More sailing stuff. Ok, truthfully, a lot of rambling sailing and socializing stuff

[anigo]

When we came back from St. Pierre we left the boat in Cape Breton as we planned on coming back to do this regatta. Which we did. We left home Friday by car at about 3:00 and got to this guy's cottage about 8:30-9:00 or so. And then... well... we had a bit of fun. I didn't get to bed until after 3:00 AM. In my defense, we were drinking dark and stormies (dark rum and ginger beer, which is really really yummy) and the band was incredible. Lots of Great Big Sea type stuff. Good traditional Celtic rock fusion. Much dancing ensued. Steve and his wife had set up two tents, one for them to sleep in and the other a dining tent, only with just a big rug and a lot of chairs - no table - which soon became known as the Bedouin tent. (Pronounced beh-DOO-in', as in: whatcha be dooin?)

Note to self. A "bit of fun" should not mean that you wake up in the morning with a hangover. You should also note roughly where about in the month you are when you try to have a "bit of fun", as you tend to feel the negative affects more during some times of the month than you do during others. Don't do that again as it's not fun to try to race with a hangover.

The morning of the first race was blowin' and rainy. Fun! Our hosts served a light breakfast - fruit, bagels, muffins, biscuits, coffee, champagne and orange juice (passed on that, thanks). We got the boat ready (and I only threw up twice!) and off we went. We were sailing with a fairly limited sail stock as our good racing sails are still somewhere in transit from St. Pierre, but we managed with a less than beautiful main and only a half-ounce, and an ounce-and-a-quarter spinnaker, despite gusts of 25 knots. (Still had a 125% jib, a heavy 2, a light 2, a blade, and a 5 for jibs, so we were ok in that department. Thom isn't lacking for jibs.) (Put there mainly for pacolouie, as he'd most likely be the only one to relate to that bit of information)

The sun came out, the racing was great. The wind was shifty and gusty but the crew was sharp and, well, there ya go. There are other pictures about, but I'm not sure where they are at the moment. We won the race and the trophy was the cup, as shown, and a really really really big bottle of rum. I didn't have much of the rum (yes, there are pictures around somewhere of me drinking from the cup, but i don't know where they are either) But overall I behaved myself. (Though the rest of the crew didn't) We found Carl sleeping in his car all sweaty and with his fly undone (dunno why, but I'll let you use your imagination). Thom got rowed over to the boat about 2:00 and fell asleep in an upright position. I woke up the next morning feeling like a million bucks. Everybody else... not so much. :D Which was good for me, since breakfast that morning was scrambled eggs, ham, sausage, home fries, toast, bagels, coffee.... unfortunately no champers and oj that morning. Too bad.

The second race had similar conditions to the first, except it was more downwind than the first so there was less white knuckled "pole on the headstay" sailing. We sailed a clean race with the exception of the last five minutes. We were on a spinnaker run to the finish when a gust of wind came from pretty much 180 degrees in the opposite direction, hourglassing the spinnaker beyond recognition. We lost by 4 minutes corrected time to a 1D35, which is possibly one of the sweetest looking boats ever. Plumb bow, big open transom... sweeeeet. Oh well, second isn't horrible.

Barbecue that night, and it was much lower key than the previous night. Pete and Shane hit the road early for home. Thom, Carl and I stayed to deliver the boat to St. Peters (get a head start on bringing it home) The deliver home was great. Cape Breton is a very pretty place to sail. I had the tiller for a good chunk of the way there, which is something I don't do very often. T'was fun! The only down side was I slipped coming up through the forward hatch and bonked my teeth through my lower lip. Owie.

Lessee.... in summary. T'was fun, despite the fact that I didn't get to have a shower the whole time I was there. (The hosts drew the line at sharing their bathroom with 300ish sailors, go figure.) And it was confirmed to me that despite the fact I have a tendency to whine too much (hey, I like to hear the sound of my own voice, so sue me!), I proved (have proven?) myself, particularly with the event that left a good quarter of the skin of my left hand on the spinnaker halyard a couple of years ago. They like me, they really like me. :) Oh, and Thom had a couple of moments that were truly "assholic", but despite those, T'was fun.

We now resume your regularly scheduled programming... unless I can think of anything else exciting that happened that I need to share.

As you were.

Comments

[fyremaven.livejournal.com]

wow, sounds like quite the party.

and where did you sleep, young lady? in the 'whatcha-be-doin' tent???

where?

:)

[anigo.livejournal.com]

Nope, slept in one of the berths on the boat. All by my little lonesome, thankyouverymuch.

:)

[fyremaven.livejournal.com]

well.

then you were quite the good little girl, were you not?

deserves a treat, i'd say.

how about a nice little eddo?
:D