A Summer Sail
By Sheila Helmberger
There is no lovelier sight than a sailboat gliding with ease across the water on a beautiful summer day. The sun’s rays reflect off the gentle waves and the sails billow and snap in the breeze. The visual treat increases immeasurably when the sight is one hundred sailboats over a three-day period, mastering the elements in a picturesque, but competitive regatta.
As hundreds of competitors and spectators take to the waters of Gull Lake in July, the wind may be one of the most important guests of all. The Gull Lake Yacht Club hosts the 2009 Class X Championship Regatta for the Inland Lake Yachting Association the weekend of July 22–25. More than one hundred two-person teams, made up of youths sixteen years and younger, embark on the lake in a test of strength and skill to maneuver their boats into, out of, and through the wind to determine some of the best youth sailors in the nation.
Gull Lake Yacht Club board member Vince Driessen and the club’s commodore, Charles McQuinn, say the championship regatta has been held for seventy of the association’s 112-year history. This is the first time it will come to the waters of Gull Lake. The club is honored to host the event and show off its home location.
“We did a lot of PR work,” says Driessen. Competitors come from nine states and the association’s fifty member clubs.
The X boat was first designed and built in 1933 in White Bear Lake, Minnesota, by John O. Johnson, owner of Johnson Boat Works. The ancestry of the X Boat is in the traditional scow boat, which had its origins in Scandanavia. It is a sixteen-foot sailing dinghy ideal for young sailors. “Its size, shape, speed, and forgiveness are perfect for youth events,” says McQuinn.
The boats in this summer’s regatta vary in age, condition, and value.
“You can get a used one that’s about five or six years old for a couple of thousand dollars,” says Driessen. “New, they’re probably ten to twelve thousand dollars. They refer to this type of sailing as one-design sailing because all of the boats are essentially identical. If you have a boat that’s four, five, even ten years old and you take care of it, you’ll be just as competitive, or more, as someone who went out and bought a brand new one. Theoretically, in one-design sailing, the person who wins the series could swap boats and have the same results. It’s all about the skill.”
July’s competition features a senior fleet with skippers fifteen and sixteen years old and a junior fleet with skippers fourteen years and younger. In addition to the skipper, each team has a one-person crew. Communication is key to a good racing team.
“You need a close relationship,” says McQuinn. “To throw two good sailors out in a boat and say, ‘go race,’ you’re not going to win. You have to be able to know what each other’s thinking. There’s a rhythm and a routine. Teamwork is very important.”
The environmentally friendly sport, which relies on only wind and water, also demands top notch athleticism.
“The senior fleet is highly competitive,” says McQuinn. “Fifteen and sixteen-year-old boys and girls are adult-size. When I started sailing I was probably eighty pounds and I had a crew member that weighed about fifty pounds. Every light wind day, we’d blow everybody away because we had no weight. We couldn’t handle a heavy wind day. Some kids will be faster in light wind and some kids in heavier wind. You have to be pretty skilled to slow it down when you need to and speed up. If you don’t have momentum, then you’re trying to get momentum and you have the boat next to you trying to steal your wind. Sailboats can’t go straight into the wind, so you end up zig-zagging through the course trying not to hit the other rigs.”
The three-day event consists of a series of eight races for each of the two fleets. “Ideally two races will run in the morning and two in the afternoon,” says Driessen. “Four in one day would be great, but there may be too high or too light a wind to get that many in. A variety of conditions would be ideal. Maybe a day of five to ten mile per hour winds and a day of thirteen to eighteen miles per hour. If you get more than fifteen miles per hour, the kids start getting challenged. Closer to twenty miles per hour—you could have some crashing or capsizing, some of the younger teams getting scared. In terms of mental and physical fatigue, a full day of heavy wind sailing is the equivalent of running a marathon!”
Variety also helps judges get a feel for the spectrum of skill. “The kids that are at the top after eight races have sailed well through all conditions,” says Driessen.
Luke Surma is a student at Brainerd High School. He’s one local resident that will compete in the senior fleet in this summer’s regatta. He also teaches classes at the club’s sailing school. “Luke is an outstanding sailor,” says Driessen, “At last year’s championship on Lake Winnebago in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, in the senior fleet, out of sixty-three boats, Luke placed twenty-second and qualified for an elite, ‘Blue Chip’ invitational the following month.”
Surma knows what it takes to be a good sailing competitor. “You need to be really quick on your feet,” Surma says. “Be able to make quick decisions. You need a lot of confidence. Once you do poorly on a race, you have to let it go. You’ll never do that race again, so you need to get that confidence back.” He said the sport is as physically challenging as any other he’s participated in. “There’s a lot of pressure,” he says. “Heavy winds can tire you out fast.”
Surma started sailing the summer after fourth grade. “It clicked right away for me,” he says. This is the third summer he will race with his boat, the Flying Toaster. “I try to do two or three regattas a year. Most are in Wisconsin, and one I like to compete in is on Lake Geneva, in Illinois. I think it’s going to be a really good regatta,” says Surma, of this summer’s home event. He’s up for the competition. “I hope we get at least sixty or seventy entries in the senior fleet.”
Spectators are welcome to watch the regatta for free from a spectator boat sponsored by the Gull Lake Yacht Club or from their own boats anchored in designated areas. Official races begin at 9 a.m. Thursday and continue Friday and Saturday, when trophies will be awarded to the winners. Each race runs about an hour and fifteen minutes.
“This is truly a junior championship event. The very top sailors that come through this event every year are evolving into being some of the best collegiate and national sailors that the United States develops,” says Driessen.
For a summer activity usually associated with grace and beauty, area residents are about to see a whole new side of sailing.
Gull Lake Yacht Club is replacing its old clubhouse in time for this summer’s big event. The new clubhouse includes classrooms for the sailing school, event space, and a catering kitchen. An antique E Scow sailboat hull will be suspended from the clubhouse ceiling. New members are welcome, with social and sailing memberships available for anyone on or off the lake. Sailing classes at the Gull Lake Sailing School are offered for students six years to adult through Brainerd Community Education. www.glyc.com