Sailing

Okay now, I should let everyone know that i do not respond well to commands (ask my boss.) Suggestions, guidence, poking, prodding those work better for me. Sailing was awesome. A friend of a friend is a member of a sailing club. I don't know how the logistics work but I think the club owns a bunch of boats and you can rent them out as a memeber. The club held a race last Saturday from Long Beach to Catalina and back. We raced there but not back. They wouldn't have let me drive during the race. The photo is from the way back.


Sorry to inturupt your not so regularly scheduled blog. I just saw a commercial for a movie with a guy who tries to build a rocket in his barn. Even if the guy was most brilliant rocket scientist in the world it would not be possible for him to build a rocket in your barn. It's a difficult feat for huge organizations with connections and money. One dude can't even put the muscle into torquing down the nuts on the rocket.

Back to the show ... We got second place, racing "Turkana II." I think the monkey painted on the back of the boat helped us win. It wasn't a serious race, two of our crew race competitively so they probably took it a little more seriously than some of the other teams. I was a moving ballast, rail meat. I don't think any of the other teams bothered to weigh the rails. In fact, we may have been the only ones to have waited to start drinking until we finished the race, but I can't confirm. There was an awards ceremony with appetizers at a bar in Avalon. We got a little trophy.

It was a little cold up on the side of the boat where all the wind was whipping by so i went to the cabin to change. I'm sure you have all seen pictures of racing boats ... they tip over from the wind in the sail and roll around on waves. I went down to the cabin to put on more layers and was down for too long. My mind was keeping references to the floor and walls but my body said that it was all tilty and I got SUPER motion sick. I came out and just stared at the horizon until it went away.

Sleeping on the boat was different. It was loud and rocky and in the middle of the night I got scared and had to calm myself down to fall back to sleep amd Dave tripped on the boat and sat on my head.


Catalina is beautiful. We walked around and Dave talked about the diving he has done around the island and what he saw there. He talks about diving a lot, he'll probably get back into it. I took some pictures and I'll put them in the post. I also saw porpoises, dophins, pirates and HUGE ships. Someone else thinks he saw a sun fish. I don't know what was going on with the pirate ships but it sounded like they were shooting cannons and there were puffs of smoke. The trip was exhausting and I was so glad to sleep sunday night.