
Jess and I are married! While COVID threw a wrench in some of our plans – we still had a great time celebrating with family and friends.
I got a late start out of Richmond on Thursday night and finished the 2nd half of the drive this morning arriving at Brant Beach Yacht Club 45 minutes before the skippers meeting. We ended up being postponed on shore another 45 minutes before finally leaving around 12:30.
We would go out and float around another 2 1/2 hours without any wind really filling in. I tried making a GoPro video that made it look as if we really were sailing fast. Kind of glad I did – I took some underwater video and only after reviewing it later did I realize how bad the weeds really were despite not looking bad on the surface. Also note how shallow the bay is.
Back on shore the sailors enjoyed a great dinner in the club house and watched the sunset as the club’s A-Cat Raven sailed by.
After spending some time in Dallas – Jess and I headed down to Austin to explore the city and surrounding area. One of the first things we did was visit the Hamilton Pool Preserve. It was an overcast day, we were there early and it was pretty deserted.
We visited some other parks, walked a portion of the trail around Lady Byrd ‘lake’ and visited an exhibit of Dr. Suess art. Those are all the things we did between eating awesome food at a variety of places around town.
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!
Richmond hosted the UCI Road Bike Racing World Championship September 17-27. I took Friday afternoon off to watch the U23 championship on the streets of Richmond. They did 10 laps on a ~17m course. I started at the east end of the course and worked my way west zig zagging my way across the city on foot to watch. After watching a lap on Monument Avenue I took an Uber back to the start/finish.
What amazed me:
And watching other parts of the race on TV/ipad really showed how cool Richmond is and I was proud to see it on stage for the world.
Here are some of the sights and sounds that I saw:
It’s winter now and what better to be doing than reflecting back on fun fall sailing. Here’s the video from the 2014 Laser Masters Atlantic Coast Championship at FBYC.
It’s been a great year visiting friends and seeing the ECU Pirates play football with the WhiteTiger. Here are some of the highlights: