The 2015 Cup is Yours: Team Tartan Takes the Leukemia Cup

A huge thank you to our 93 Team Tartan supporters for 2015! We did it again! The cup is yours. This year we raised a record $45,499 thanks to you.

YOU GUYS ROCK!

Sunrise on Leukemia Cup day

A wet morning on the water: The Team Tartan Crew

Special thanks to Phil Venables who this year upped his donation to a jaw dropping $30,000. Thanks as well to our major donors Linda Cancro and Andy & Heather Steingrueble who donated $1000 each, and to Paul Kocher who gave us $600.

Team Tartan sails in stormy weather

Team Tartan on the water (and in the water). We got soaked.

Rebecca on the water between races

Here is the story of our very soggy race.

A misty cold front moved through the Potomac as Team Tartan’s racing team took to our venerable sailing vessel Rebecca—a 25′ sloop. She’s a fine boat, though a little shaggy on the bottom and showing a few cracks about her bulkheads and a few signs of extra character in her sails from the strains of hard service. (Perhaps that’s a reflection of a couple of us who sail her?)

Donning our kilts since we crushed our fundraising goal, we set out on the water early in the morning with a real sense of possibility. We were damp before we even got out on the water, but that was only the tiniest taste of things to come.

The supporting team cheered on from a split level observation boat—Carly and Maggie with kids in tow, Gary Sr, Laura, and Faith wearing Scottish gear and leading loud cheers. Meanwhile way up the river, Ana was cheering from a race committee boat in the flying scots class.

We haven’t spent as much time on the water recently as we have in past years, and unfortunately it showed. Despite adequate starts on the line as the regatta horn sounded during all three races, our nemesis Captain Bill, who has won 13 or so previous races bested us around the combined courses as did two other vessels.

Just before the final race of the series, a menacing bank of dark rain clouds with rumbles of distant thunder appeared from the South. Many boats radioed in their retirement from the race well before the starting sequence. After some debate, we decided to press on, but made a strategic error, replacing our 150 jib with a 130 at the very last minute. We were expecting a major storm to blow. It didn’t, and our little jib did not give us the power we needed.

Though we’d bested a majority of our peers on the race-course and managed to avoid hitting a pier this year, we only secured fourth place on the water. But then, though we love winning on the water, winning on the water is not really what our efforts are all about.