Placencia Sailing Club's Annual Regatta

Last weekend the Placencia Sailing Club held their 11th annual regatta in the water offshore from Tipsy Tuna. The regatta consisted of 2 days of racing for both the Optimist and ILCA (Laser) class categories. Competitors from Caye Caulker and Corozal clubs traveled to attend the regatta and the weather was beautifully breezy, making for nice and slightly challenging conditions. Placencia Sailing Club had a great showing and did their fans proud with first place results in both classes.

My little guy Mitch began going to sailing club back in August. Most of the early days were more like sandcastle club rather than sailing club but after consistently attending he began picking up the basics and eventually grew into a decent novice sailor. He’s only 7 and hovering around the 50 pound mark so he lacks both finesse and strength but he gets by and he thinks he’s like… so cool. He was talking about racing and his coach thought he might be ready to give it a try so I pushed for him to be allowed to compete in this regatta. We prepped him about being a gracious loser and that no one expects a completely green 7-year-old to come in anything but last but we’ll be so proud of the effort. Ms. Maria went through loads of extra trouble to kit out 7 optimist boats so that everyone could race- we were so excited. Phil and I dropped Mitch down at the sailing shed with the rest of the team while we headed over to the beach to set up the tents and watch the race. We spent a good 2 hours anticipating his arrival on the course and watching the rest of the kids warm up before realizing he got cold feet and turned back. He didn’t even make it to the starting line! Ugh, what a disappointment that he didn’t even try. Now he’ll have to wait another full year for a second shot. Mitches be trippin’ I tell ya.

The rest of the kids did great though. I didn’t realize that the races would be continuous. I thought they’d come in and beach their boats between heats but they all basically kept going non-stop. The sailors do a “sausage” I think its called which is a loop of the course and then que up again behind the starting buoy to launch straight in to the next race. They only came ashore if they had trouble with their boats or in one new sailor’s case- because she was too scared to continue (but she re-entered the following day and completed 2 sausages!). Here are the results of the regatta:

ILCA sailors: