It was another fun weekend with the tailgate crew especially with one part having just gotten engaged and another part home for the game on baby watch.
It was also military appreciation day and we got to climb like kids on the equipment and see a pretty cool flyover.
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.
For Halloween I flew to Dallas for a week of visiting Jess. To make a long story short – we made a deal back in June for something that resulted in me getting to pick out her Halloween costume and of course I picked a Pirate costume and she rocked it! We had fun time out on the town on a Monday night in Dallas with Connie and Andrew.
The Laser Frostbite Regatta was the last event of the year at FBYC and we made it quite easy on the RC by setting a course that allowed them to signal it from the dock. The wind was just the right direction out of the south west where the RC could run the races from the end of the dock. We used a boat to move the weather mark and pin. They had a great time and the proximity to shore enabled the sailors make breaks at the club in between races.
The wind was a little light for this one, but we rolled through the races doing short courses with 10 boats. While I seemed to have good boat speed – I did find myself on the wrong side of some shifts and occasionally out of the top 3. Charlie Brewer once again sailed incredibly consistently and took the day. I followed in 2nd with Len close behind. What a great way to end the season!
UCONN was in town for a Halloween inspired afternoon ECU Football game. We had a couple clever costumes among us.
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!
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!
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.
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.
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.
