Jonathan Weston is working harder today than I am. Here's his report. btw, Jonathan is an Atlanta/LLSC native who then moved to Hawaii to windsurf just as the sport exploded. He's written an excellent book about those years, Maui Glory Days.

https://www.facebook.com/jonoweston/posts/pfbid02nDuTi6ifXFYkSN1LW54EDfjrZ3uAxVxYX4KHm6vkFvYk441bNEgYTiD8PmZwP9ul

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Lake Lanier Revisited for the Atlanta Windsurfing Festival. I think this was my second board, photo by Dad. You can see in the first pic I was much younger. With all due respect to organizer Chris Voith Sr., this punk was the first Atlanta windsurfer, if not the East Coast. 1972. Talk about tooting my own horn! Okay, here we go with the regatta report... and the detrimental humor... conditions on Saturday were ideal for at least the lightweights. Could have been gusting to 18, was hard to tell when sailing in the shadow of the Open Class and Cody Stubbs, lol, but from the pic I took after racing, it looks at lot windier. I suggested separate starts from at least the foiiers for "safety reasons" but perhaps in the back of my mind was the fact that most of us on LTs would be getting mowed over like a fine Atlanta lawn, no matter how good the start. I quickly discovered that complaining was not part of the SIs. I also quickly realized how bad I sucked compared to the better LT sailors. Having a slalom boom and a completely ragged out 4-year-old sail were not excuses enough for how poorly I pointed upwind. Downwind, this turned to an advantage, or perhaps I used a better technique from years of Laser sailing on how to point the board dead down and turn to lee before nosediving into the next wave. Did that once, swam, lessons learned to do a little dance back on the board beforehand, no matter how slow. Swimming is really slow. There was an old focka like me, I think his name was Bob so we'll call him Bob. He wasn't too fast but outpointed the fockouttame upwind. But downwind, I was able to nip on his heels and then on the last race of Saturday the wind kicked up and he was late at that start so I finally managed to do better than third at weather mark. Only, there was an anchor line above water for the mark, which I caught handily above the board. that was a first, but thinking fast, I jumped over the line. Having skipped physics class (see photos, me skipping physics class), I forgot that my rig would also have to clear the line. No problem, a quick freestyle reverse skate would solve the problem. Swim. Still wound up being my best race, a second, and I hoped to move into second the next day. Unfortunately, I had to head back to Atlanta for family and the change of time was only posted physically on the clubhouse bulletin board, so I missed the first race on Sunday. Time to go electronic, guys! Well, I made the last race as the wind died, but managed to cross ahead of Cody at the weather mark... no holding off the young bucks downwind unless I blanketed him, which was going to do me no good regatta wise and wouldn't want the payback if we ever met again, lol. So Cody won, Bob (his mentor he said) was second, and I was third in LTs. There were 7 others registered but everyone behind me spent more time in the water than on the board, so let's just say I was DFL. On the bright side, it was fun and I didn't hurt myself. William Fragakis I'm pretty sure won the Open Class on his foil by a mile. Wow, that's a really long race report. You get an award if you read till the end. Copy, share, post on 5 different pages and all your friends will appear lol.

results

pics from Benjamin Joffe on the race committee

I do a flyby.
https://www.facebook.com/1727433512/videos/pcb.23958143997134313/1130022137984056

More pictures courtesy of David Jackson at the LLSC