Wind Storm!

It's Easter weekend, so while this may mean time with your families, for me it has always meant sailing (just ask my Mom). Growing up in Alberta, I've been coming out to the west coast to train over Easter since I was 14, until finally I just packed up and moved here. This year is no different, with about 15 sailors flying and driving out for the weekend.

Today was supposed to be our first day of training, but it might be a bit windy! As I write this the wind is a sustained 45 knots (that's about 80 km/hr to you non-sailors) and over 90 000 homes are currently without power. The storm started at about 4 am (at least that's when my windows started rattling) and it's a big one! We usually get some awesome south-easterly storms during the winter in Victoria, so this one is a bit late. The roads are covered in tree bits and the cherry trees have lost all their blossoms. Since its a holiday, many people are out driving along Dallas Road to storm watch. After determining that we were NOT going sailing, that's what Jen and I did and I took some photos. Then we went back to the yacht club and ran around with everyone else all excited. We re-tied boats to the dock and rescued some sails shredding themselves in the wind. If you own a boat I suggest you go check on it! I have put in some links if you would like to follow the storm. It is supposed to blow out by about midnight, so hopefully we will get sailing tomorrow! CBC Story Wind Forecasts Photos

The Long Trip Home

Jen here,

After a rather epic drive home all the way from Miami to Victoria, the boats are unloaded, washed, rigged, and (for the most part) ready for spring training. A big big thanks to my sister, Meg, who flew all the way to Miami only to hop in the truck and head home. She didn't even leave the airport and we were already en route back to Canada! The trip took us 11 days, mostly because we had an extra boat on the trailer which slowed things down a lot. It was an amazing trip home, though, and we saw beautiful country, met great people, and had some fantastic adventures. I've taken the liberty of condensing them into a top ten list for your amusement-drum roll please...

10) Hushpuppies, deep fried catfish, deep fried ice cream, deep fried crabcakes, biscuits and white sauce...all seem like a fun idea when you're trying to get a taste of the local cuisine...until you realize that you're sitting in a truck for twelve hours a day and have not gone to the bathroom since you left Miami.

9) Southern hospitality: we adopted, or rather, were adopted by an exuberant hotel manager named Paul Bruno at the Ramada Lodge in Pensacola, Florida. He found us a place to stay in New Orleans, filled our bellies with (more) biscuits and white gravy, and insisted that we phone him when we got there, just to make sure we were okay. He has officially been dubbed our Pensacola Dad, and anyone passing through would do well to take him up on his hospitality.

8)New Orleans is great. The Saints are great. Is it worth trucking around the French Quarter in a monsoon? Sure, just be sure to wear your bright yellow Saints poncho and have a bourbon while you wring out your dripping jeans in a fancy bar where you're the only two people who look like drowned rats. More deep fried southern food in the form of creole goodness: jumbalaya, poor boys, and some sort of deep fried piece of dough covered in icing sugar to top it off. At this point, the top button of the pants came undone.

7) While getting lost, we dub our GPS "Linda" after an unsavory professor that we both had in our undergrads. Picture two girls driving around Yuma late at night yelling "Linda why are you doing this to us!?!" to an inanimate object. And we wondered why a State Trooper pulled us over...

6)Blowing up a trailer tire on the I10 just outside of Houston. Meg says: Hey? Why are we going so slow? I say: You're paranoid. Meg says: Do you smell smoke...

5) Every single gas station attendant in America asking us first where we're from, next where we're going, third are we crazy, and fourth why we haven't killed each other yet? Meg replies that this is nothing compared to nine months in the womb together.

4) Truck stop in New Mexico featuring thousands of terra cotta Jesus figurines. Would the purple one look good in our boat stall at Royal Vic?

3) Nearly dropping the 49er off the crane while unloading it from the top of the trailer in San Diego. Whoops, don't tell Hunter! Uh, I mean, your boat is fine...

2) Rush hour traffic in LA, in the dark, while raining, with a three boat
trailer...then Meg tells a joke.

1) Sitting on a cactus. Why? Let's just say that 6200KM sitting on my butt wasn't painful enough already, so I opted for the extra challenge of having my friends pick needles out of my bum on the side of the road. Had to sit sideways all day from the welt!

Ahh roadtrips. Who wants to drive back with me next year?

Jen

NQR - Day 3

We left the dock this morning in about 8 knots from the NE, with our mast set up for light air. By the time we got to the course a short sail away, it was 14 knots. We pinned down to our medium air setting as it got windier. We started the first race and right off the line fell into the boat above us. We attempted to tack out to clear our air, but the jib got stuck and then so did I. The boat capsized on top of me while Liz jumped over onto the centreboard, where she promptly fell off because we had buffed the boat to a shiny finish on Tuesday. This was of course witnessed by the entire laser fleet. We got the boat up and went blasting off to the right side of the course, where there was more wind (which we didn't need) and big waves which threw water into our faces. At some point the boat and I lost contact while I was trapezing and I flew through the air and then slammed back into the boat still on trapeze, much to Liz's amusement. Once around the top mark we shook the water out of our eyes and put up the spinnaker. All was going well until a gust hit and the kite went soaring to windward. As the boat capsized to windward Liz again flew through the air. Since we were already losing the race we took our time getting the boat up, attempting to douse the kite. Unfortunately the kite had wrapped itself around the port spreader and trapeze line, so we sailed back to the dock to untangle it and set our mast up for heavy air. We headed back out having missed a race and changed our mast set up again, as the wind had now died down to 10 knots.

We had three more races during which we managed to get off the starting line and keep the boat upright. The breeze was up and down, so we struggled a bit with changing gears and getting our boat speed up. We did managed to make some good tactical decisions both upwind and downwind and were in 4th for quite a bit of the last two races.

It was a long day on the water and everyone is pretty exhausted. Although we didn't finish two races, we didn't damage any of our equipment or ourselves during our capsizes, and managed to come back and sail some good races. The forecast for tomorrow is 20 knots from 7am to 7pm so hopefully we survive that as well!

NQR - Day 2

So we didn't have much wind at all today. Postponed on shore for 3 hours and then it filled in from the South. When they lower the postponement flag on shore you have 30 minutes until the race starts on the water, a fact we kind of forgot. We ended up missing our start by about two minutes with two of the other boats, which was just dumb on our part. The wind was similar to yesterday afternoon so we headed out right and rounded the windward mark in 6th. There was better pressure on the right but for some reason all the boats ahead of us were heading down the left side of the course. We gybed over and ended up catching right up to the 4th and 5th place boats at the leeward mark. We gained again on the second downwind, and noticed coming into the leeward mark that the wind had shifted left. We played middle left on the third beat and came out dead even with the 5th place boat, which lee-bowed us but then plowed right into a large kelp bulb, allowing us to stay in clear air. The wind had now died almost to nothing and the last downwind leg was painfully slow, with us and the 4th and 5th place boats sailing all together. At the bottom of the course a race committee boat was tied off to the leeward gate mark to finish the lasers on a shortened course, and behind this was our finish line. Basically it was a mess of no wind, lots of RC boats and a lot of confusion. The boat directly ahead of us thought they had finished when they passed the gate mark and took down their spinnaker, allowing us to sail past them and across the finish line in 5th. The race committee then cancelled racing for the rest of the day as there was no wind again.

Other than missing our start it was a pretty good race. We managed to focus on our speed and made some excellent tactical decisions which allowed us to gain on the boats around us. Hopefully we will have more wind tomorrow. Results are at http://www.nqr2009.ca/.

NQR's - Day 1

We had three races today, the first day of NQR's. There are 7 470's racing in the event. The wind was fairly light and shifty as we had several rain storms move through in the early afternoon. It was very cold and rainy on the water for most of the day.

In the first race we had a poor start and did not tack out early enough, so were behind most of the fleet. We managed to catch up a bit on the downwind by sailing into the current before gybing, and crossed the line second last. This ended up being a 5th as one of the boats had to retire due to equipment issues. The second race had an okay start and got out to the right where there was more pressure, but the wind had lightened quite a bit and we couldn't get the boat up to speed, and ended up last. We tuned up with the other girls after this race and made some adjustments which helped with our speed. In the third race we were over early but so was half the fleet. We ducked the line and then got out to the right and were with the rest of the fleet. Downwind we had good speed but had failed to locate the next mark, so ended up missing a chance to gain on the boats ahead of us. We rounded in 5th but sailed left too far and lost a boat on the upwind. We closed the distance downwind but did not manage to catch them before the finish.

Overall it was a good day. We are fast in a straight line but have major issues going around marks, especially when the laser fleet is rounding the mark at the same time!

Three more days of racing. Hopefully it warms up a bit. Results at http://www.nqr2009.ca/.

470 NQR's

We will be sailing in the 470 national qualifying regatta this weekend. Although it is unlikely we will qualify for the National Team having only been sailing together for a month, it should be a good indicator of where we stand and great experience for the future.

Results can be found at http://www.nqr2009.ca/

470 Sailing

I have been sailing the 470 Dinghy on and off for the past three years and have just started sailing with a new partner. We have been training for the past month and sailed in our first regatta together this past weekend (Fall Dinghies at RVYC) and didn't come last, which is promising!