Thanks Anjohn! I appreciate this!

Usually we are hurting for crew…tonight we have 8.  Let me tell ya, it didn’t help.  We almost ran over the Opti’s that were trying to race; and I might have run into the anchored Committee Boat.  Thanks to Anjohn, we have photos.  We quit the race very shortly after that leg.  And the GG Regatta is just around the corner. SHIT!!!

We still BOOOOOZED it up after wards…you should check out the pictures.

Introducing Jake!  He is not only the newest crew member on the boat, but he is also the youngest and lightest.  Makes him the perfect candidate to be our Snacktician and the one to get hoisted up the mast for whatever reason.  Well, only if his mom and dad let him come back!  We raced last night with a light crew (Dwight, Sheryl, Jake and I).  Jake got his feet wet by trimming in the Genoa with Sheryl.  We did alright.  Better than we had the last couple of weeks….at the very least we went to the right marks!

All the pics are @ http://pics.MySpeedster.info

The plan was to take some of Mandy’s old friends out for a cruise to see if they enjoyed the whole sailing thing. We all met at th club and proceeded to go sailing.  It was Mandy, her old friends and their two boys, their cousins from out of town, and their two kidos…and me.  We had 10 on the boat…I was not sure that many could fit.

Wind was great going out and we cruised the lake just flying the main.  We then headed back and noticed that the wind was a bit light, so we put up the 100.  It got us moving…then the wind really died.  We took down the 100 and put up the 155.

Then the wind really died.  We were just sitting there…I am not sure what happened, all day the wind was coming from the north and then all of a sudden the wind started to come in from the south.  And I mean it started to BLOW! Took down the Genny…and tried to make it back to the club with the main.  And if I had my choice we would have reefed that too!  I mean it was blowing…

Appearently the club memebers could see what was happening  and were taking bets on whether we could make it back safely.  WE DID…got the boat tied up and waited for what was to be a KILLER storm that was coming through.

Mandy’s friends escaped to the safety of their cars and headed home.  The regular crew (Dwight, Jamie, Mandy, and Sheryl) decided to wait out the storm to help me put back the boat.  Richy Rich, his new GF Lyn, and her mother were there too.  We all headed into the club and found out that the race had been postponed.

I was not giving up though.  Afterall, it is TEXAS!  Wait 20 minutes and the weather will change!  So it took a little over 20 minutes, but the storm went away…we headed to the boat to drink all the booze we had brought.

I think we were over compensating since the last couple of weeks we stated to run a bit short at the end of the night.  I think there was about 4 or 5 cases of beer…thats a lot of beer for what was to be a 3 hour cruise…even for 8 people!

Mark (barking fish) also joined us at the boat, and we had Yummy Chicken salad that Mandy made while drinking the beer!  All of a sudden we looked up and the sky was Sunny!  Let’s GO people…we rigged the boat and went out for our booze cruise and race…the race committe canceled the race, but we still had our BC…

We even picked up Shannon from Chandliers…Mark brought in the boat to the dock, and she jumped right in…we didn’t even stop! Wooooohoooooooooo….

We proceeded to lose the new pee bucket Sheryl had bought…that’s two in two weeks…

As we headed home, the wind died and we didn’t get back to RCYC till 1 in the morning.  Left the boat in the water…and headed home.  I had been at the club since 3 in the afternoon.  I was DONE!

Ok…Dwight and I took pics and they are now up at the new Picasa Album for the boat…the address is http://pics.MySpeedster.INFO

Pictures don't do her Justice, THE NEW NAV LIGHT!

WooooHooooooooooooooooooooo…We raised Dwight up the mast today and he fixed the NAV light…WE ARE LEGAL BABY!!!  No more “Borrowing” a light.  We also removed the babystay and got some other minor repairs done.

All this so that we can race tonight and not have to come in after the race.  Let me first say, that I am an idiot.  I might have made a couple of tactical errors during last night’s race.  But, what the Hell was going on at the start…I am not sure how that worked, but we got off to a decent start.  Heck we even got to the first mark in a timely manner…from there on things did not go too well.  I might have yelled out something to Barking Fish, when the was no reason for it.  Its just that we were going downwind, and it looked like he was coming across us going the other way kinda.  You’re confused?  No, apparently I was the confused…I had a lesson thought to me by Mark, and I might have touched his boat with part of my spinnaker.  OK so I did…he protested…I didn’t correctly do my penalty turns…we pretty much might have been DQed… I am not sure what happens. Learned my lessons.

We didn’t quite make it back to the club with the rest of the fleet.  We wanted to test out our new/fixed nav light!!!   Did I say how bright that LED bulb is, I think you might be able to see it from the International Space Station.  We cruised across the lake for hours, staring at the LED light, listening to country music, singing, and maybe having a couple of drinks!  We must have been a bit loud though, the people on the RCYC Deck didn’t care too much for our  singing.

Anyways, the Saturday night races are a blast.  You wanna see pictures? Click here…

Saturday night we headed up to RCYC for the usual race…but this was not a usual race.  First of all, we were not one of the two boats racing…there were actually a hand full of IC24′s, some J22′s,  and a couple of Melges 24′s…Woooohoooooo….AND we had a race committe boat.  I was just shocked!!!

At the very least, we had a great crew on the boat.  Dwight on the foredeck, Jamie and Mandy trimming the Jib, Sheryl on spinnaker duty, with me at the helm and Joanne was there for emotional support.   We did OK with the start sequence and only were off by seconds.  Sure beats being off by minutes like we were last Wednesday.

Did our laps and ended the race trying to gybe the boat at the finish and hanging the spinnaker around the forestay…That was ugly…and everyone made sure to come by and make a comment.  THANKS!

We went back to drop Mandy off at the marina, and ended up staying there all night finishing up the beer we had brought.  YEAH, I might have spent the night on the boat…

Dwight has the pics!  Needless to say, I might have been enjoying myself a bit too much.  Photo Album

This was the first time Patrick and Carrie had ever been on a boat, and as far as their experience racing the boat, I don’t think they will be coming back.  Patrick got to fly the chute, I am not sure that was his “thing”.  Carrie got bruises all over  her bottom from the toe rails….I might have forgotten to mention that would happen.  They were troopers.  And I really think that they enjoyed the Booze Cruise.

The Boooooze Cruise is what it was all about.  After the race we flew the spin to the power station and watched the sun come down.   STUNNING!!!  We had drinks and enjoyed the music coming out of the speakers.  We sailed…Just sailed, with no where to go, and no worries.  We had wine, and beer, and great company.  We had it all.

Finally came back to the club around 10 and put her back on the trailer and headed to Snuffers….it was such a chill and fun night.  Dwight, as usual took the fantastic pics!  Click here for the Album….

I read the Race Instructions at least three times, I knew our start time was at 7:05….I JUST KNEW IT.  We were a bit late leaving the dock, but I though we would have plenty of time to get to the start.  We had a hiccup in setting up the boat and it became apparent as soon as we started tacking.  Not a big deal but we did have to hang out for a couple of minutes before heading towards the start.

Imagine my surprise when I saw the other boats starting…I called for the time and it was 7:00…Surely they were just getting ready…when the other boats did not turn around after a minute, I knew something was wrong.  We turned the boat and BOOOKED it for the start…we got there at 7:04:56, crossed at 7:05…and we played catchup for the rest of the night.  The Breeze was good and we did pretty good.  No foul-ups, and plenty of cold beer.  NICE

We finished, put the boat aways and read the Race Instructions for the 7th time…our start was at 7:05…the other boats jumped the GUN!  Can you say WINNER WINNER CHICKEN DINNER?  So what that it was by default.  It is still a Numero UNO!  NICE!

Chris, Dwight, Mandy and Scott were a great crew….I am not sure how we didn’t get any pics….