Who is the Hamlin Lake Sailing Association?

We are a small, but friendly, group of sailors who enjoy good company and some spirited competition on the weekends during the months of July and August.

Our fleet represents a wide variety of boats including Hobie Cat 18 and 16's, Nacra 5.5, Laser, Lightning, Interlake, Flying Scot, MC-Scow, E-scow, Sunfish, Sailfish and many more.

As a result, we use the US Portsmouth Handicap system to try and equalize the differences between the boats.  For those of you not familiar with this system, essentially what happens is that each boat has a rating based on the wind speed for the race.  That number and the elapsed time for the course are plugged into a formula that adds, or sometimes subtracts, the percentage of the elapsed time to determine a boats corrected time, which is then used to determine the winner.  For example, if you sail a Hobie 18 catamaran, which has an overall rating of 72.1, you can roughly figure that about 28% of your course time will be added back in determining your corrected time.

We race from the months of July and August out on Hamlin Lake.  Typically we are in the northern part of the lower, or larger, portion of the lake just off the dunes.  Sometimes we can also be found in the upper lake, although that is dependent on the weed conditions at the marker locations.

We sail what is called an Olympic - 5, or triangle course.

Come on out and join us, no experience in necessary.  We will help you through your first time.