed up and then shouted over to a couple of others that were close to me that we should run some practice laps around a couple of buoys.

As I came off the water on Saturday I had a memory flash of trying to start a hand-cranked Dodge pick-up I owned when I was 19. My Laser seemed to be running like a twenty-first century boat, but my twentieth-century body was just sort of turning over with an occasional sputtering of power. It’s discouraging that Dacron and fiberglass are more resilient than muscle and bone.

The Ouija-board effect can win you races. Just place your hands on your Laser and ask, “Who is going to win this race?” Well, your Laser may not end up pointing at you or your opponent, but the principals of the Ouija-board effect can improve your Laser sailing skills and straighten out your head.

 It was the third race of the Laser’s New England Masters in Newport, RI. I had been aiming toward this regatta for the second half of the summer and now I was quite literally hanging on by my toenails, and that was with my radial rig set board flat and eased. The committee boat said that gusts to 30 were overlaid on top of steady wind of 24 plus. I was keeping the boat upright by easing the sheet and hiking off my toenails, or so it felt, but my energy was evaporating.