Ambulances outside our first flight from RIC>ATLWe started the week with a bit of a bumpy ride to Key West on Saturday.  John Wake drove, Tal flew out of Texas, and Rob flew AirTran.  All of their trips were pretty uneventfully. Lud, Travis and I were on all of the same flights and we can’t say the same for our trip.  Our first flight out of Richmond was diverted back to the gate while taxing to the runway due to a passenger having a medical emergency.  An hour later we were on our way to Atlanta, but not with enough time to catch our connection to Key West.  We relaxed at the sky lounge and caught the next flight to Key West.  That flight was at the end of the runway about to take off, and they had a computer problem and returned us to the gate to fix it.  An hour later we were on our way not arriving in Key West until about 5:30, 5 hours after we were originally scheduled to be there.

Welcome To Key West

Thankfully the other guys got there on time and were able to register, check into the condos and pick up our rental bikes for the week.  After getting settled we went out to a Brazillion Steak House for dinner and then went out on Duvall street.

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Key West Race Week 2011Next week I’ll be heading to Key West for Key West Race Week.  This will be my first trip to Key West and to Race Week. There will be around 135+ other boats on 3 different courses; everything from 72 footers to the mostly professionally sailed RC44s to PRHF-C boats like J24s.

I’ll be sailing aboard the Richmond-based J105 Lucky Dog from Fishing Bay Yacht Club owned and skippered by Travis Weisleder.  The J105 is a 34-foot boat that will be sailing one-design (not handicap) against 15 other identical boats on the Division 2 Racing Area. The boat sails with a crew of 6 and I’ll be in the pit mostly helping make sure the sails get up and down correctly.

Throughout the week I’ll be posting updates on my blog and when possible I’ll post updates to twitter (@jondeutsch).  There’s a few regatta blogs that will be updated throughout the week with race results, weather, rounding orders and where the full kegs are.

Ways to Follow Along:

The General Schedule for the Week:

Other Information:

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2010 has come and gone and I thought I’d post some of my favorite photos from the last year:

2010 James River High Water

January 27, 2010 High Water on the James River at Pony Pasture.

Sun setting during the Moonlight Regatta

June 26, 2010  Sun setting during the Fishing Bay Yacht Club long distance moonlight race.

July 4th sparklers

July 4, 2010 Lighting sparklers on Stove Point to celebrate the 4th.

B/W Mr. Roberts Bow

July 18, 2010 Caroline riding the bow of Mr. Roberts back to Jackson Creek after a day of race committee during the 2010 USODA Layline Nationals.

Opti Nationals Starting Line

July 20, 2010 Starting line during the 2010 USODA Layline Nationals.

Shot of Mr. Roberts at the start of a race on Wednesday

July 21, 2010 Photo of Mr. Roberts and the starting line during a sequence in the 2010 USODA Layline Nationals.

Optimist Sails at Start during the 2010 USODA Layline Nationals

July 21, 2010 Optimist sails close together during one of the starts at the 2010 USODA Layline Nationals.

ECU 2010 Home Opener Panoramic

September 5, 2010 East Carolina University Football home opener against Tulsa. First game with the new stands in the end zone and the new score board.

Cape May Harbor Sunset

September 24, 2010 Sunset from the Corinthian Yacht Club of Cape May in Cape May New Jersey the night before the first day of the Laser District 11 Championship.

Mr. Roberts and Lasers on Fishing Bay

Saturday, October 16, 2010 Day 1 at the Chesapeake Bay Laser Masters Championship taken from Fishing Bay Yacht Club as the Lasers head back out to the course after a short break while the course was reset.

Washington Monument/Arlington Cemetary HDR

November 13, 2010 Arlington National Cemetery as the sun sets on the Washington Monument in the background.

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Long overdue is the video from our trip to Tampa last March to sail a Front Runner in the Fireball and Friends Midwinters at Davis Island Yacht Club.  My daily recaps can be found here.  More photos here.

The reason for the delay is that this was my first and last video done with a FlipHD camera.  The file format was un-editable and after countless hours of putting the entire video together only to realize it won’t render because it was MP4. So finally I have been able to learn a bit about video editing and was able to convert the original video to .dv and then re-edit it all back together.  This has literally taken me weeks of time to get to this point.

Fear not, I have a better solution for future videos with my new camera that I should be able to edit on just fine.

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Canon SD1400IS

My second of two Canon SD870IS cameras bit the dust this weekend.  It had survived boating, tailgating, snow, rain, beaches, trips to 10 different states, spilled beer and numerous drops, but it was no match for Christmas dinner.  At some point Christmas Eve the lens was scraped ruining the photo quality.

It has been replaced by the camera pictured above: a Canon SD1400IS.  This is my 6th camera in a little over 6 years. It’s not a high-end camera, but will do what I want and has HD video.  For the price I won’t feel too bad if it suffers similar fate after a year and a half.

Thanks for the memories 870IS #2. RIP.

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2010 SMU @ ECU Football Tailgate

The final ECU home football game of the year against SMU started out a little rain and ended with an ECU loss.  We managed a 6-6 finish and have been invited to a bowl game.  It’s been a fun season and I can’t wait until next year.

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Fishing Bay Yacht Club won US Sailing’s Regatta of the Year award for hosting the 2010 USODA Layline Nationals.  A big part of what set us over the top was our online media and promotion of the event.  It was a fun event this summer and I’m glad to have played a part in it.  Kudos to the rest of the team that made it happen.

From US Sailing’s Press Release:

The Fishing Bay Yacht Club (FBYC) of Deltaville, Va. won the 2010 Regatta Award for the excellence in development, promotion, and management performed by organizers and sponsors of the 2010 USODA (United States Optimist Dinghy Association) Layline Nationals on July 17-25, 2010.

Co-chairs Noel Clinard and Jay Buhl, along with webmaster Jon Deutsch were recognized for demonstrating extraordinary individual creativity and contribution to the year’s most innovative one-design event of national significance. The regatta attracted broad national and international participation of 317 boats through persistent marketing and communication efforts. The small club located in a village maximized their resources through their entrepreneurial promotions, sponsorship development, community involvement, shore activities and creative dissemination of housing, tourism, historical and racing information.

The regatta site conjoined four nearby properties, including the Deltaville Dockyard, Jackson Creek Condominiums, Deltaville Maritime Museum, and Harbor House Community. The regatta consisted of three events: team racing, girls fleet racing, open fleet racing, plus a green fleet for novices. Despite its small size of about 330 family members, FBYC turned out different race committees for these events with over 50 volunteers.

The backbone for marketing the regatta was an effective, user friendly web site at http://optinationals2010.org. The web site was enabled to provide social networking through Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. A detailed media plan included the engagement of two separate video services, t2p.tv and Sailgroove, who provided ample coverage. FBYC facilitated the recruitment of Layline, a marine supplier, as the first ever Platinum level partner for USODA.

Also, 2008 Olympic Gold Medalist and US SAILING Team AlphaGraphics member Anna Tunnicliffe was in attendance and gave the keynote address for the opening ceremony.

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