Extreme Sailing in a River

Extreme sailing in a river may seem like an oxymoron but it aptly describes racing an International 14 dinghy in the Columbia River Gorge. This July I took 4 days and competed in the International 14 National Championships sailed out of Cascade Locks, Oregon. This location has long been one of my favorite places to sail a dinghy. A hot, windy, natural environment with beautiful scenery and freshwater combine to make for some excellent sailing.

In this excellent picture from Sean Trew, you will see me in the blue hat with Kris Henderson on the helm. My hat is on backward because it was getting blown off. Here we are going upwind in a 25 knot puff, fully hiked and going about 9 knots. You might take notice of the fact that the crew (forward hand) plays the mainsheet directly from the boom and there is not a mainsheet cleat. The beautiful scenery of the Columbia River Gorge can be seen in the background.

For this National Championship we had 13 boats show up from as far away as Alberta, CA and Southern California. Among the rules for an International 14 National Championship is the requirement of a long distance race. So after 4 good buoy races in the morning, they set us off on a downwind start for a temporary mark 7 miles up river and back. It is a simple course but a seriously difficult challenge when the wind is up. We ended up capsizing at the start because we were a little to aggressive with our full-on, kite up, twin wire, going 17 knots at the line, 5 seconds late start, because there were 5 boats right in front of us going slow as they hoisted their kites. It was one of the more memorable moments of the regatta and was executed exactly as we had planned, except the capsize. We righted the boat and by the time we got to that mark way down the river we were in fourth place, we passed one boat on the way upwind and finished the long distance race in Third Place. Here is some neat video of some friends of mine sailing (and capsizing) their 14 in "The Gorge"! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0R74mpPQKM