25 August 2008

Fun Sail on Sunday the 24th....

Hi all!!

Well, we went out and had a fun sail after our scorching performance in the Leukemia Cup Regatta. Here are the pics from Sunday... I am still writing out the story of Saturday's race.

We had a fun group out Sunday, with one of my old friends (Alma,) coming out sailing for her first time, and her friend Lana coming out... although Lana and the big waves didn't get along so well. We all had a great time, and Splash even found the Loch Ness Monster of Seaweed!!

The best part, was a newly married couple happened by, and wanted to take pictures on Maskwa. Splash invited them on, and we made some new friends... that's what it is all about anyways, right?

Cheers!!

Scott
















18 August 2008

Verve Cup Weekend - The Picture Proof

These are in no particular order, Blogger is a pain to load pictures....

:)

Scott



















Verve Cup update

O.k.. so we did not do so well... lol. Actually, we really jelled as a crew. The best part, was; in addition to switching positions throughout the weekend, we really had a great time. Ready for the season to begin!

Seriously, everyone performed very well. Don was very complimentary when we came back to harbor on Sunday. No big mistakes, that was for sure! Sometimes, you just can't win no matter what. We sailed well, and it is hard to ask for more.

So, pictures from sailing and from the various parties afterwards will be posted shortly. Stay tuned to this very page!

Ciao!

Scott

13 August 2008

The Chicago Verve Cup

Hi Gang!!

Well, the Verve Cup weekend is approaching fast, and things are looking good. Here is our section for the race:
1. USA 35234 Aftershock J 35 69
2. USA 32851 Bozo's Circus J 35 69
3. USA 56613 Heart Throb Columbia 30 69
4. USA 42121 Houqua J 35 69
5. USA 40395 Irish Rover J 35 69
6. USA 11508 Maskwa C&C 115 72
7. USA 25634 Nighthawk C&C 115 72
8. USA 41625 Sorcerer Schock 35 72
9. USA 46409 Syrena B-32 69
10. USA 32776 Touch of Grey J 35 69

As you can see, there are no boars more than 3 seconds faster than us, and NONE slower than us. Except for Syrena, whom I do not recognize, we have beaten ALL these boats, scratch. This will be a good tight band of boats for us, nearly a one design section. We should especially fare well if the wind is in our home range of about 14 kts or so. The J35s will be trying to carry their big #1s, and will be way heeled over, and we'll have our full sail plan up, and we'll only be going faster.

Hope you all got the email with regards to the Tri-State, the Leukemia Cup, and everything else we have cooking. The end of the summer is near, and we have lots of sailing yet to go!!

Ciao!

Scott

01 August 2008

Around the Island Race Brag Flag.

As Scott mentioned in the previous post, we almost made third place and just missed out on an "official" brag flag. I still think we should have one...



-Splash

Around The Island....

Hi All!!

Well, we decided to take an extra day on Mackinac, and do the first annual "Around the Island" Regatta. We had had decent weather after we got to the island, and we heard about 30 boats would be doing the race. Could be interesting to see who stayed and sailed. So, we got ready for Wednesday afternoon. We had lost Whale and Steve to work, and had picked up Nicole and Jean to sail with us. NOT a bad trade at all!

So, Don went and got the SIs, section breaks, etc... and.. lo and behold! We are now a Turbo boat! Yes, when they did the section breaks here is how who we were grouped with: Vincitore, a Kiwi-made 58 footer, custom built racing machine... Pororoca, a GL70 Class boat... Jason, the Farr 395 from across the dock, and Scirocco VI, a Mumm 36. O.k.. the Mumm, I can handle... but really, the rest of it? They all owe us at LEAST 45 seconds/mile in PHRF... what an absurd section break, when the boats in the next slowest section were all within a few tenths of a second with us normally. Sheesh!




Well, nothing to be done about it, and Turbo Maskwa was born!! Of course, we did not have a Section 1 flag, so we had to improvise.. :) George managed to find a red pen, and we had all this notebook paper... so that'll work.

We were a few seconds late for the start, but we were having a great time. We had tried to flag down Vincitore before the start, and convince them they had to do TWO laps, but they were not biting. Rats. We fell in line after the start, and accelerated away. The wind was blowing nicely, we had a good crew, and the boat was handling quite well. Nothing to do, but sail fast. We had an advantage, in that we only draw 6'9", compared to the big boats 14' or so... so we could cut closer to the island. We used this to good effect, but were hampered by one thing. We just could not make the first turn close enough. We had sailed close to the island, but could not get past a small shoal that was marked ahead of us. That kind of put us behind a bit, but we were still sailing well. We even passed Jason and Scirocco, because we were the better sailors. ;)

Passing around as we went over the top of the island, I noticed that at the halfway point, we were still in sight of the big guns, AND... we had only been sailing for 35 minutes! This was gonna be a short race! On the West side of the island, we watched Jason and Scirocco get into a little match racing... the only problem for THEM, was that we were still there, and we took advantage of them letting down their guard to pass them both. Jason managed to overtake us towards the end, but they lost sight of the big prize, which is that there were more boats on the water.

We had great wind the entire time, but needed the island to be a big bigger. We finished the race in 1 hour, 20 minutes, just a few seconds behind the 3rd place boat, Scout, on corrected time.

After the race, they had all you can eat free burgers and brats, and all you could drink beer and wine, so we had to do SOMETHING with our time!

All in all, we had a great time; the race was a hoot, even if we only got 4th place. Just kind of hard to beat the big boys in a short race. After the race, we made some new friends, with Stacey, from Jason, who would join our crew for the Harbor Springs Regatta, and Dan, also temporarily from Jason, who needed a ride down. It really was a great time all around....

Scott