Category Archives: Sailing

J-22 World Championships

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I’ve never been in a race with 15+ OCS (on course side) boats and no general recall, but, I guess when there are 105 boats on the line, that isn’t many!!

Nelson, Mike and I went out yesterday and practiced with everyone. We had light and shifty winds and 3 foot seas, so there was a lot of bobbing up and down.

The winds died down to less than 5 knots right at race time after blowing all day from the North.

Not much fun for a practice race but probably the toughest sailing we’ll see for the rest of the week.

Today, for the first day of races we are supposed to see very light and shifting winds from SW changing to  NE so we may not even get a race in.

Here is the boat I’m helming: “Changes in Attitude” #1378, Bow # 82

Here is the results page: http://myyc.org/result

More updates to follow!

2008 2.4mR Canadian Championships

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We’re heading around to the other side of “the lake” this morning, pulling one of our 2.4mR boats and visiting with friends in Toronto, Canada. I’m going to participate in the 2008 2.4 Meter Canadian Championships on Saturday and Sunday.

The National Yacht Club is hosting the event and sailing is off the shores of Toronto on Lake Ontario.

Today is boat rigging day and tune-up sailing with local Toronto sailors and those of us who shows up early.

I’ll be posting photos and updates in the evenings.

Algae blooms at Olympic sailing venue

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Algae Bloom for Olympic sailors

Quindao, China Algae Bloom at sailing site, originally uploaded to Flickr by beijingente.

China’s latest Olympics nightmare is a vast algae bloom that covers one third of the sea where the world’s best sailors are supposed to be competing in just over a month. Athletes call it “the blob”, “the carpet”, “the fairway”, and “the serious problem”.

Click here to read the full story on the Fox News site.

Beautiful evening for sailing

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Evening Sail

Tracy sailing her 2.4 Meter, (Photo by Bill Blevins)

Tuesday night after work, Tracy and I headed down for an evening on the water.

I plopped in the fishing boat while Tracy got her 2.4 Meter rigged.

We met at the lift and got her pointed towards the middle of Canandaigua Lake at about 6 p.m.

The winds were light and other than me, there weren’t many other powerboats out creating chop. We chased each other around for about two hours.

The wind dropped off as she approached the docks and she got to try out the “Praddle” for the last 200 yards. We met again at the dock and put the boats away.

It was a great evening for sailing and putting around in the powerboat.

There were 10 or so cruisers out reaching up and down the lake. You could see each crew straining as we (or they) passed by to get a look at the little sailboat being chased by a bright red powerboat.

The sun was setting as we packed up and headed out.

As we were leaving, vehicles pulling trailers full of Force 5 sailboats were pulling in to the camping area to prepare for the Force 5 US National Championships being held at Canandaigua Yacht Club later this week.

The restaurant and bar are apparently closed on Tuesday nights so we picked up carry-out pizza on the way home and pulled into the driveway at 9:30.

Perfect.

Tonight is the “GO Fleet” race series. “GO” stands for “Geneoa Only” (whisker poles aren’t even allowed) and I’ll be out there with the cruisers tooling around a triangle course a couple of times.

Tomorrow night we are meeting friends after work and taking out several of the club’s Sunfish sailboats and participating in the Thursday night Sunfish races. That should be a trip! I haven’t been on a Sunfish since I was in eighth grade sailing on Brandermill Lake in Chesterfield, VA.

Stay tuned, that should be a real story!