CENTER OF EFFORT
Some regattas are greater than the sum of their parts
Some regattas are greater than the sum of their parts, and each of these is its own
spirit animal.
Does your outfit have an event that defines you? That inspires its members? That embodies pride and spirit? That brings the volunteers with bells on? In my West Coast world, our poster child is the Congressional Cup at Long Beach Yacht Club—canceled or postponed like everything else scheduled for early 2020—but that match-racing extravaganza is the centerpiece of LBYC’S life in the world we used to call normal. To the members, it’s more than a premier event. Past commodore Camille Daniels says: “Our volunteers schedule their vacations around the Congressional Cup. They look forward to seeing sailors they know, umpires they know. That’s especially true for host families, because all our visitors stay in private homes, and the Cup produces lasting friendships. The sailors call whenever they’re in town, and they tell us: ‘Come to Australia; stay at my place. Come to Sweden; stay at my place.’”
Race committee service for the Congressional Cup is also a grooming ground for club leadership. Look at a commodore of LBYC, and you’re looking at someone who stepped onto the Con Cup’s RC ladder probably 12 years ago and never looked back. If you want to take another route to becoming commodore of Long Beach YC, good luck.
Across the United States, there are other examples, more than we can fit in, but let’s look around.
The Gulf Yachting Association stretches from Sarasota, Florida, to Houston, Texas, and everything in the “GYA” season builds toward the Lipton Cup, which—donated in 1920 by Sir Thomas—launched a culture. The sailors of the day committed themselves to club-owned, one-design race boats and created the 20-foot Fish class for the purpose.
Southern YC in New Orleans ordered the first six, and Fish served for the next 48 years. Owning at least one Fish became the ante for any club to join the GYA, which developed soon after the Lipton took off. Today, each club
We come to the ILYA, the Inland Lakes Yachting Association, where the look is different but the heart is the same and, again, it’s all generations together.
competing in the Lipton enters one boat for four races over Labor Day Weekend. To plumb the depth of a club’s talent, and to involve as many people as possible, no one may skipper more than one race or crew more than two. There’s also a Junior Lipton, and it’s a hallmark of many of these signature events around the country to involve multiple generations. (If you think I believe in the desoccerization of youth sailing, you’re right.)
Maybe, just maybe, there will be enough near-normalcy for the GYA’s 100th Lipton Cup to run on schedule this year. Standard practice would place the event in Mississippi at Bay Waveland YC, the 2019 winner, but Southern ran the first Lipton, and the 50th, and sentiment in the GYA assigned the 100th to Southern. Wherever the Lipton goes, it’s an all-hands call. Time stops.
Cathy Cromartie, author of a GYA history to be released
this summer, says: “The Lipton brings out the numbers and the best of the best. You need a navy’s worth of boats to run it and an army of volunteers, even down to people directing traffic in the parking lot, but it works because everybody wants to be part of it. Bands, cookouts, an event program designed as a keeper—all generations together. These days we sail the Lipton in Viper 640s, but for the 100th, we’ll bring out the Fish class too.”
And while we’re not on the subject, your correspondent tips a hat to one of the sailing dynasties of the Mobile, Alabama, GYA station, specifically to Ken Kleinschrodt, in line to sail his 47th consecutive Lipton Cup this year.
Shifting from the far south to the far north of the country, we come to the ILYA, the Inland Lakes Yachting Association, where the look is different but the heart is the same and, again, it’s all generations together. I count 49 clubs in the ILYA. You’ve probably heard of Lake Geneva YC, in Wisconsin, but perhaps not Lake Wawasee, Indiana, or Lake Okoboji, Iowa, where the 2020 Big Inland is scheduled in August. The website at Okoboji YC is rich in photos of grinning kids in costumes paddling outlandish, homemade
You won’t find any shade trees around Lake Pleasant, Arizona—thus the tent—but you will find a forest of tall cactuses and views to assure you that, yes, this is the great American desert.
floating contraptions, and an online visitor (me, for example) might immediately think, What a great place to be a kid. It’s also a great place to sail, apparently, as one of the ILYA’s favored destinations for the Big Inland. ILYA president Dave Berg speaks of hundreds of boats, hundreds of volunteers, “600 people attending the dinners and maybe three generations on one boat.”
This is scow country, and we’re talking A, MC, C and E Scow classes. This has been going on since 1898, and it’s grown to include lakes in nine states. ILYA historian Tom Hodgson relates: “A few years ago, we surveyed the members on what they value most. First of all, they told us, they want a big lake with the best possible sailing conditions.
“After that, and a close second—as important as the racing, really—was to see their friends from all over. People they might see only a few times a year, or only once, at the Big Inland, because nothing else in our sailing comes close to the Big Inland. Imagine kids of kids of kids. The Big Inland is our crown jewel, and the clubs bid against each other to get it. When they win the bid, volunteers come out of the woodwork. Hosting is a point of pride. If we were to lose 2020 to a virus, for us, that’s on the order of canceling the Olympics.”
Arizona YC, with its annual Birthday Regatta set for midwinter, faces less-immediate pressure, and the world is likely to change several times before then. Even so, the thought that comes to mind for Commodore Rob Gibbs is that it would be “emotionally devastating” if a continuing pandemic shuts down their spirit center this winter. “We’d try to move to a different date, not cancel. We’re supposed to be there at the lake, gathered with 250 families. It’s supposed to happen. That has meaning. Some of these people travel a distance to camp out and play games with their friends. We put up a big tent as a rallying place, and the Birthday Regatta is the one occasion when our paper club has a physical location.”
You won’t find any shade trees around Lake Pleasant, Arizona—thus the tent— but you will find a forest of tall cactuses and views to assure you that, yes, this is the great American desert. It’s a dramatic setting, north of Phoenix, and it’s one of the draws for the sailors, who include plenty of multigenerational entries. Gibbs says: “We have a mom and dad in the Catalina 22 fleet who sail with their three girls, all somewhere younger than 7. Two years ago, we had an Etchells fleet, and four or five boats sailed parent-kid combinations—building memories. Last year, with a little help, the Arizona State Sailing Team fielded four boats in three fleets. It goes on.”
Or not, in 2020. “Uncharted waters” is the catchphrase we’ve all heard too many times, but it’s apt. It is likely the predecessor organization to the Gulf Yachting Association was a victim of the Yellow Fever epidemic of 1912. Records are hazy, like the future today. The only thing that is almost certain is that eventually these and other spirit events at other institutions that treasure them will blossom, more valued than ever. Then we can say again, it goes on.