How Was Your Weekend?

[Ex-Calif]

After a 3 PM meeting on Friday we snuck out and got a twighlight sail in. I think the weather might finally be turning.

We've been stuck in the doldrums for what seems like weeks and this weekend we finally got some change. Although we didn't see much northeasterly I think it might be on the way. We had steady westerlies pretty much all weekend and while that made sailing around close to our club a lot of beating and running, it is very nice out in the open areas.

We sailed until after nightfall on Friday and had a most excellent time. Saturday saw 25-30 dinghys on the water and that's always a great sight to see. We had a nice long afternoon sail in post frontal condiitons. A bit choppy and breezy and a lot of fun.

Sunday we got on the water around 11 am and didn't put the boat to bed until almost 6. The only thing that stopped us was that I pulled all the skin off my sheeting hand - but it's a good kind of pain - LOL. My boat partner instead of saying something helpful like, "Why don't you helm for a while." Kept offering really useless advice like, "You sailing gloves are in the cabin. Why don't you put them on?" - LOL

The dinghy's were out in force again as were the cats. The optimists were racing triangles, the lasers were planing and the keelboats were out and about.

My son (10) is part of the gang of four that hang around the club. We have been on their case for weeks about not sailing and they keep replying with, "It's no fun without wind." We're going crabbing. OK I'll buy that but I was thinking with this weekend's wind if they haven't sailed I am gonna kick some butt...

After a 3 hour run out into the shipping lanes and back and a few hours of keelboat follow the leader. We saw an F-16 cat turned completely turtle near the club.

Let's go have a look. There was one of the club's safety boats helping and a bunch of Laser Picos and a couple of other cats milling around. Sure enough, my boy was in a Pico with another boy - two of the other boys were on a twin-cat - well actually they had abandoned the twin cat to help unturtle the F16 (all 40 lbs each of them). The the twin cat then loaded up with 2 kids and 2 adults and we all did sausages across the bay for an hour or so.

The kids were totally pumped up. Can't wait for the northeast monsoon to settle in. Few more weeks...

Absolutely fantastic weekend. Especially as I am now off to the US for a couple of weeks and may not be able to sail until near the end of Nov - bummer...

But I will get a trip to West Marine - Woo hooo!

[Ex-Calif]

We've been trying to support and promote twilight racing at our club. We've commited that if there is a club event we will be out.

This is a couple of shots from the last twilight race. Basically a reason to go sail and have a few beers after. 3 boats on a sausage course. We got dusted (of course) but got second on handicap. The second place boat was flying a storm jib and a reef in the main. We had a reef and furled the Genny. Our secret weapn was to loose the genny downwind. It was like flying a spinnaker.

We had great wind. Especially at the top end of the course where we reckoned it might have been 20G25.

Here's a couple of shots of Relax Lah! pushing her weight around - LOL