Harbor Island Yacht Club
Nashville, Tennessee

    In 1973 the first Lasers in Nashville arrived in cardboard boxes from Canada with beautiful laminated mahogany foils, bright and bold hull colors, ski-rope control lines, big fat gold braid mainsheets and price tags of $695. Thanks in large part to their promotion by Dewitt Kennard, at Say of Plenty Marine, and to their appeal as a fast, responsive, strictly one design boat, there were a lot of them here by 1975 and they gathered at HIYC for the first Lotsa Lasers Regatta that fall. Among the early protagonists were Craig Lewis and Laurie Davis who represented HIYC at some of the first world championships, Anne Beesley who bested the reigning U.S. Youth Champion in several races twenty years later, Chandler Owen who saved the regatta from extinction when interest waned in the early eighties and has sailed in almost every one, and David Roberts who won a race at Nationals. Lotsa Lasers is now one of the premier events on the District 17 circuit, typically attracting more than twenty boats and featuring short course racing (so that no one is ever too far ahead or behind), video replays, a Laser-agna dinner and awards to recognize and encourage participation by sailors of all levels of skill, experience, size, age and gender, from Olympic aspirants to juniors sailing in their first regatta, from featherweights to Clydesdales, from Apprentice Master (35-44) to Grand Master (over 65), and from "middle of the pack" to "bookend". Club Lasers are available, so that skippers and crew of other boats can try their hand at this, the purest form of one design racing. Those who have done so generally return to their "class of origin" as better sailors and make occasional Laser racing part of their repertoire of sailing fun.