8-30-14 Racing

by Pam

Look who we found on the race course on Saturday ... Tom!

The forecast for Saturday was light to no wind. However, as Cathy and I started to set the course, it was cloudy and overcast with a nice breeze and coolish temperatures. As a result, we set, what turned out to be, a rather ambitious course. Everything was going fine until the last leg. A very painful last leg where the sun came out, the dark clouds dispersed and the wind died.

we went from this ...

to this

Despite, what turned out to be a course that lasted over an hour, there were a couple of close finishes at the end between Paul and Frank and also with Burton and Bowman. I understand Bowman reversed that the following day in the Flying Scots when she got a 2nd and Burton a 3rd.

After that race, Cathy got the chance to practice her driving skills of getting in close to boats as we towed several sailors in. She mastered the double tow but decided against the triple. We dropped Bruce and Amber less than 50 yards from the docks and when we returned with Paul, Amber was still about 25 yards away. The wind was zero. There was no more sailing.

So, we headed to the clubhouse for a much needed break and a rules discussion. Then Bruce noticed Doug's magnetic boat kit and tossed it into the middle of the table and Doug's head went from down to fully engaged like a kid with a train set. We all played with the boats and then Doug took the opportunity to solicit comments and ideas on his strategy for starting in a large fleet as he's been putting some thought into the upcoming France Laser Masters' Worlds with 100 boats in his fleet and over 500 on the course.

After lunch, rules discussions and playing with boats was done it was time to collect the marks. Cathy, still working on her driving skills went by a couple on stand up paddle boards. The guy was sitting on his board but the girl was standing and looking all poised and pretty in her bikini. Cathy drove passed at that perfect speed for maximum wake (completely unintentional) and the girl looked behind the boat with panic in her eyes and in a frog like manner hopped down on hands and knees and wrapped herself around the board. Doug and I got a good laugh and Cathy learned about speed and wakes.

Lots of smiling faces from the weekend:

I didn't get a picture of our Captain smiling ... oh well, he won the only race of the day so it's all good.