Hobie H17/H18 North American Championship Regatta
Day 2 Recap, by Liza Tewell
Tuesday-Friday, August 1-5, 2023
Lake Quinault, WA
Rain Forest Resort Village
Two days down, two to go. Eight races so far and what seem to be the boats to beat are bubbling to the top of the reader board. With that said, top finishes have reached deep into the fleet.
In the Hobie 17 class, Ron Holm from Kansas, home of the 2022 North American Championships, stood in 6th place going into Thursday’s racing. But he has a 1,2 and 3 in his pocket and is only 20 points from the frontrunner, Phil Collins from Oklahoma, who was happy to throw out a 14th place finish then rack up four consecutive firsts. In a class of 25 boats, 20 points is a relatively slim margin, especially with the potential to run eight more races.
In the Hobie 18 class, David Peltier and Marcos McGee are down in 10th after Wednesday’s racing but not out with a strong 2nd place finish in Race 6. Just 9 points separate the top four places.
Summer in The Great Pacific Northwest is notoriously short. Only about 8 weeks separate what the locals call grey, damp and cold “June-uary” and the early dog days of September. Puget Sounders cram in as many outdoor activities as possible into this small window of days filled with warm weather, sunshine and up to 19 hours of daylight lasting from the bright dawns to the end of the long dusks.
Blue skies are part of the equation as well, as long as smoke from the increasingly familiar wildfires don’t blow in from the north, west, or south.
Often the haze arrives in August. It’s the color of mustard and creeps through sealed windows, setting off smoke alarms in the middle of the night.
Midday through Wednesday’s racing, a plume began rising over the western hillsof the lake. White, not yellow, though the shape and density were familiar to those with firsthand experience and did not identify as a marine layer.
Awhile later, the gusty breeze that began building on the race course helped to dispel the rising smoke in the west. But the threat wasn’t over.
During the Wednesday evening fleet dinner of tacos and frivolity hosted at the Rain Forest Resort Village Salmon House restaurant, sailors, alerted by an increasing loud low rumble, clamored out to the back deck to watch as two white and orange air tanker fire-fighting planes descended from the east to scoop up bellies full of water from the lake’s surface, then rise and head west to help quell the flames creeping through a remote area between Quinault and the coast.
Barrel chested, powerful, with wide stubby wings, the air tankers made several scoop-and-drop waterbombing trips. By Thursday morning, the danger was deemed under control, a relief to the race committee which would not have to contend with incomings during Thursday’s races. If conditions do flare up, the DNR will notify the race committee prior to initiating their flights. (Though not often seen, the sound of freedom can be heard periodically—the mountains and hills surrounding Lake Quinault back up against the perimeter of Naval Air Station Whidbey Island’s EA-18G Growler training area.)
The weekend following this year’s Hobie North American Championships is the traditional final weekend of Seattle’s 73-year-old Seafair Festival. Weeks of parades and parties culminate with the running of the Seafair Hydro Races on Lake Washington.
The action isn’t only on the water. One of the most anticipated and crowd-pleasing spectacles (or not, depending on one’s ilk) of the weekend is the midday Boeing Air Show over Lake Washington featuring the visiting Blue Angels. Hobie racers were treated to a solo Blue Angel flyover while practicing its air acrobats over the lake.
Hobie Division 4 