2018 ILYA MC SCOW INVITATIONAL

North ZMax Powers Winners in All Divisions

This past week MC Scow sailing really started heating up with another big championship regatta with the ILYA MC Invitational Regatta at Nagawicka Lake in southern Wisconsin. The 42 boat fleet had some of the best MC sailors in the country in attendance and for sure you could tell they were getting ready for the biggest two events of the year coming up soon. Just in a couple of weeks you have the ILYA MC Championship at Upper Minnetonka and a few weeks after that the MC National Championship at Pewaukee.

The Regatta

This is one of our few three day regattas held each year and for many attending it was four days with setup and practice. A beautiful lake in Nagawicka Lake , a great club with over the top volunteers made for a great event this past week. The weather brought a huge high pressure system with big heat, humidity and dew points. Some unstable conditions but a fantastic PRO and RC team timed things out well and we raced 6 of our 7 races scheduled. All challenging but all fair. Race 7 was cancelled last day due to unstable winds.

The Sailors

Forty two teams were signed up on this busy weekend of sailing in scow country. The E Invite which has a lot of MC sailors was held this past weekend as well so we know 10-20 MC sailors who would normally attend MC Invite were missing. However, the group was tough. We had former national champs, Inland Champs, Masters Champs, Youth Champs and many other great skippers on hand. It was a tough group and a fun group to race with this week.

The Results

The sailing was tight with the forward two, three, four boats each race. Seems like the conditions of light to light-medium winds with big areas of wind and big light spots always allowed the forward group to sneak away quickly starting around the top mark each race. The rich got richer every time. Then usually about 5-20 was always pretty tight.

Bill Colburn a favorite coming into this event had a great shootout early on with Dan Quiram and Ryan Grosch. In fact before race 5 and then race 6 (which gave us a dropout) it was really close between these three. The last day was a cut and dried deal. Bill went out and won both races sealing the championship win.

North-powered clients with the ZMax finished 1,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10 and all divisions!

Lessons Learned

Al Haeger did a nice 30 minute Q&A for SailZing and the group attending. Probably the highlight of this Q&A with the top five finishers after four races was a real zinger from Bill Colburn. He said something really good but how he got there was funny. He started by saying “I like to have no plan” and the question was how do you prepare. He finally got to what he meant and that he felt being agile and flexible with shifting conditions was important. Be ready to shift gears and do something quite different than have a rigid plan. Regatta arbitrator Peter Keck (C Scow National Champ and more) added that really where planning is important was pre-race and that so much is accomplished then in getting ready to be in a good position to do well on the race course. Great comments from all. Certainly having panels after good days of sailing and many races helps all. We also focused on how folks at the back of the pack and in the middle could do better as well.

“Like I always say try to get 10% better each week you sail. That is a doable goal but a big goal everyone can attain.” – Eric Hood

Other Regatta News

In closing we have to give huge kudos and thanks to Craig Heinze, his wife Michele, son Ethan and about 30 other volunteers both on and off the water. This club knows how to put a regatta on. The whole event for sure was very well done and I for one MC sailor will go back anytime Nagawicka holds an event.

Get ready to sail in the big ILYA Championships soon at Upper Minnetonka. Register and get details at www.ilya.org then of course the big National Championship at Pewaukee the end of August. Register for Nationals at www.mscow.org

Learn more about North fast MC Scow sails.