By Sandy Eustis, Fleet 193                    NOTE: Click on the artilce title to scroll thought more photos

21 Teams representing 7 regional Flying Scot fleets and a single New York team came to South Carolina’s Blue Ridge upstate corner for Fleet 193’s annual Grits ‘n Haggis Regatta, held on Lake Keowee on May 18 & May 19, 2024.  Although the weekend weather forecast called for a 75%+ chance of rain on both days, the slow rolling front passed through with overnight storms only. Three races were held on both Saturday and Sunday in overcast conditions; there was no rain, but rather shifty 6-12mph wind conditions throughout and no glimpses at all of the beautiful Blue Ridge backdrop to the lake.

The conditions resulted in highly variable finishes race by race, and the final results were somewhat surprising.  Although Dave and Kathy Rink from Lake Norman were clearly the fastest team in the field, winning 3 races, they were OCS in race 5 on Sunday morning, and that blemish knocked them all the way back to fourth place overall.  John Kreidler and Dan Tegel from nearby Lake Hartwell won the event by being the most consistent team in the field.  They won the first race dash, were among the leaders at every mark rounding in every race, and never finished worse than 6th in any race.  Locals Sandy and Keith Eustis recovered from a bad first race to finish 2^nd overall, with a photo finish win over the Rinks in race 4.  Ryan Gaskin and Lauren Christian and took 3^rd place overall.  They were the best of Lake Murray’s fabulous traveling group of 6 boats. Their worst race finish occurred in a race that saw them get all the way back into the top 10 after being over early and going back to restart at the back of the pack.  The Rinks finished fourth, while Marc Bailey and Will Dehart from Lake Hartwell won a race and took 5^th place overall in their first Flying Scot regatta ever.

Full results are here.