This past weekend was the 2009 Chesapeake Bay Laser Masters Regatta at Fishing Bay Yacht Club. As the event chair it’s a lot of work to get everything together to put on an event like that. On one hand it’s a relief to have that behind me, but that also means the sailing season is over for the year.
The event turned out great and I got to take a lot of great pictures. The overcast clouds and periodic ran made it a little hard to get good pictures, but I did what I could.
It’s finally fall which means it’s time again for home improvement projects. I took off most of the summer from doing projects and now that sailing and other things are winding down, it’s time to get going on a few things again.
Since I had a nice day, my project was to clean, re-configure and organize the shed. Originally there were shelves around 2 walls of the shed. I pulled them out and replaced them with movable shelves which provided a lot more shelve space. The end result is a somewhat clean shed that I can get around. At least until next weekend when something ‘else’ needs to go in the shed.
I got to spend this past weekend with family in Buffalo to attend the wedding of Andy and Kristin. They had a beautiful outdoor wedding and got some good photos.
This weekend ECU kicked off their football season against Appalachian State. This was the maiden tailgate for JG’s RV. We got a great RV spot right next to the practice field and just a couple hundred yards from the stadium. We stayed Friday night through Sunday morning for game at noon on Saturday.
In addition to the regulars, CK flew in from Albaquerque for the weekend to help us kick off the season. One game down and one win for the Pirates! Looking forward to a great season!
Check out photos here.
My mission to sail at one new club every year took me to Brant Beach Yacht Club the second weekend in August for the Laser Nationals. With 278 Lasers in 3 fleets this is the largest Laser event ever held in North America. I was one of 105 Lasers in the standard rig fleet.
The first day was a little out of my wind range and I had a tough time keeping the boat flat upwind. On the second day I was a little more competitive, but with 105 boats on a short line, the starts were brutal and I am definitely out of practice starting in a big fleet.
I can’t say I sailed my best regatta, but I had a good time and everyone at Brant Beach Yacht Club did a fantastic job hosting us.
Here are a handful of photos that I took while I was there with my camera phone.
Here’s a couple pictures taken by the photographer here, here, here, and here.
This weekend I was at the 2009 Southern Bay Leukemia Cup Regatta in Deltaville, VA sailing about Wavelength in the PHRF-A fleet. Last year I took photos and did a regular video.
This year my experiment was to take and collect photos from the event and immediately post them to twitter via the Fishing Bay Yacht Club twitter account (@fishingbayyc). I had a couple people emailing me photos from their camera phones throughout the event. During every free moment I had while racing, I would download the pictures, edit them, and tweet/post them to twitter/flickr. Having image editing apps on the iPhone made this work so easily. The only downside was the spotty coverage out in the middle of the bay, so downloading/uploading went slow.
All and all it was a fun experiment. I want to thank Goeff Cahill, Gary Hooper, and Scott Turpin for contributing photos to the video. The event website including results can be found here.
This past weekend I was up in Fort Erie Ontario for the 2009 Laser North American Championship. I was sailing a Radial in the 4-day regatta. It wasn’t my best showing, but I leaned a lot about sailing a Radial and how a big-time regatta at the level of a North American Championship runs. I’m looking forward to US Nationals in August. Here’s a few pictures from around the Buffalo Canoe Club during the event.
This weekend was the wedding of Chris Webster and Heather Wade. Chris was one of my roommates my Senior Year at ECU. Heather was a regular at our parties and despite both of them having significant others at the time, things eventually worked out for them and 5 years later, they are getting married. Congratulations Chris and Heather! I am very proud and happy for you both and look forward to many more years of tailgating and hanging out.
Here are my photos from the weekend as well as a dance-off video.
After many months of work on the house I finally got it in ship shape and threw a housewarming party. I was joined by friends from work, kickball, high school, soccer and others and everyone had a great time at the bar, play pool, or on the patio playing beer pong and flip cup. Thank you to everyone who came and I am looking forward to many more parties just like it. Here are photos.