Bulldog Regatta, hosted by The Citadel in SC

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Well another milestone for New Bern NJROTC Sailing... our first "away regatta" and it was a good one. We have been holding our own regatta for 3 years now, using our FJs. This was a similar deal with the host providing a fleet BUT the boats were Lasers (link).

Here's the scene on Saturday morning, rigging up the Laser sailboats we'll be racing:

OK, sailing in a strange place, unfamiliar boats... sounds like a lot of things could go wrong. Lake Moultrie is over 6 miles across, which is open water (our sailing area on the Neuse River is about 1 1/4 miles across). But not much did go really wrong. Yeah, a couple of our team capsized. We had a solid lead in almost every race and blew it (except for 2). However we showed both good sportsmanship and solid Right-Of-Way skills. We learned about a new kind of boat, everybody sailed out & then sailed back in OK... it was definitely a great learning experience.


Start of the first race: our team is in yellow lifejackets, the two at the left. Althogh it looks like they are behind, they are actually in quite good position considering distance to windward not just forward.



Now let's look at some of the racing action... although it's been said that watching sailboats race is almost as exciting as watching paint dry...



The starting line is between the pontoon boat & the yellow bouy, the first mark is directly to windward so the boats will have to go close-hauled and also tack at least twice to get there.

A few seconds later- you can see that not only does our team have good speed, but they are closer to the camera and thus in better position to windward.

After rounding the first mark, they go downwind to another red buoy. The larger buoys that we use are easier to see, for sure!


The two schools represented here are us (New Bern High School) and West Ashley, near Charleston SC. All the sailors in the 1st race have been sailing for at least 2 semesters, but the basics are the deciding factor. All boats spent at least a little time stuck in irons, nobody made good tacks, and the sail trim + boat-handling was less than stellar. However, in the first set of races everybody got around the course fairly well.

Here we go around the first mark: New Bern sailors are in 1st and 2nd place! Hey what's so difficult about this?!? Well it's harder than it looks, we ended up with a 1st and 3rd place. In the next race, we scored 1st and 4th...

New Bern NJROTC is not a "yacht club" program. Our sailors generally are starting out with no experience in boats. However, we have had a few cadets with sailing experience and our racing team features a young man who has been sailing for years with his family. The team placed him in the second set with the idea that it would be like batting clean-up in baseball...



There were 8 sailors and 6 races. Overall our top skipper placed 2nd, with two wins out of our races he sailed. Our 'Clean-Up Batter' did win a race but in another race he capsized and failed to finish. As a team, we finished 2nd out of two...

Sailing is over, got work to do...

Our program is not really oriented toward racing, which is just a game after all. It's fun and it can help build skills & confidence, but our program is mainly oriented toward SEAMANSHIP and LEADERSHIP. It is great to be able to participate in events like this, it was really fun as well as a learning eperience. The sailors learned a lot, the coaches learned what the sailors need to improve on... count on hearing more about that.

Our goal for this event was to sail well, to avoid collisions & show rules knowledge, and to gain experience in a new environment. So, to bring home a trophy at all was a BONUS !! We give a huge 'Thank You' to the Citadel for organizing and running this event, and we hope to be back next year.

... posted by Assistant Coach Douglas King