Notice:
The advice given on this site is based upon individual or quoted experience, yours may differ.
The Officers, Staff and members of this site only provide information based upon the concept that anyone utilizing this information does so at their own risk and holds harmless all contributors to this site.
Tonight I'm on a plane to Florida with my wife to attend a conference (w/ no kids!) so I thought I better get this topic up and running before we get too busy and I end up somewhere w/ out wifi. I read on the vorg site something about group forum capability being added to the groups? That will be nice.
So let's do a roll call of all Catalina International Assn Group boats that will be participating, so we make sure we get all boats added as friends.
Avocado checking in.
And good luck and fair winds to all!
1983 C25 FK/SR Finistere Garner Olympia WA ~/)~ ~~~
Well, I guess I'll be the rear guard for this race. I thought I'd gotten myself off the rocks twice, and came back to find the boat unmoved. Finally managed to reverse course enough to get free, but I'm miles & miles behind the fleet.
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">ps. I figure I only have to catch up at 55 places per mile and I'll be a leader... only 117,000 places to go <hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></font id="quote"></blockquote id="quote">
Well, 16 hours later and I'm down to 33,000. It's been a sweat. My crew were near mutiny crying out "Com'on, Tack! the rest of the fleet is going south!" But I just held them at bay with a marlin spike and now they are cheering me on! "Go north Skipper!", now we are in sight of the leaders, they are just to port hugging the coast. It'll be a few hours of coastal navigation then we'll aim for more open water.
Rations are holding up better than the crew, though they are getting a bored with the jam sandwiches, (the peanut butter is on the recall list so that went overboard! - we had a quite ceremony and one of the crew said a few words.)
Good news over the radio this morning! The leader(was) is fine! he's hard aground and has moved from #1 to #43,000 and climbing. Apparently he's now part of the Monday night TV show 'Lost'
Our spies on one of the group of association boats called us this morning, apparently Kendall is kicking butt down there. We're worried that he might not be at the wheel (schools in!). Sanger and the rest of that bunch are pretty much huddled together, our leader (David) has recovered from his mishap yesterday when he went aground. Apparently the keels are stronger than one would guess! Twisting the grounded boat on the keel does no damage. So his 180 for a couple of hours got his boat off the shoreline (not sure if any of the locals were trying to help) and then it looks like he decided to head north. I knew others would figure out my plan eventually.
As dawn rises in eastern USA, it's as dark as pitch on-board. We'll try to catch the inauguration tonight on the ships TV.
Got sidetracked over the weekend and spaced this out. Finally checked in about mid-day yesterday. Looks like I'm mid-fleet but should be breaking the 50k barrier here soon. We hope...
I forgot to check my boat this moring and it was in irons. I think it has been in irons for at least 10 hours. Needless to say i lost mucho ranks. LOL. For some reason I'm not as much into this as I was in the last leg.
We got down to #154 yesterday and issued a tot-o-rum to all aboard... mistake!
Our middle watch helm fell asleep at the wheel, and the morning watch guy didn't even wake till 05:30!
So we lost nearly 29,000 places. The crew had another mutinous meeting on the foredeck this morning, I wondered what was going on with so many of them busy up front. The statistician was the most aggravated, he wanted to get out the plank and make the tardy crewmen pay for their errors.
It took a while to calm them down, then we took stock of the boats around us. First off it would be difficult to achieve anything by making them walk the plank.. They would just step off to the adjacent boat! (We're in the thick of things here, literally wall to wall hulls!) and secondly, the rest of the pack suffered the same position change.
So the focus is back on sailing the course and not sailing the competition! Winds have picked up, we're well clear of the shore and we're all jostling for a better spot. Fortunately, we only get to see a random selection of boats that are actually nearby, so watching the onboard terminal is healthier for the spirit than looking over the rails.
Talking about spirits, I told the crew that the spirit locker is locked until we're alongside in Qingdao!
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by britinusa</i> <br />Talking about spirits, I told the crew that the spirit locker is locked until we're alongside in Qingdao!<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></font id="quote"></blockquote id="quote">I think we're overloaded w/ rum on the bus. I'm ordering 2x-rations to lighten us up...
Edit: oh yeah, and anybody else not get the L4 briefing until last night?
Just got back from Florida last night- first time there. We were in Orlando and Sarasota. And a side trip to the Kennedy Space Center. What a beautiful place! BUT, I will say this: Sarasota was 72 degrees sunday, perfect wind, and I only saw 1 sailboat out! Makes me think you Floridians are spoiled:) Anyway, been a bit tough to keep my crew focused with so many margaritas and sandy beaches (and spotty internet connections) but we're doing our best to hold our own!
BTW anyone check out that user video of the IOM Europeans R/C race? Thats pretty cool.
No idea how it was done, but I just jumped in front of half the fleet. I gained over 64k spots in the space of a couple of hours. I have a feeling it's a glitch and I'll end up back in the rear guard by the end of the day.
Notice: The advice given on this site is based upon individual or quoted experience, yours may differ. The Officers, Staff and members of this site only provide information based upon the concept that anyone utilizing this information does so at their own risk and holds harmless all contributors to this site.