On July 8 and 9, four boats from Keuka and one from Sarasota made the trip to Ithaca Yacht Club in New York. Ithaca YC is located on the west side of Cayuga Lake and just three miles north of Ithaca, the college town (Cornell U. and Ithaca C.) on the southern tip of the lake. Cayuga Lake is the second largest of the Finger Lakes in New York, just under 40 mi long, 3.5 mi at its widest point, and 435 feet at it’s deepest.

Ithaca YC was the host of the Central New York YRA annual regatta. This is an annual regatta between all 27 yacht clubs in the region much like the ILYA Champs, but much smaller in scope. This year the MC fleet joined Lasers, Lightning’s, 420’s and Optimists. This year the centrals were held in conjunction with the CNYYRA qualification for the US Youth Champs for the SMYTHE and BEMIS cups.

Saturday started with the MC fleet joining the Lasers and Lightning’s on the same course. There was a nice 5-8 kn southerly thermal wind that got us all out to the race course. Unfortunately by the time everyone was at the RC, the wind died. After bobbing around for a while, they served lunch on the water and soon after cancelled the races for the day. There was a nice bonfire on the edge of the yacht club grounds that was a nice end to good summer windless day.

Sunday dawned with another southerly thermal giving us a nice breeze to the race course. This time the wind held for the first race. After watching the MC’s zip around the Lightning’s on Saturday, the race committee decided to start us first. The race started with a clean start and John Kimball and Steve Andersen tacking first and going out the right side of the course. Tom Buechner, Bob Cole and Sean Treacy stayed left with Tom staying left longer then Bob or Sean. This won the race as Tom got around the windward mark first, with Bob and Sean following, and never looked back. After rounding the leeward gate Sean went right in search of some more breeze to catch Bob and still keeping an eye out on John. The right turned out to have a better breeze and better angle but Bob was too far in front for Sean to catch, though he did say it gave him a good scare.

After everyone in the MCs finished the RC unwisely, in this sailors opinion, decided to wait for the rest of the fleets to finish before starting the MCs again. The second race started with the line slightly shifted to the south east, but still had a huge pin favor with everyone tacking to port once the race started and a follow the leader to windward mark commenced. Right before Bob made it to the windward mark the wind went very light. Bob and John were able to squeak by the mark and get a huge lead over Sean, Tom and Steve. Heading downwind Tom was able to stay in the small pockets and passed Sean, while we all had to sail into the oncoming Lightning fleet. Half way down the leg the wind decided to show back up but with lots of sharp wind shifts. Many auto tacks commenced. Both Bob and John sailed through Start/Finish line, and after Tom was nice and hailed them that they could not do that, John came back and unwound himself, and was still in front of Tom. Bob for whatever reason decided not to and was DSQ’d, though he did sail the best race. Read those sailing instruction, they are important.

The race committee decided to wait until the wind filled in for third race, but since it was the Soccer world cup finals and some of us had horses to feed, the MC racers went home. So the final results were Tom, John, Sean, Bob, and Steve.

We went to this regatta to expose the MC to more people in New York and we did seem to peak some interest from some people. There were many questions about the boat from the young, old and the young at heart. We even had one inquiry about frostbiting the MC out of Ithaca YC. It was unfortunate that the wind did not hold well as we had offered rides to any that were interested. We will be back next year at what ever club hold the Centrals and hopefully with a few more years’ exposure there will be more MC Fleets forming in the New York region. This area is ripe for the growing with many wonderful places to sail, a healthy fleet at Keuka, a resurging fleet in Cuba and some lone sharks in a few other places.

Sean Treacy
MC1808