M Squared

Or is it... After spending time back east , I was eager to get back on the water and racing again. It had been several weeks. The guys did okay without me but the familiarity of sailing together (Don and Gordon for over 30 years and the three of us of nine) is a big comfort and advantage. So it felt good to be out on the water, in a good stiff breeze and gearing up for a race last Thursday evening. We got off the line fairly well as did several others. We had to hold our position for a while until the others tacked away (no wanting to duck three or four boats). We had Faux Pas below us and couldn't quite get the clean air we wanted but had no place to go. Finally after the boats above us tacked away, we were free to tack over on port. We continued for a while until our lift decreased and we tacked back to starboard.... "starboard... STARBOARD!"... BANG. Similar to this . After getting over the initial shock and briefly making sure Faux Pas was okay, I checked out the da...

The Sea Stallion , 100-foot-long replica Viking longship departed a Danish fjord Sunday to sail across the North Sea to its home port in Ireland. It is the largest Viking warship ever rebuilt and with 65 crew will make the seven week voyage powered only by sails and oars. The ship will be the crews only home on the 1000 nautical miles long journey across the North Sea, into the Atlantic Ocean and south through the Irish Sea. The crew must fight through the toughest waters of Europe and some of the most challenging waters of the world north and west of Scotland. Do you think Vikings need a Mommy Boat ? Well certainly not real Vikings! But these... replica Vikings will be escorted by Cable One (a ship for hire). Test sailing is not safe "We've done everything we could to minimize any risks concering the historic test voyage of the Sea Stallion. For three years, the crew have practised in a long series of test sails, getting to know the ship and learning to sail it. No one have ...

Tillerman has been posting about the quizzes at mingle 2 ... First he found his blog rated as Parental Guidance Suggested . Turns out this blog came up with the same rating because of the words "shoot" and "hurt". Most recently he wondered: How Addicted to Blogging Are You? I found I am (according to the mingle 2 quiz ) 52% addicted to blogging. Then another quiz caught my eye. This one quantifies your geekness. With this quiz I find (what I already knew)... That I'm a geek albeit not over the edge... I may not be the Sci-Fi loving, always playing video games type of geek... But I recognize "/(bb|[^b]{2})/" as Shakespeare no problem... and here I was early on a Sunday morning checking in with Google Reader looking for the latest word on Race 7 . After seeing there was no racing today, I start scanning through other blogs and news and find someone is asking if I'm addicted to blogging. Na, my conclusion is that I'm a bit of a geek. How e...

It's game on with the Americas Cup. The regatta is all tied up at 2-2 which Tillerman points out has only happened once in the last seventy years. That would indicate the 32nd Americas Cup regatta is about as exciting as it gets. In fact, the third race was about as exciting as it gets. According to Scuttleblog , "The third race of the 32nd America’s Cup proved one thing – a yacht race television show can be riveting. Tight start, huge leads, major splits, 3 passes, a horrid leeward mark rounding – all in minimum winds - and a final winner that wasn’t known until mere boat lengths from the finish. This race set many records..." Or if you're a gambler, you can relate to the view on SailJuice that sailboat racing is sometimes a crap shoot... a really exciting crap shoot. So what's up with the anti-AC sentiment? I can understand apathy from people who can't relate to sailing at all or those who are disgusted by all the money poured into an AC campaign by billi...

Except when they're wrong and succumb to pressure and personal bias... Tillerman is at it again with another assignment. Last time, in response to his request for Worst Sailing Mistakes , I posted a story about my Protest Shoe . Overall the response provided many funny stories and a few intense ones. Fortunately, no one was seriously hurt (emotionally or physically) in the making of these stories. This time the assignment is Top Race Committee Screw Ups . First and in general, these (for the most part) volunteers to a great job. We couldn't have fun racing without them. The good ones run a race or regatta in such a way you hardly know they're there. On the other hand... they do occasionally make mistakes. In a regatta on our local lake, we were racing on Sunday. IIRC, the points were quite close. We were setting up for what was likely the final race of the regatta. The committee put up the course label and the sequence was rolling. We made sure we new the course, studie...

Emerald Cup was a lot of fun this year. Several boats sailed really well and showed great improvement . Eve won a race and nearly trophied (which would have terminated Adam's novice skipper status!). Summerwind had a couple really good races. Pizzazz finished 3rd in the first race on Sunday. Way to go girls! Guano Girl finished 2nd in a race on Saturday and 3rd in the last race on Sunday (which was significant...). One Eyed Jack had a great regatta with three bullets and some other low numbers. Race two on Saturday was their worst finish. They tossed out a six. That race was also our worst... We were over early and tossed a four. Going into the last race we had seven points to One Eyed Jack's five (not counting the eventual toss outs). We needed to put a couple boats between us. It was a long race (triangle, windward, leeward) and things were looking pretty good. We were ahead of One Eyed Jack and it looked like we had the possibility of one boat between us but no guarantee...

There have been a few posts out there in the cyber sailing world about coaching from the sidelines as it were... When kids race solo (or single handed), they're sometimes followed around the course (at various distances...) by a parent. Such support boats shall now be referred to as Mommy Boats . The thoughtful parents follow at a distance. There's no yelling or obnoxious coaching. They're there in case of an emergency (meaning the boat is swamped and the kid has trouble righting the boat type of thing... not a "YOU NEED MORE VANG" emergency ). Not all Mommy Boats are as courteous and thoughtful of others... Imagine all of the little league parents being able to following their son or daughter around the field giving direction and "encouragement". Sometimes it's bad enough when they're relegated to the sidelines. My approach is to be in the same boat... racing together as a team. I'm sure this causes some problems too. There are just so...