Midwinters Regatta 2022
November 2022
The Midwinters regatta is a USODA or United States Official Dinghy Association event, and so these regattas are qualifiers for Team Trials and Nationals. This regatta is held at Southern Yacht Club (SYC) in New Orleans. This year, Midwinters had 208 optimists* registered for the event. We arrived at the yacht club after a 6 hour drive from Houston Texas, 2 days before the event. We decided to do this because we were to sail on a new body of water or Lake Pontchartrain and we needed practice. The first practice day was canceled due to very minimal wind. But I was more worried about the following day, because of measurement. This is because the optimist boat is a one design which means that it must follow various specifications such as weight of your boat and size of your sail. This was worrying me because since it was my first USODA regatta, my boat had not been stamped yet, and I hadn’t gotten an official measurement before. I would be forced to partake in the measurements and if my equipment was to somehow be unofficial then I could not participate in the regatta.
The next day was our first race day. We arrived early at the club to rig, have a team meeting and the skippers meeting. Once we launched, it was chaos, and when we got out to the water the fleet had three races. I did not do well and placed in just below half of the fleet.
On the second day of racing there was severe fog and rain. This caused the racing to be canceled for the day. On the third day of the regatta there was quite a bit of fog, and it caused the first half of the day to be postponed but we were able to get 2 races completed. On the third day heavier wind was present and I did a bit better but still not my best.
This was a great regatta even though we only got in 5 races of the 9 that were supposed to take place. There was a lot of off-water craziness, World Cup watching and Thanksgiving Dinner at SYC.
*optimists- a class of boat
**rig- to get your boat ready for sailing in the conditions present