2017 Freeze Your Butt Off Regatta – FYBOR VII

by Dave Brawner

After five or six inches of fresh powder, the slopes at Laurel Acres were filled with kids on sleds of all shapes and sizes. On the western side of the hill, a slightly older group of “kids” were taking part in the 7th annual Freeze Your Butt Off Regatta.

If you watched the Army-Navy game on Saturday, you know what our weather was like the day before our regatta. Thankfully, Sunday was a completely different story. We were greeted by a relative beautiful December day with a cushion of snow for ambience. The breeze was in the upper “A” rig range out of the west, which kept us sailing in the parking lot end. While this is convenient, it gets quite confining with a fleet of 18 boats on the water.

As always at the FYBOR, the sailing instructions are fairly simple….arrive with a smile, leave with a smile. One addition this year was the requirement of an apology before doing a penalty turn. While the sincerity of these apologies was usually in question, the entertainment value was always there.

The fleet sailed 11 races using a 5 boat Line of Excellence and a 2 ½ lap windward leeward course. The Line of Excellence was visited by 13 of the 18 skippers. Obviously, no good deed goes unpunished. Racing was fairly straight forward except for races 4 and 8 when some gimmicks were thrown in to keep the skipper on their toes.

I do believe if we cancelled racing people would still show up for Nick’s chili and swag, that is worn with pride. Nick Mortgu is always the superstar of this event. Without him, do you really think we’d get this many people sailing in December in Mt. Laurel? Heck, they even look forward to it. That is the great part.

Skip Hall and Nick handled the scoring duties. Victor Oberg handled Chili warming duties. Skip arrived early enough to clear the snow off all the tables and benches for the skippers.

Thanks to Nick, all skippers went home with a FYBOR hat and some FYBOR swag. Lisa added cookies for the skippers. I believe everyone followed the sailing instructions by leaving with a smile. It was a great ending to another successful season.