4/14 Opening DayJon Deutsch trimming the spinnaker as we go downwind.

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.

Last Sunday for the Offshore Spring Series #4 at FBYC I sailed aboard Wavelength and brought along Lauren and Patrick for the ride.  We mounted the GoPro camera to the spreaders and here’s a couple of photos from that.  I’ll put together a video in a few weeks.

2011 Offshore Spring Series #4 Spreadercam 1
2011 Offshore Spring Series #4 Spreadercam 2

Saturday was my first time back to Deltaville since the Tornado came through last weekend.  I was surprised to see how much had already been cleaned up and put back together.  With last weeks racing cancelled, this was the first day of offshore sailing and I was aboard Wavelength. It was a bit cloudy, but warm and we saw 15 knots with gusts to 30. It was a bit wild at times with the kite up in winds over 25.

Here’s some video of the damage and some highlights from FBYC’s Offshore Spring Series #2.

Wavelength Crew Leukemia Cup

Last weekend was the 2010 Leukemia Cup Regatta. It was held in Deltaville at Stingray Point Marina/Fishing Bay Yacht Club. Above is a photo of the crew. After abandoning the first race on Saturday in a lightning storm, we only managed 1 race on Sunday before the wind let out. We finished 4th in our 7-boat fleet. We might not have gotten any hardware on the race course, but we were the top fundraiser raising over $11,000 to support cancer research.

FBYC Opening Day Flag Raising

This weekend was Opening Weekend at Fishing Bay Yacht Club. We had two beautiful days of racing with winds between 10-20 knots. Between sailing the past 3 weekends and the unseasonably warm weather we’ve had – it hardly seems like opening weekend for me. It’s not May yet, but it certainly feels like it.

This weekend and the last 2 weekends I have sailed aboard Wavelength, a C&C 37 with ~9 other crew. It’s been fun sailing the same boat for a while and really learning some of the finer points of sail trim and boat handling. Let the sailing season begin!

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.