2008 Memories by Cryssa (Byers) Andersen

Oh… Oklahoma City! We had a great week there September 17-21, racing in the 2008 US Sailing Women’s Championship (Adam’s Cup.) The week was filled with eleven races, not so much wind, plenty of crazy wind shifts, lots of bugs, a very friendly Oklahoma City Boat Club, and many laughs between our crew of Whitney Loufek (skipper), myself (jibe trimmer), Lauren Maxam (spinnaker trimmer), and Megan Pluth (bow.)

In order to fully appreciate how insane the conditions were, you have to look at the results. Out of the eleven teams, nine of them had either a dead last or second to last. There were two teams who both won two races, but also got last in two races, and our team, who managed to never repeat the same place twice! That is pretty insane when you think about those odds, especially when you consider that this was a national championship.

The conditions were some of the most challenging I have ever experienced racing. First of all, it was really light. All the locals kept saying that it was never like that this time of year, but you hear that everywhere you go no matter which regatta you are sailing. I have done my fair share of lake sailing, but this was like normal lake sailing (if there is such a thing…) with a huge twist. In my past experiences on a lake, you work your way up the course from one shift to the next, no matter how big or small. Not the case here…as we slowly discovered. The shifts were massive and even bigger than the shifts, were the patches of wind and how they were filling in. You couldn’t just tack on the shifts, you really had to consider where you were in the puff and where the puff was actually going. There were some races where the entire fleet would be on starboard, but not a single boat would be sailing on the same angle! Crazy! We definitely had great boat speed, which helped and we were able to sail our own race most of the time which allowed us to take big risks, some of which paid, and some of which didn’t, but that is sailboat racing for ya, right?

– Cryssa (Byers) Andersen
4th at 2008 Adams Cup in J/22s provided by the Host, Oklahoma City Boat Club