Columbia Gorge Racing Association sails through 20th anniversary

Aug. 6: HRYC Double Damned

Aug. 12: RS Aero Long Distance Race and Speed Challenge

Aug. 13-14: RS Aero U.S. National Championship

Much of Cascade Locks’ growing acclaim as a world-class sailing destination can be attributed to the Columbia Gorge Racing Association (CGRA) — a group of sailors that has hosted world and North American championship races in the Gorge since the mid-1990s, and is celebrating the Cascade Locks-based association’s 20th anniversary as the 2016 CGRA sailing season comes to a close next week.

Recently, CGRA hosted sailors from around the Gorge — and a few outside the area — during the annual Columbia Gorge One-Design Regatta last weekend, which followed up the North American Laser Championships the previous week, which brought more than 150 competitors from all over the continent to the city of fewer than 1,200 people.

Back in the 1980s and early 1990s, it was a different story. Kerry Poe, a CGRA board member, from Portland said in CGRA’s magazine “Sail, the Gorge,” that members of the Willamette Sailing Club in Portland would get together to sail “bush regattas” in the Gorge: informal races where sometimes a six-pack of beer was the prize for the race winner. In 1990, some of those sailors went on to win the Pacific Coast Championships, giving them the right to hold the PCC at the venue of their choice. They chose Cascade Locks.

“Many reasons made, and still make Cascade Locks a great venue,” Poe writes in the magazine. “The river is close to the [Bonneville Dam] so the current is less. It’s wide for more race course. You can pick if you want flat water or waves depending on where you go. There’s fresh water, beautiful scenery, nice moderate wind (for the Gorge), and you’re pretty much guaranteed wind, whether it is out of the west or east.”

Bill Symes, a Portland sailor who has been on the CGRA board since 2007 and who has been sailing the Gorge since the early 90s, said those prime conditions are exactly why it has become a renowned destination.

“The Gorge has developed a kind of mythology about it that it’s just an epic sailing venue,” he explained. “It’s famous around the world… everybody knows about the Gorge. It’s legendary in sailing circles, so they want to sail there.”

Symes said the event that “really got CGRA started” was the Tasar World Championships (a Tasar is a class of sailboat that is a 14-foot fiberglass two-person sailing dinghy) in 1996. Around 90 boats showed up to the competition, “which was way more boats than we have ever hosted on the beach before.” The size of the event prompted the development of CGRA to help organize these increasingly large events, and make sure there were professional race judges and personnel on hand to monitor them.

Over the past 20 years, CGRA has played host to numerous high-profile sailing events, including the 49er U.S. National Championship, the International Moth Class U.S. and World Championships, and the 29er U.S. National Championship, just to name a few. Symes estimated that the CGRA attracts upwards of 1,000 people a year to come sail in the Gorge, and receives more and more requests to hold regattas there.

Despite its growth in prominence, the CGRA remains grounded in more way than one to its humble origins. The association maintains its “rustic” facilities at the Port of Cascade Locks, which includes a shed, a small race headquarters building, and an equally modest paved boat launch. There are only a couple of paid, part-time staffers, with the rest of the operation kept running by volunteers.

“We don’t have a lot of fancy facilities — what we have is a beach and a great sailing venue right off the beach,” Symes said.

The nonprofit, which subsists off of donations, sponsorships, grants, race fees, and other funds, doesn’t require sailors to be members, with Symes noting that CGRA is open to the public. Every Thursday during the warmer months, the association holds a community sailing event that is free to the public — although donations are welcomed, and you might want to bring something to the potluck that typically follows these events. The CGRA also offers free sailing lessons to Cascade Locks residents on Sundays and reduced price lessons for students on National School Lunch Program.

“It’s a unique organization in the world of sailing,” Symes said of the CGRA. “Basically, it’s just a bunch of old dinghy sailors that believe it’s a great sailing venue and are eager to share it with the rest of the sailing world.”