Capitol District's Championship Regatta 2009

This was made for the Capitol District's Championship Regatta 2009 which was hosted in Wrightsville, PA, by the Susquehanna Yacht Club. I can't believe how long it took to make the sail. lI was up until 4 a.m., the night before it was due, working on it and trying to figure out how I was going to get everything to hold together. I had thought enough ahead of time to allow time for the sailing cloth to dry, as it was made of fondant, but didn't consider ahead of time how I was going to attach it all to the skewer stick. The night before it was due, I struggled with using royal icing, but with no luck. It wasn't strong enough, as I didn't have a week to put it on thickly and let it airdry. I figured no one would be eating the sail anyway, and on due day, I assembled it with my hot glue gun. LOL It looked great, but that still didn't prepare me for anchoring it into the cake. The billowing front sail made it a little heavy on one side and the skewer kept turning. I couldn't hold it in place without tearing up the cake, so gave the instructions to the person picking it up to place it in at an angle, leaning toward the back of the cake and if that didn't hold it, to just stick it in 90 degrees and let the bottom of the sail rest on top of the buttercream boat. If I were to make a sail again, I would double or triple a skewer (using the glue gun again) so that there it would be better fixed into place when inserted. Weather was another concern to me while I worked, finishing up the cake, as it had been raining the past few days and Due Day was no different. If it had been me driving across York County with it in my car, I would have just held it by the stick, in my hand, until reaching my destination... but it wasn't me. I was able to figure out a way how to get it to stand up vertically for the trip, without risking it fall over in demise. It will be interesting to me to find out if it did finally make it onto the cake without getting broken en route. Chalk that up to an advantage of delivering a cake yourself...getting to see the cake in it's final environment, safe and sound and secure! Ultimately, I filled the bottom of an egg carton with my leftover buttercream to weight it down and then found the perfect-sized, sturdy cardboard box (I just happened to have on hand!) to wedge the egg carton into to secure it from tipping side to side. I was able to wrap the sail box in a plastic bag to protect it from the rain. The base cake, with the boat on top was also too tall, by an inch or so, to fit the height of my cake box. I decided to prop it open using additional shishkabob skewers so the top wouldn't get smooshed. Fortunately, the larger box was closed well enough to shelter the cake inside, keeping it dry.

Now... what to do about the 8 year old carrying the sail in the front seat ....