thanks, wikipedia
this year i've been in a jy15, which is a larger boat, about 15 feet long. it has two sails, a main sail and a jib. when you see a picture of a sailboat and there's the big triangle and the little triangle, that's what a jy is like, basically. i had sailed in these briefly with friends of mine at fobh, which is the "yacht club" (actually a large tent and small, messy dock where children can learn to sail over the summer) that i sail for, but not too much. anyway, this year i did a free programme for kids from six nearby towns. three kids from each town were in a jy together, the other three were each in one of two optis or a bic, which is a weird tiny dinghy(?) fobh has for some reason. most of the jy kids were 10-13, and some of them had sailed before. pretty sure i'm the only one who was 16. i was with a 10-year-old girl who was really loud and a slightly quieter 12-year-old boy. i was skipper (in this case that just meant controlling the tiller since there were three of us).
we competed in the mayor's cup at fobh which is a regatta between the six towns, with a jy fleet, an opti fleet, and a bic fleet. we did a port triangle—a triangle of buoys which you go around with your port (left) side next to the mark—four times. of six jys, we came in first, second, fifth, then second. in the fleet, we came in first overall, but since they average your scores with the others from your town and our optis came in dead last every time, we didn't place in the top three between the towns. the wind was very light, though it picked up slightly as the day went on. we ate cold pizza afterward.
today i did the friendship cup, which is fobh's other regatta. my mom had signed me up to be in the opti red fleet (in this one they do the optis by age, each colour is a different age group) but when we got there there was a kid who needed a partner for the jy, so i did that fleet instead. there were five jys and two 420s which is another slightly different boat, which also has two sails (neither rigged the spinnaker). the other kid and i did pretty well together, he was skipper since he had more experience and i was crew, so i did the jib. i had to do most of the hiking (that's when you lean off the side of your boat with your ENTIRE body except from your thighs down, it's crazy. that's just in the jy though, in some boats, like the 420, you get in a harness and hang your whole body off. sometimes you have to throw your arm up because you need all the weight you can get. the reason for it is that if you didn't put all your weight to the side of the boat opposite the sail, the wind filling the sail and the sail itself would be so heavy that they would push the side down and you'd capsize.) since the hiking straps (that's what you put your feet under so you don't fall backwards off the boat) were kinda short. the wind was super-heavy, heavier than i've ever sailed in, i think, so a whole lot of hiking had to be done—it's getting stormy lately. we nearly capsized many times but i was mostly able to stop it, at the expense of getting splashed quite a lot. overall i estimate we came in around fourth, including the 420s, in five races (we mostly came in third and fourth, once last but they drop your worst if you get in that many). so we did all right, and it was fun, even though the wind was kind of terrifyingly strong. considering we were strangers i think we made a good team! by the end we were getting around the marks very professionally. plus i learned how to roll tack.
and yes regatte is an accepted plural of regatta.
