Colorado Mutineer Fleet 15 and Union Sailing Club hosted the 2019 Mutineer National Championships, September 12-15. Sixteen teams gathered from Florida, Texas, North Carolina and Cape Cod to compete.  Gib Charles, Doug McNight and Rosemary McNight planned, coordinated and executed a fantastic regatta.  The venue was breathtaking with wide views of the Rocky Mountain Front Range.

Day one of racing, Friday, saw light and variable winds.  However, race committee was able to get two races in the books.  The light wind racers were in their glory!  Saturday started off rather light but the breeze built and 5 races were completed.  Sunday Union Reservoir looked like a giant mirror reflecting the Front Range.  AP was signaled ashore.  Then a teasing breeze blew through the boat yard and AP came down with great anticipation.  I did say a tease and that’s exactly what it turned out to be.  Race Committee pulled the plug around noon and the sailors headed in to pack up.  PRO Ryan and the entire Race Committee did a fantastic job over the regatta in trying conditions.

After packing up boats and grabbing a shower, the racers were off to Tim and Susan’s home in which they hosted our annual meeting and awards ceremony.

New officers were elected, lifetime memberships to the class conferred and new ideas were exchanged.

Peter Way designed and produced beautiful, unique trophies that reflected the theme of the regatta.

Finally the awards were given and all agreed it was an extremely successful regatta and a great time.

MNC 2019 combined results here.

Matt Dalton reflects on MNC 2019

Light and shifty breeze for all 3 days. Well……that’s really only true for days 1 and 2, lol. Day 3 did not deliver enough breeze to have a race. There was a lot of this…..

When we did race, it was very tight racing. There were 9 Gold boats and 7 Silver, however half the Silver boats were consistently finishing ahead of half of the Gold boats (including us at times!). We had 2 crews there from TSS, there were also 3 crews from Texas. The other 11 boats were locals.

Local knowledge played a big part with how to deal with the flukey wind, although the locals would sometimes get parked by no wind just like we would. The only boat I saw that consistently handled the wind changes well was Doug McNight, one of the top local racers, owner of the newest Nickels Mutineer in the land and the newly crowned National Champion.

Day 1 was 2 races. Wind shifts from 50 degrees in multiple different directions. With one shift you are in the lead, next shift you are half pack, then back to being in the lead. Then the wind dies completely and you drift as well as you can. We were in second place on one of these races when the wind died……..it does come back, but from the other side of the course. Lol. Every boat over there goes past us and we finish last. Dang!

Day 2 was 5 races. Kinda more of the same for 3 races. Then we had 2 races in decent, mostly steady wind. We took a 4th in one of those! We were significantly over early in the other, which guaranteed we would be sailing behind the entire pack for the remainder of the race.

Herb did a good job of keeping his head on a swivel while driving SCK. I did my usual good job of talking too much and offering too much insight at often inappropriate times. Lol. We did have fun! We finished 7th out of the 9 Gold boats. Certainly a tough business. Thanks to Herb for getting SCK out to CO!

Of the top 5 Gold boats, 3 were locals. A Texas boat snuck in there along with Dave and Zach, who did an excellent job of sailing a borrowed boat. In true team spirit we spent Saturday morning before racing tuning their boat up to make it faster.

Next year!!!!!! MNC 2020 is at TSS!!!!!

Matt
SCK 8006