Category: Life

16 years I’ve run the Chesapeake Bay Laser Masters Championship and this one – like many before – will be like none-other. We’ve had hurricanes, Nor’easters, power outages, exceptionally high tides just to name some of the challenges we’ve faced at this regatta and all have made it an interesting and well remembered event. This year it’s COVID and we’ve had to make some modifications to the off the water activities to social distance. We’re all thankful our hobby is singlehanded sailing which enables us to continue to participate while remaining socially distanced.

It was a cool, rainy and blustery day at the club as we prepared for 45 Laser Masters. Nobody arrived early or was looking to go a practice. A number of sailors did pitch their tents and set up a fire pit for the weekend. This front should start to clear this evening, leaving us with winds in the low teens for much of Saturday. Sunday is less certain. Regardless of what we get, it’s fun to be sailing and seeing sailors again even if from a distance.

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We ended up with an awesome day of racing for Fishing Bay Yacht Club’s Laser Fall Regatta – it was fun sailing despite the drizzle most of the day. I ended up 4th after loosing the tiebreaker.

The drizzle was a blessing in disguise. It wet the tell tails causing them to stick to the sail all day long. Having not sailed the boat and being out of practice – I didn’t have a good feel for the boat and not having tell tales forced me to feel the boat and not rely on them.

The fleet we had was fantastic – everyone sailed well and was fun to sail with. The fleet was deep too – with a lot of passing in the top 10 in any given race. Evan H was great in his return to the Laser. Dave W was consistently just a little faster and always in the right spot on the critical first beat.

Several sailors from Severn Sailing Association made the trip and made a mini weekend out of it staying in town tonight and driving back to Annapolis in the morning. All of them are returning next weekend for the 39th Chesapeake Bay Laser Masters.

Bob F ran a great RC, the length of the line challenged us and he made adjustments as teh wind shifted a bit and got lighter. Clark and Jen were on point in the Parker.

PICTURES | RESULTS

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The day after our wedding Jess and I headed to Warm Springs Virginia for a short honeymoon. We had grand plans to leave the country for a beach on an island that would some day be underwater but with COVID we didn’t want to leave the state. That lead us to a few days at the Omni Homestead. It is a beautiful property in the mountains and were upgraded to a corner suite in the tower on the 20th floor (10 floors above ground) that had great some great views. On the way out there we stopped in Staunton to visit friends Mark and Melissa who weren’t able to attend the wedding. The suggested a cool pizza join in Staunton for dinner. Staunton had closed one of the main roads downtown and all of the restaurants had seating in the streets. It almost had a European vibe to it.

We spent the first day exploring the grounds, relaxing at the socially distanced pool and having dinner at the restaurant. I went for a late morning trail run and startled a baby bear along the path.

The next day we left the property to do a hike about 10 miles away at Douthat State Park. To get there by car we had to go over/around a mountain and it took over an hour on some pretty rural roads. Early in the hike we both spotted 3 baby bears and a mother crossing our path. We were on high alert the rest of the hike. We made our way up to the top of a mountain, past a waterfall, along the ridgeline and then back down. There were a few beautiful views and some great terrain. Much of the trail looked to be seldom used and we had to do some bushwacking in parts.

That evening we got takeout from a restaurant in town and ate in our room.

The next morning we ate breakfast on the porch in the rocking chairs and started making our way home. We stopped at Pollock winery for a bit and then to Bold Rock to resupply some of the ciders we can’t get in Richmond and tried some others while sitting in chairs down by the creek.

PICTURES

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Day one of the Stingray Point Regatta was a breezy one. This was my first time taking sailing pictures with a new-to-me Nikon D300s and it’s great to have a camera again to take pictures with. We watched the finish of the first race and the start of the 2nd race and got some great shots.

PICTURES

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The forecast looked a little bleak for FBYC’s Laser Summer Regatta in August, but the wind did come in and we had a great fleet to sail with. We sailed 5 races in about 8-10 most of the day.

Luke sailed really well and was consistently fast and in front. David H was also always in the right spot on the course able to just pull away anytime he was with some traffic. Rob also had a great day and was followed by me and Britt.

The starting line most of the day was very long for such a short course making it pretty critical to start at the favored end which happened to be the pin. This also led to some over early boats and eventually we started under the Z-flag. Britt did well to buck this and went right when everyone else was going left and managed to catch the shifts and round with the top group most races. I tried this in one of the last races and was too far behind to catch up.

RESULTS

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This July my weather website was relaunched on a new domain: https://buoy.report

I originally launched this site back in 2014 to enable me to more quickly and easily see weather buoy data in the various places I sail. Most of the existing sources of this data are slow to load and hard to read and I wanted something easier. The original site was PHP-based and ending up being a bit finicky and unreliable.

I’ve been spending my free time during COVID to learning AWS and getting the AWS Architect Associate certification as well as learning Python. This site has been a great project to re-invent the website using a modern serverless architecture that should prove to be a lot more reliable as well as provide flexibility for more functionality in the future.

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We visited friends sailing Albacore’s at Ware River Yacht Club’s Governor’s Cup regatta and got to see an absolutely beautiful sunset. There was a pretty Blue Jay sailboat anchored in front of the club that made for a great subject. This was my first time really using a new to me Nikon D300s that I had picked up a few weeks ago.

PHOTOS

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Having gone without an SLR for a few years I finally picked up a used Nikon D300s. It’s 10 years old and doesn’t do video well or have many fancy features, but is just enough to capture some sailing shots and some sunset shots that the iphone just can’t quite do justice. I paired it with a used 18-200 (not pictured).

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