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Busbey set to defend Highlander Nationals title next week on Lake Norman
By Bill Kiser, LAKE NORMAN TIMES

  Bruce Busbey, a member of the Lake Norman Yacht Club, leads the pack around the turn marker during last year's Highlander National Championships on the Canadian side of Lake Erie. Busbey went on to win the national title, and will defend it next week when the Highlander Nationals are held on Lake Norman. Photo courtesy of Highlander Class International Association
Bruce Busbey grew up riding and racing on a Highlander-class sailboat, and crewing for his father as he won championships in the class.
  Now Busbey has a chance to put his own name in the record book, as he will defend his title during next week's Highlander National Championships, to be held July 20-24 on Lake Norman.
Busbey - of Greenville, S.C., and a member of the Lake Norman Yacht Club - will be one of more than three dozen sailors entered in next week's Nationals, which will determine champions in five different divisions.
  "Things are coming along pretty well," said race committee member Patrick Rykens. "We've got more registered now than went to Canada last year for the Nationals. … We were hoping for 40, maybe even 50, but the gas prices are affecting people's decision to come."
  In addition to the championship class, titles will be decided in the Masters division, for sailors 55 and older; and in divisions for junior and women sailors, and even for owners of "classic" boats.
The first races will be held July 20, with the Masters division determining its champion. The championship division will race three races a day up to nine total beginning July 21, and the women's and juniors divisions will race July 24.
  But Busbey - whose father, Bob, won five Highlander Nationals titles in the 1960s and 1970s - said that defending his title will be a challenge.
  "It's definitely going to be interesting," said Busbey, who won last year's title on the Canadian side of Lake Erie. "I've never sailed a Nationals on an inland lake ever.
  "The winds on Lake Norman, while they're not like a pond, they're different than sailing on open water, where we've sailed stuff like this in the past. The winds there can be tricky."
And the winds on Lake Norman lately have been very tricky.
  Two weeks ago, the LNYC's annual Fourth of July Regatta was shortened to just one race in all but one division because of little to no wind, and last week's Soverel 33 National Championship had the same problem had light, constantly-shifting winds one day, then was forced to call off racing the next because of no wind.
  "Big-lake sailing is just different," Busbey said. "Your winds are more consistent … and it's easier to figure out. But for me, Lake Norman at times has been very frustrating to say the least.
"There's some patterns to the lake that some of the older guys over the years have figured out, that I haven't quite caught onto yet."
  Bill Kiser is the editor of the Lake Norman Times. He can be reached at (704) 664-2882 Ext. 13 or by e-mail at editor@thelakepaper.com.

printed in the Lake Norman Times July 16, 2008
reprinted with permission from Bill Kiser