![](//images.clubexpress.com/405653/graphics/52377948904_a7fe6fa466_w_888555080.jpg)
Photo by Al Schonborn
Clark Lake is a challenging place to sail, especially when the breeze has a southerly or northly direction. It is a beautiful place. The Clark Lake Yacht Club is amazing. If you ever have a chance to sail out of Clark Lake Yacht Club, do it.
There are many holes puffs and shifts. Sailing here is CHALLENGING.
BNAC 2022 had some interesting things that were written into the Sailing Instructions.
1. No throw-outs
2. A Black Flag after one General Recall.
Saturday and Sunday we shared the course with 3 other fleets. That is 5 rolling starts. This helped to keep things moving. We ended up only having one general recall and no competitors were OCS on the next start. The threat worked.
Scoring: Possible Black Flags and no throw-outs changed our strategy a bit. We summed up our priorities before the regatta as follows:
1. Stay clean, if you lose in the protest room, you can NOT win the regatta. 2 circles on a foul will put you back in the fleet.
2. Get to the top 3 in the fleet. Top 3s should be good enough to win. Getting a 10 will make it hard to win.
3. Protect the asset. If you run aground, break something, get hit, you are unlikely to win.
Conditions
First day was canceled and that gave all of us time to catch up. It ended up being a pretty great day!
Saturday and Sunday had us racing in a gradient SW wind building throughout the weekend. Started off 5-10 knots and building to 8-15 on Sunday. The wind was on and off, left, and right.
The boats that changed gears and reacted to the changing conditions were rewarded with added speed. Trevor likened it to going to catholic mass. Sit, stand kneel, repeat.
![](//images.clubexpress.com/405653/graphics/Ed-Trevor_split_1124095704.jpg)
Photo by Al Schonborn
Boat Handling
While we did concentrate on coming up in the lifts and down in the headers. It really helped to have the sails eased enough were we accelerated while coming up in a lift. If our sails were in too tight as we came up after a lift, we could not accelerate as much as when we eased the sails as we came up to the new upwind direction. We did this in all the conditions, not just in depowering mode. Ease, Hike, Trim. Even in lighter breeze.
Compass: Never looked at it. The shifts were so huge and frequent that Dennis Martinelli may have run out of areas on the boat to scribe them throughout the day.