Regatta

My daughter Olivia spent the vast majority of her summer sailing on Lake Superior. Roughly eight hours a day, five days a week for seven weeks, she taught kids from eight to eighteen how to sail.

Technically she helped teach. There are adults in charge. Her sister helped as well, though not the whole time. She also loves sailing, but is less fond of younger kids who don’t listen. All my children have a low tolerance for people who lack self-discipline, something juijitsu and wrestling instilled in them from such a young age that to lack it is mystifying to them.

Olivia is only 13, so she can’t actually work in the state of Wisconsin. She is a volunteer, all she gets out of the experience is time out on the water, and, this year, the other instructors invited her to sail in the annual end of summer regatta.

The regatta is a triangular race around the upper portion of Chequamegon Bay. It starts at the beach by Thompson’s West End boat launch, where she teaches, crosses the bay to the lighthouse, then comes back to a smokestack rock south of Washburn, and then back up to the start line. All total it’s usually about 4-5 hours, depending on the wind. Last year I believe it was more like 10-11 hours owing to a lack of wind.

This year the morning of the race the wind was blowing so hard at our place up on the hill I was worried they might cancel the race. Luckily down by the shore there was less wind, but enough to make for a lively race. The same person has won the race the last three years because, well, he’s a very good sailor and he has a fast boat (Laser). Olivia wasn’t much interested in racing, she just wanted to spend another beautiful day on the water, which she got.

It was one of those gorgeous end-of-summer days we get around here, when the high tops out at about 80, and even that’s only for an hour. The rest of the time it’s 75 and sunny, with no humidity, and a little cloud cover to make sure you don’t get baked in an open boat. I went down and watched them launch but regattas really aren’t a good spectator sport.

Lilah and I went for a bike ride along the lake shore for a while, stopping every now and then to put our binoculars on the far shore of the bay, trying to figure out which boat was which. The orange foresail on Olivia’s boat was visible from a surprising distance, but eventually we lost it against the far shoreline. We gave up and retreated to the coffeeshop for refreshments.

It was after noon when we headed back down and found that the very same Laser was once again on shore, having beat everyone by a good half hour. Olivia’s boat came in third, just barely missing second.

The race marks the end of the sailing program that the girls helped out at, but they’ve joined Sea Scouts, so they’re still sailing, just on a much bigger boat.

This year’s regatta was a little bittersweet for me. Typically this has marked the end of summer for us, where we start making last minute repairs and getting the bus ready for the road. This year there was none of that. The school bus didn’t get done this summer. Too many house projects got in the way. Our plans to head to the Outer Banks had to be shelved again.

I found myself later that day, after the boats from the regatta were packed away on a trailer, headed for winter storage, sitting down at the beach with the girls, staring out at the lake, wondering what comes next.