Gibson Island Frostbite

Lawson Rum Bucket

11/21/2009

The Gibson Island Yacht Squadron hosted the frostbite regatta and Lawson Rum Bucket on Saturday, November 21^st.  Attendance was down a bit for this season ending event, however the four sailors who showed up were treated to a very pleasant afternoon of sailing.  Winds were northwest, generally, although at times it was mostly west, and at other times mostly north, and other times, a mixture of both, depending on where you were on the race course.  Read Jr. with dad Read Beigel Sr. serving as tactician took advantage of favorable wind on the west (left) side of the course and pulled ahead in lap two of the two lap windward leeward course to win race one.  Charlie Krafft with Donna McKenzie bounced back to win races two and three.  Scott Williamson with crew Aubrey Barringer followed with 2nds in races 2, 3, and also in race 4.  Scott loaned his boat Thunderchicken (7703) to Greg Bincarowsky, who is currently building a Penguin and showed up to get a close up look at one.  With the loan of a drysuit and a boat, Greg was off to the races, and inspired to speed up his boat building project.  For race 5, a gybe mark was added.  Scott Williamson led around the course, carefully capitalizing on all of the shifts.  On the final run, Scott upheld the recently established Penguin tradition and managed a puck up.  Instead of finishing, he rounded the finish mark, which incidentally was also the starting and finish line pin and started to sail back upwind for lap 3.  By the time he had sorted things out, Charlie and Read had finished.

Many thanks to Walter Mitchell and his assistant for running the races for us.  This is a wonderful, if not tactically challenging venue.  We are planning an event in the spring and also the fall next year.