Silver Heel Sailing

Well there’s your problem! The damned kite is up…might as well be a sea anchor on top of the fore. (Fine, this picture is from last year, but I’d wager this could have been the problem this year) (Meredith Adams photo)

After a July packed with log canoe sailing, I missed all of August’s racing this year, sadly not able to attend what is roundly hailed as the year’s best weekend, the Oxford Regatta.  Although the Oxford breeze is often just as suspect as it is around the rest of the Bay, you only have to go the awards at Harleigh once before you’re hooked on this race. 

The weekend invariably plays as a once-a-summer gathering of the Bay’s varied sailing communities, more diverse than any one other regatta.  Big boats, Stars, Snipes, Optimist dinghies, and more all cram onto the Tred Avon river with the canoes, giving spectators plenty to gaze at along the Oxford shore.  The canoes (quite clearly the stars of the flotilla) are placed front and center, with the course always running along the Strand and past the point at Tred Avon Yacht Club.  The only competition for space so close into the Club is the Opti fleet, creating one of the more striking and perhaps comedic juxtapositions in the world of sailing whenever the behemoth canoes cruise past the diminutive sprit-riggers.

As I say, I missed this year’s series, but apparently it was not kind to the Heel.  I haven’t gotten the full debrief on the racing, but the results (let’s call it a tie for 9th) speak for themselves.  A rough return to action after back-to-back fast showings at Rock Hall and Governor’s Cup.  The measure of a weekend on the Silver Heel, though, is not simply taken from the on-the-water performance, and the scattered reports coming through to me are that the evening entertainment was spectacular, as usual.  Could it have matched last year, when Peter spent his Sunday evening doing donuts at 2 knots in the Bojan’s tender, all to keep his of ice cream away from the crew, who he imagined was just dying to poach his bowl?  I doubt it, but it’s not outside the realm of possibility.  Still, it seems that everyone had a great time.

Quite civilized indeed. (Meredith Adams photo)

From the smallest Opti kid to the, ahem, “largest” canoe boardman, the highlight of the Oxford Regatta is the awards ceremony at Harleigh.  Harleigh is where sailors remind themselves why we used to call the sport, “yachting.”  With the plantation style mansion standing sentinel over the countless picnic boats packing an idyllic slice of the Tred Avon, Harleigh Estate seems the Bay’s answer to the pedigreed Newport mansions on the bluff overlooking the Narragansett.  The setting gives the awards a gala feeling, in turn giving all present a ready-made excuse to dress like yachtsmen and –ladies, with flowing summer dresses mingling among enough plaid, seersucker, Bretton Red, and navy blue to make your head spin (Harleigh is proof that no matter how much some might like to hide it, all sailors enjoy dressing the part).  Add the open bar stocked with Mount Gay, and it’s all quite the civilized affair.

For a regatta so representative of sailing on the Eastern Shore and the Bay as a whole, the awards ceremony at Harleigh is very much appropriate to the occasion.  Oxford may not have a single race as big as the Governor’s Cup, but the series and the fanfare are important enough, at least to me, that I’ve rarely had a prouder moment as a sailor than when we were able to place last year, allowing my grandfather to lift silver in front of the appreciative crowd.  All assembled could tell that this was a special moment, and I was overjoyed to have been a part of it.

Happier days in the Silver Heel croquet camp. (Meredith Adams photo)

Lest you think that the Harleigh awards are entirely an homage to the weekend’s sailing, let me correct you right now: they are much more than that.  Yes, sir; for the crew of the Silver Heel, equal to the import of the sailing trophies is the annual epic battle against the two-bit, no good crew of the Edmee S. on Harleigh’s finely manicured croquet lawn.  Each year, the two crews take the field for a battle of the forces of Good (that would be the Heel, thank you very much) versus the minions of Evil (we’re looking at you, Edmee).  Always fierce and often honorable, the match determines bragging rights for a full year, assigning glory to the victors and 365 days of shame to the loser.  Needless to say, running up to this year’s match, the crew of the Heel had enjoyed several years of basking in the glory.

Two things to note here: First, the grass is a tripe tall for the usually impeccable Harleigh lawn...methinks this favored the Museum crew somehow (bribes may have been involved). Second, there's clearly some sort of undue and potentially illegal taunting going on here. And oh yeah, you've got to be freaking kidding me that we lost!!! (BlogCanoe.com photo)

Now, it’s obnoxious to criticize the crew when I couldn’t be bothered even to show up, but I’m going to do it anyway, because this year the Heel lost the croquet match!  When I heard that we hadn’t done so hot on the water, I shrugged.  When I heard that the boat capsized after Saturday’s racing, I laughed.  When I heard that we lost…lost!…to the dogs aboard the Edmee, I put my head in my hands, too shocked to express my disappointment with words.  And I was sitting around in China, a continent and an ocean away from the defeat!  I won’t belabor the point, but guys, how could you let this happen!?!  I’m going to have to speak to Peter about this, but for the next year, it’s two-a-days on the lawn for the Heel crew—this embarrassment must not be repeated!

That said, congratulations to the crew of the Edmee S.  These guys really aren’t that bad (no, they aren’t two-bit, no good, evil, or dogs…but they might smell a little rank at times), and in fact it’s a blast playing them each year.  Still, the Five Dollar Bill prize left the hands of my grandfather this year, and you can bet your ass we’ll be gunning to recover that next year (plus interest).

Here pictured after the glorious 2006 victory, that Fiver will be ours once again!