Another bullet
2002-08-08

Ahh, back at work. Wonderful.... It was a productive day away from the plant. I applied for two jobs, mowed the lawn and did some weeding. I played with puppy for a while. He likes that. Then I went down to the boat, reserved a dock for the next three days and got the boat all set up and washed down. The cooler was loaded and iced and everything was set and ready to go.

My right knee has been giving me trouble lately and by yesturday afternoon it was killing me. It still is sore. I may have to get it checked out. Then I did all the shopping for this weekends race to Block. Lots of yummy stuff and planty of junk food. YEA!!! Then I went home and took a 15 minute nap. It helped.

Last night was race 7 in the best 7 of 10 series. We need to be consistatly at the top of the pack now if we hope to win this thing. It didn't start out well. First my mainsail trimmer emails me and informs me he will be out for at least a couple of weeks. OK, no problem we can work around that. Then two more people bail, and one misses the boat, we are way short and way late leaving the dock. Not a good combination for my stress level. We work out crew assignments on the way out. Everything seems to be OK as we dash along at full throttle. It's a beautiful night but VERY light winds. Not our conditions, but we'll do our best. We get to the starting area just in time to the gun, but there are two guns, postponement. The RC is waiting to see what the wind does. The finally pick a course and it is a good one, but the line is skewed to a funky angle. It made for an interesting start. We are running the line with 10 or so seconds to go and notice Evil 42 is over early. That means they have to come back and restart. But... We have right away and we are running right down the line. They can't get back. The gun goes off and we push them even further from the line. Then we tack and head for the mark. The best start in the fleet. Evil 42 finally gets back but gets messed up with a late starting slower boat that also has right of way over them. They have to do a 360. Not a good time for them. Dispite the light stuff we are moving really well. We get a huge lead and the crew is doing wonderfully. We round the mark and it is really light. Evil 42 has made a come back and is steadily gaining. I'm asking for reports and M.E keeps telling me they are below us. Oops, she was confused, she meant above. I come up a bit closer to the wind and the race is on. We get to the bottom mark even with one of the spinnaker boats. We have to play with him the whole way back. They mess with our wind the whole way. Yeech!

The leg back is two miles of hard on the wind but one tack sailing. We can tell that dispite the disturbed wind, we are holding our own with Evil 42. If we don't messup, we'll win this one easily. We don't mess up. The spinnaker boat and us finish 1 second apart. We both get guns and both finish first for the second week in a row and for the third time in the six races we have done. Not bad for a new boat. We thank the RC and the crew starts high fiving. We put the sails away and pop a few brews. We get back into the slip without incident and stay way too late at the post race party. (Yes, I am tired today, but by now that should be understood for all posts right?) We get lots of congratulations. Everybody but Evil 42 who complains about the 4 minutes he says he spots us at the start. I remind him that the start is part of the race too. He just nods and walks away. COOL! It's not often you can get him to shut up.

So back to cleaning up the mess from yesterday. I have stuff here to do today so hopefully the day will fly by. I'm providing the boat for RC tonight for the other clubs ladies race part deux. Should be fun if I can get some help. Have a great day.

me

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