2016 ECU Football vs UCONN
UCONN was in town for a Halloween inspired afternoon ECU Football game. We had a couple clever costumes among us.
Category: Life
2016 Chesapeake Bay Laser Masters Championship
It was the 35th Anniversary of the Chesapeake Bay Laser Masters Championship and the regatta is finally old enough to be a competitor. The color coral commemorates a 35th anniversary and the shirts we designed turned out pretty cool:
The first day saw medium winds just into the double digits with mostly clear skies. In 5 races we had some close competition up top between Gavin O’Hare and Charlie Brewer who both finished the day tied with 20 points. Mike Schmidt was close behind in the 41 boat fleet.
Alain and his kitchen crew prepared another fabulous me and a tent city popped up full of sailors.
Sunday started out with no wind and we waited ashore as it began to build about an hour later. A little lighter than yesterday we ran a little shorter courses and made it through 4 more races. Charlie and Gavin stayed close and Gavin managed to edge just ahead of Charlie to win the championship.
Thanks to Alain, Rick, Len, Frank and everyone else who helped make this another great Chesapeake Bay Laser Masters Championship. And after 13 years of only being the event chair – I’ll be looking forward to next year where I can both run it and qualify to sail in it!
2016 FBYC Offshore Fall Series #3
We had a rainy, wet and cold day for the FBYC Fall Series #3 and I jumped on Double Eagle as none of the J70s were going to go out. We had a good first race, solid crew work, picked the right side of the course and led Nanuq all the way around the course.
The 2nd race didn’t go so great for us – on the second upwind leg we were going through a tack. As we were switching to the other side and the boat started heeling over, one of the crew who was switching sides over the cabin top, lost their footing and went right under the lifeline and into the water. I quickly jumped to the back of the boat and threw the heaving line while we stopped the boat. We pulled the crew in and took them down below to warm up. That didn’t take too long, but even after a few minutes we were so far behind that we just took a DNF instead of going around the course again.
In the last race of the day we had a little trouble at the start and ended up a couple lengths late at the line. We weren’t able to recover our time on Nanuq and otherwise sailed a solid race. Thanks again to Sam and crew for having me along!
2016 ECU Football vs University of Central Florida
For this game against UCF the old photo album finally got an upgrade. We had a lot of fun going back through all of the old photos.
Again good weather for tailgating and a fun crowd.
Unfortunately, the game didn’t go in ECU’s favor and our preferred seating was in front of the big screen with beers in our hands.
2016 FBYC Indian Summer Regatta
I got to take one of Jess’ college sailing friends Michelle out racing on a Front Runner for the Indian Summer Regatta. Once again we had a very competitive fleet of 4 boats. Michelle did great to learn the boat very quickly. In the first race we even had the spinnaker flying upside down (my fault). With that sorted we picked shifts well and stayed competitive.
2016 FBYC Offshore Fall Series #2
Today started out as a pretty light-air day and the wind quickly built for the 2nd race of the FBYC Offshore Fall Series #2. We sailed with just 3 of us – Andrew, Nathan and myself and we sailed a good first race, picking the correct side and finishing 1st in the 4-boat fleet.
As the 2nd race started the wind piped up closer to 20 and two of the teams dropped out and we knew at that point we just needed to finish the race to win the day. Unfortunately for us we were late at the start having been doing some rig tuning and not being closer enough to the line. Hotty Toddy had a 10-boat lead at the start, but by the time we got a mile upwind we had caught up and were neck and neck. We pulled away for another 1st.
2016 FBYC Offshore Fall Series #1
Back racing the J/70 after nearly 2 months we had nice wind and clear skies for the FBYC Offshore Fall Series 1. We had out Louise, Andrew and Patrick and it was Patrick’s first time on the J/70. In the starting sequence Louise had a minor family emergency so we transferred her to the Mr. Roberts and had to sail 3 up. Having practiced 4-up and with no time until the start, we winged it and did our best with only 3 of us.
We weren’t able to quite keep up with E.L.E. but we did well nonetheless and were able to finish 2nd. In between races Louise was back and joined us for the 2nd race of the day. In this race all 4 J/70 were a lot closer and we got behind early on the wrong side of the course upwind. We came back downwind, but weren’t able to get back ahead of Spice to finish 3rd. All in all a fun day back in the boat. Thanks Louise, Andrew and Patrick for sailing!
2016 FBYC Laser Fall Regatta
For the 2016 FBYC Laser Fall Regatta we took a novel approach to running the races: since it was nice weather and light winds and we had no RC helpers – 7 of us took out 6 Lasers and a RIB. We then took turns on the RIB to run races and I jumped on the boat of whoever was on the RIB. We did two cycles so everyone missed 2 races and we got in 14 races.
All in all it worked pretty well, everyone had fun and it was good racing.
2016 ECU Football vs NC State
After last week’s game were were back a week later to tailgate for the ECU Football game against across-state rival NC State. This was the first game I got to bring Jess to and she was a good sport in ECU garb.
This also happened to be the game where our group was featured on the ticket. We had won a fan contest and so our group picture was on the ticket that went out to all of the season ticket holders, plus the story was in the program. Unfortunately, the ownership of the white tiger was a little disputed in the article, but we were thrilled to be recognized.
Despite the noon kick off and shortened tailgate time – we had a blast as always.
2016 ECU Football vs Navy
After being rescheduled due to a flooded Greenville earlier in the year we returned for the last and final game of the season.
