Another Regatta

This one was a lot more intense and required more than a little hot air, although good lung capacity is important!  Kylie raced in the Head of the Lake regatta at the University of Washington.  She was in the JV 8+ boat, 7 seat.  It was their only regatta of the season since the one at American Lake was cancelled due to high wind and rain.

Brad and I found a spot sitting on the wall of the Montlake Cut and waited for Kylie's boat to go out for their warm up. I think rowing a single, like the one in this picture, looks like so much fun!

Here they are, heading out.  Unfortunately, my camera is broken and I had to use Ben's, which doesn't have a very good zoom, so you can't really see Kylie, but she's 7th seat.  You count from the back to the front.

After they went past, we walked up to the Montlake Bridge.  Here's a view looking back towards Lake Washington.

Then we walked over the bridge and down to the other side. The boat on the left is going out to warm up and the one on the right is actually racing.

While we waited for Kylie's race, the bridge went up to let this sail boat through.  I wonder if they knew they were in the middle of a regatta? 

 

Looking out towards Portage Bay, where the race was in progress.  Those are three Men's 8s racing, Bainbridge's boat is the one right next to the buoy.  It's a 5K race, and starts out in Lake Union, which is past the 1-5 bridge that you can see in the distance.

Kylie's boat during her race.

It's a staggered-start race; the boats start 15 seconds apart, so it's hard to tell who is winning.  

Here are several of the boats in Kylie's race, but you can't see Kylie's boat. They go out to the last orange buoy, then turn back in to cross the finish line.  It would have been fun to be in that big, white yacht out there, watching the race.

Here they are after they've crossed the finish line,

getting out of the boat

and carrying it back to the tent area.

Post-race meeting with their coach. They still don't know their status yet. They have to wait until all the boats have finished and the results are posted, which can take up to 1/2 an hour, so it's not really an exciting spectator sport unless you know someone racing.  They ended up placing 5th out of 19 boats, so they were pretty happy!