By Mike Ferring
Racing Captain
Grab some friends, invite someone new, splash the boat, and race around the islands. Just for fun.
It’s the annual Tall Cactus Regatta, a chance to chase your friends around Lake Pleasant on a nice spring day. For a selective few in the hard-core brigade, it’s a chance to race for a trophy.
This year’s Tall Cactus is on Saturday afternoon, April 22, starting at 1pm. The optional skippers meeting is at 11:30am. At the 1:05pm gun, everybody will start together, heading south from the mid-lake start/finish line, then north to round Horse Island and the mark north of Balance Rock Island, and then turning south to finish at the start/finish. It’s time-on-time handicap scoring, so the crew that sails best is supposed to win.
Awards this year will go to the top-finishing boat and the best-finishing mono- and multi-hull boats.
Mostly, this is a time to enjoy the sport and to get out to stretch your boat’s legs on a long-distance chase. It would also be a good time to invite some of the club’s many new members to come sail with you, to try out someone on the crew list, and to enjoy the afternoon.
Here’s a link to the racing page with the combined Notice of Race and Sailing Instructions, Course Chart, and the button to sign up. It’s just twenty bucks to enter.