9-3-11 RACING

by Pam

I don’t know who came to visit us, Katia or Lee but, man did it feel like we were sailing in circles. We had wind with a few little gusts and it was slightly cooler than it’s been so I shouldn’t complain but it was a little confusing. The course seemed to somehow be wrong and I kept getting lost in the first race. It didn’t help that I rear-ended Doug and fouled Gary on the start line and had to do circles. Then, I hit a mark and had to do more circles. During all of my super slow circles I could hear Doug’s voice saying that doing circles in a Butterfly is easy and super quick and you shouldn’t lose more than one place. I had a little discussion with that little Doug-voice in my head as I stalled repeatedly in my circles.

Fortunately, Bowman, was experiencing some of the same rust and confusion as me and had headed for the wrong mark so I had some company in the first race. It is such a pleasure to sail with women. Lots of friendly conversation. I look forward to the day when the women in the fleet have more time in their schedules to sail regularly. It should be a lot of fun and most have the potential to be very competitive and at the front of the fleet.

Doug was testing out his new hat cam and videoed the racing. He has some more tweaking to do to get the filming angle right but it was fun to go along with him for the races and hear his running commentary. He has such clarity in every decision he makes and explains why he is tacking and whether he is now sailing the course or competition and describes what he sees his competition doing. It will be fun and very educational once he gets this thing working properly. Next weekend he’ll be at the Nationals so hopefully he’ll have it working properly and we can sail every race with him.

Bruce has officially swapped boats with Doug and has been putting together a string of good races the last couple of weeks. On any given day, there is some really good competition between Bruce, Burton, Doug, Frank, Gary, and Sandy. The rest of us have a good race here and there just to remind these guys that we can but I think consistency is overrated. There is a certain appeal to being a random, surprise element and then doing well feels so much more rewarding.