Fort Peck Can-Am Regatta Outlasts Elements

The wind blew hard across the deep teal water of Fort Peck Marina on Saturday morning. Indeed, it tore with such force as to merit the lowering of a flag pole from the roof of a camper parked behind a grove of trees some fifty yards from the harbor, and forced the postponement of the second annual Fort Peck Can-Am Regatta until 9:30 the next morning. 

In place of the prior day's 30-knot bluster, Sunday morning provided overcast skies, an intermittent drizzle, and comparatively-frigid temperatures. "We've had the sun, had the rain, had the heat," said John Cormack, the event's race officer, from aboard Rafe Sigmundstad's boat as the light showers picked up again, this time accompanied by a stinging gust of cold wind. "Going to get some snow now, then?"

Despite the weather, the regatta contestants, most clad in black wetsuits, took straight to the water. The silhouettes of five Lasers and one Hobie Wave, each manned by a single sailor, a MacGregor, and a Sea Scout, specked the gray horizon as the small armada of patrol boats and spectator crafts pushed out from the marina some ten minutes later.

Among the collection of volunteers and fans dispersed across the sliver of lake which the event had claimed as its own was Harold Gilliam. Gilliam, together with his wife, Joanne, and son, Caleb, 14, drove up from Billings for the latter to participate. "We try to hit four or five junior events a year," says Mr. Gilliam, who mentions Colorado and Texas among prior family-trip destinations. Somewhere in the jumble of rerouting buccaneering fishing boats threatening to cut across the race course, scouting out his son, and conversing with fellow volunteers over the broadcast radio, he lauds Fort Peck Lake as "a real gem," and voices his desire to expand both the participatory breadth and number of regattas held in Northeast Montana. 

"All it takes is a small group," says Gilliam, "and the rest start running in. Kind of an 'if you build it, they will come' thing." He has spoken to avid sailors from Seattle, Texas, and many of the other places the sport has led him as his son's talent, interest, and purpose hone to an ever-finer point.

If out-of-state participation in this summer's edition provides an adequate proportional indicator, the future, assuming the increase in numbers which Gilliam envisions, promises wide supranational involvement. Already Fort Peck has captured the attention and heart of Cormack, a certified Club Race Officer; Cormack, an Englishman who has lived in Canada for 40 years and now occupies himself at Newell Sailing Club in Brooks, Alberta while rambling across the country - the United States, that is, from Richmond, Calif. to the Florida Gulf, where last winter he presided over four regattas, one with over 100 entrants - brought with him to Montana fellow Canuck David Elliot, a 70-year-old with international skippering experience. "I just love the camaraderie," says Cormack. "Coming out on the water, getting the people going."

The boats tack and jibe, jibe and tack, zigzagging on a figure-eight, or "sausage," path between two buoys spaced a half-mile to three-quarters of a mile apart. Julie Burke's double-hulled Hobie Cat glides effortlessly over the water; it looks as if, rather than consigned to mere floating, it has taken flight, sails taut as the wings of a soaring hawk. 

Cormack, appraising the race from his high perch near the stern of Sigmundstad's vessel, serving as the commissioner's boat for the day, sees Elliot flash by in his Laser. "I love to see him and guys like him out on a boat instead of in a nursing home," he says after yelling out praise to his friend. "There's no better place to be than on the water." He sighs, inhales, raises his face to the calm breeze. "This is a fantastic body of water," he says, echoing Gilliam's sentiments. "Why there was no sailing club here for 50 years, who knows."

Cormack insists racing makes one a better sailor, "because it makes you go places you wouldn't normally go" to find the strongest wind. Sunday's race lasts until just after midday, when the wind died down to seven knots and word of a hamburger lunch wafted in over the crackling radio waves, ensnaring first the ears, then the minds of those who'd ridden the crests and valleys of Missouri River waves all morning.

In the name of expanding the pastime's reach, the event was an unequivocal success. "In both the program and organizationally, we've improved this year," says Sigmundstad. "It's just the weather that didn't cooperate."

Regardless of Saturday's postponement and Sunday's overcast unpredictability, Cormack sees the Fort Peck Sailing Club as having facilitated a brilliant weekend on the lake. "Sailing is one of those things we need to support wherever we can. Support it, like we have today, and it'll only continue to grow."