Recap – Rock Lake 2021

Rock Lake Regatta, 2021. I guess there is no better place to start than the beginning. I was born
on April 23rd 1996, in Rockford, Illinois. Now a few years pass, many CRAW seasons were
raced, we had a pandemic, and now we’re all caught up.

So when I showed up to the regatta, it was a warm Saturday morning. The usual suspects were
running around and setting up their boats, while the other usual suspects were figuring out if we
could actually sail in this wind. After a while, we decided that it was powerful enough to carry
most of us, and we set sail to the beautiful greenish water.

The first race popped off, all of the boats were moving fast and hard (that’s what she said.
Saved y’all the effort). My dad and I were the first to round A mark. As we rounded I hoisted the
spinnaker. It wouldn’t go up. I took it partly down and tried hoisting it again. Then the sound of
the tearing happened. A brand new spinnaker was now going to be lining the trash can. As we
headed into shore I felt my blood sugar dropping. One of the other boats from Michigan came
back to shore around the same time as us, also for boat repairs. So Alex jumped on to our boat
to sail with my dad. I was trying out a new system of trying to wear my insulin pump on the water
with my CGM sensor as well. Needless to say, it worked! But, it worked too well. My blood sugar
dropped so low, that I couldn’t sail anymore. So from that point on I sat on the shore, waiting for
my blood sugar to raise back up to a normal level. I also had to reinsert my pump again, as it
had gotten torn out taking my gear off. So yeah, that’s how that ended.

Dinner was honestly pretty good, as I had never had Qdoba up until that point. But as I was
sitting around with everyone, sharing good food and drink, and having many laughs. I came to
realize that these are moments that sometimes we take for granted, we have no idea when it’ll
be over. As we all experienced in the pandemic, we all had moments where weren’t sure when it
would end. We’d reminisce on these specific experiences, as almost a light at the end of the
tunnel. Something to look forward to.

These regattas are a great thing that we all get excited to do and look forward to. Every regatta,
party, or special event we have with each other is something we should not take advantage of.
So anyways, 8/10 CRAW regatta. Needs more shenanigans. Needs more members of our
CRAW family.

Cole Korte