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This past weekend the Hair of the Dog team hauled the boat up to Vancouver for the Canadian J24 Nationals at WAVES 2008. It was hosted by the snazzy Royal Vancouver Yacht Club with its strict no cellphone and no hat rules.

We didn’t sail well Friday. Then there was no sailing Saturday, just a lot of bobbing around, but we did place 2nd at the drink competition later that afternoon with out modified Dr.Pepper (drop a shot of Southern Comfort in a glass of half beer, half Coke.) On Sunday our best race result was a third.

View all my photos.

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…drinking but tomorrow we are heading to Vancouver for the Canadian J24 championships and there is a drink(ing) competition on Saturday night:

Put your creative minds and taste buds together to develop a drink that you would be proud to serve your mother!

Drinks will be judged on taste, originality and presentation – prize for “the best”

Any suggestions!?

Oh, and the weekend before last I was in Las Vegas and lo and behold I booked my flight for the Monday instead of the Sunday. How many times have I done that?? In fact, this is the second time I have booked a flight to/from Vegas on the wrong day!

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This weekend the sailing crew took Friday off and raced Brad’s J24, Hair of the Dog, at Seattle’s first NOOD (National Offshore One-Design.)

We had the good fortune of this being the first three day stretch of gorgeous Seattle weather (it should resume raining tomorrow.) We also had the good fortune of having a decent amount of wind (my arms and legs are telling me too much wind.)

I’m very excited to say we came sixth (well, tied for fifth but lost the tie.) We had some good races with a second and third place finish and the rest of the finishes were respectable. Today we should have had a first but lost it :(. As a team we’re getting more consistent and moving up.

There were definitely some exciting moments with a few crash tacks and bear aways and a little rubbing with a six meter who apparently forgot they were on port as they came into the windward mark. As it turns out we got very lucky on the six meter encounter; it very nearly took our rig down.

There was also a helicopter constantly buzzing around taking photos. It definitely felt like a big regatta!

Rhonda and I were on boat delivery at the end of the regatta. Here’s a few photos from the three hour trip from Shilshole on the sound back to Leschi on the lake.

More photos…

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This past weekend we went down to the Gorge. Some professional photos were shot. Here’s one of our boat:

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A skipper I occasionally sail with recently bought a J-105 and invited me out this Saturday for Snowbird 06 - Race 2, his second race in it (and my first time on a J-105).

(For more pictures of Xtreme being surveyed check out Maurice’s photo album).

We started the race in the pouring rain and raced from Shilshole down to Alki and back. Even with all the ski gear that I’d wear up to around -5′C, the leg to Alki was very cold. We then turned around and tried to sail the asymmetric spinnaker in ~30 knot winds back home to Shilshole. Needless to say it was a wild ride as we sped along at 11 knots. After more than a few round ups and losing a good patch of skin off one finger (I need gloves with better coverage) we took the chute down and were still doing around 9 knots downwind to Shilshole.

Overall, it was pretty exhilarating, but I’m looking forward to learning how to sail this boat on a calmer day :).

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J24 boathandling CDROM

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Busy weekend!

After sneaking away early Friday I had dry land practice for the J24 Districts, the I rushed over to check out Hump 2. We even made the Stranger’s blog, HUMP 2 Storms Seattle!, or, at least my ass did.

Then Saturday and Sunday I had two days of racing:

upwind trim Hosted on Zooomr

And yet another picture of my ass…

mark rounding Hosted on Zooomr

Sunday afternoon the wind died so I spent the afternoon on the motorboat relaxing and then went to Daniel’s (by boat of course) with Kristi.

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Tonight was a pretty regular night for us out on the J24. Some good starts, some bad. Some good mark roundings, some bad. This is until on the last upwind leg of the night I apparently missed the duck in ‘we’re going to tack then duck’. I was unprepared for the sudden movement after the tack and lost my footing while pulling in the jib sheet. And pull as I could on the jib sheet I couldn’t pull enough in while in mid air to be able to stay on the boat and over board I went. Brad did a great job getting back round to me very quickly. I only had time to think that ‘good thing my cellphone isn’t in my pocket’ before Dwayne (good thing we had him on board tonight, he’s a big strong guy) and Tom pulled me up over the side. Unfortunately just as I hit the deck we slammed over onto a new tack and the boom whacked me really good in the forehead (thank god it was my forehead and not my nose or teeth). I wisely declined beers after the race and got a ride home. Hopefully I wake up tomorrow :) and hopefully Brad forgives me for how many places we lost in the standings. Doing a circle minutes from the finish line in a full fleet is never a wise move.

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Growing up I always loved the day we put our boat (C&C 25) in the water in the water for the first time. There was the long car ride over to Northern Harbour with a stop at Canadian Tire along the way. In later years, maybe a stop at Subway to grab some food. Then we’d have to find the boat since it invariably got moved from the location where we ended putting it away the previous fall. Once we found it we’d crack it open and start working. Without a doubt while my dad was busy working on the more technical things we the kids would have to clean and wax the bottom (first we’d have to go steal someone’s ladder since we never had our own. we also would have to haul the water from seemingly very far away). It was definitely the worst part of the day (the best part being eating licorice on the boat once it was in the water and headed to Echo Bay).

Fast forward a whole bunch of years and I’m now crewing on a serious racing boat. We even bring in top coaches to help us improve our game. Turns out one of the things the winners do is clean their boats before every race. Now since our boats are not dry docked this means that yes, someone has to go swimming. This week was our first week getting on top of this detail and I drew the short stick and spent fifteen minutes diving under the boat with a sponge and rubbing off the growth from the last two weeks (we had a week off because of July 4th). Plus it wasn’t even hot and sunny. Not a lengthy of a job as cleaning and waxing a dry docked C&C 25 but still, it’s kinda freaky being four feet underwater on a dark cloudy day :).

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I wasn’t planning to race sail boats competitively this summer.

Last summer with two hockey teams, wakeboarding, biking and sailing, life was just too hectic. I vowed not to do it again. Needless to say I couldn’t say no to either hockey team, still own a wakeboard boat, bought two bikes and one night decided to fill in one night on a J24. Turns out no one on the J24 had raced J24s before and some had no sailing experience. They originally were just out for a good time but after a few good races the skipper got competitive. With some experience I was a welcome addition to the crew. So first came a new set of sails and next he brought out Paul, an expert to coach us. Paul is currently a North Sails consultant and previously designed keels for ten years for America’s Cup boats. Racing with him the last two Tuesdays has been amazing. I know now the mechanics of trimming jib and spin on a J24. My execution has also gotten much better. And tonight, with Paul on the helm (since our skipper was out of town), it was incredible to set beside him and listen to him explain everything that was going on around the race course. Of course, the stream of information was never ending and quite overwhelming. And so while I’ve been sailing quite awhile, I realize it will be many many years before I begin to fully understand just how the game is won.

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