On Sunday Mike Toms and I ran a clinic for a dozen Laser sailors at Fishing Bay Yacht Club. Most of the group was new to sailing or at least new to the Laser and we spent most of the time going over the boat parts, rigging and basic maneuver techniques on a Laser. Then we took out about 7 boats in nearly no wind to putter around for an hour. Pictures.
Saturday’s Offshore Spring Series #3 at Fishing Bay Yacht Club wasn’t the best weather day. We did one race in very light wind against a stiff current for the first leg. The second race was abandoned after the wind died and many boats anchored to hold position on the ‘upwind’. Still in 3rd for the Series.
Saturday was a beautiful day for racing and Wavelength had a great day at Fishing Bay Yacht Club’s Offshore Spring Series #2. We had good boat speed, good crew work and manged to go 3-2-1-4 in 4 races putting us into 3rd overall for the series. Results.
Photo: Andrea Winner
Sailing continued on Sunday with a a string of 3rd places by Wavelength in the 3 races on the 1st day of the Fishing Bay Yacht Club Offshore Spring Series. Results.
Photo by Andrea Winner.
Got the sailing season off to a great start on Saturday with the Opening Day Regatta at Fishing Bay Yacht Club sailing aboard the C&C37 Wavelength. We did one 12.5 mile race out around the channel buoys to the entrance of the Rappahannock River and back. We did some great sailing which included a spinnaker peel and managed to finish 2nd in some very close racing – only 36 seconds separated the top 4 boats on corrected time. Results and Pictures.
Getting my Laser ready for the spring and I’ve found that an ant colony has taken up residence on it.
On March 4 I shot this film in Annapolis with the Severn Sailing Association Laser Fleet. I was on the committee boat with a camera and then we had 5 GoPro cameras on various boats getting footage. Thanks to Dorian, Luke, Eric, Carlos, Reid and Bob for helping out!
I’m planning on doing a lot of sailing this summer and when I’m on bigger boats than my Laser I want to be able to have my Nikon D7000 DSLR close at hand. I can’t use the camera while I’m actually sailing, but there will be plenty of downtime while aboard when there is no splashing and I could easily pull the camera out if it were handy. I plan to use the camera for both stills and video so I’ll need to have extra batteries and a Sennheiser MKE400 Shotgun Microphone. To make this work, I need:
I found the Pelican Storm iM2075 for $45 that was just the right size for Nikon D7000 and a 17-55mm lens without the grip or my side-plate mounted microphone holder. It’ll fit the camera with the lens hood, plus the microphone, 3 EN-EL15 batteries and a couple of AAA batteries for the microphone.
Completed case with camera and accessories in place:
Basic case with foam:
The case comes with two pieces of foam blocks. I cut one of them roughly in half to form the bottom of the case that the camera will rest on.
Used toothpicks to plot the size of the camera on the foam on the uncut block foam:
Remove the 1cm x 1cm foam squares for a custom fit around the camera:
Put 1/2 of the foam in the bottom of the case, and then cut 2 of the 1cm blocks at half of their height so that the AAA batteries are sitting on foam and not the bottom of the case where they’ll clank and make noise:
Put the customized piece of foam over the flat piece of foam and put the Camera and batteries in place:
I then added the strap to the camera and placed the Sennheiser mic alongside the camera:
Recently finished a video which will be used in early 2012 to promote Fishing Bay Yacht Club’s Crew Training Program.
Here’s the video from last January’s Key West Race Week aboard the J105 Lucky Dog Racing.