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America’s Cup Live Broadcasts This Weekend If you have the time and interest you can tune in to the live broadcasts of the America's Cup series races from Venice this weekend. Quite a treat to hear the familiar "Guys, we got a cluster f**k here" spoken by a highly paid athlete in an Australian accent.
It's an amazing sight with the Cup catamarans racing in the narrow confines of the bay in front of lovely and historic Venice. You can find the races at http://www.youtube.com/AmericasCup. |
 May 16th Barcott race as the fleet heads to the first mark. Another great photo by Wendy Feltham from SILENT WAY Piper Dunlap pointed out that on the Wednesday race starts, Satch’s Rock still awaits starters who venture a little too close to the Indian Point shore as they are heading for the line. That wasn’t an issue for the rock’s namesake who has STEP’N ANNIE out of the yard and moving really well. Good crowd out on another beautiful evening.
 Darby Flanagan, Olivia Gibbons, Eliza Dawson, Serena Vilage and Cody Kowalski receiving their 2nd place trophy at the District Champs held at the Center for Wooden Boats May 4 -5. Photo by Scott Wilson, the Bellingham Coach. The last two beautiful sunny weekends there were two great high school sailing events held down at the Center for Wooden Boats. May 5th – 6th the NWISA Doublehanded Districts were held and May 11th – 12th the Mallory Cup, Doublehanded Nationals, were sailed under beautiful conditions. For the Doublehanded Districts on the water, dictated by persnickety winds, were 14 Flying Juniors and 14 Vanguard 15s manned by NW high school sailors. For the Port Townsend team it was a well sailed, but at the same time difficult event. After Saturdays racing they were in second place behind the Bainbridge Island team, but early Sunday they took the lead and at one point were ahead by 11 points. Then by the 30th race they were tied with the North Kitsap team and by the end, after 32 races, they were behind by 3 points and that had them taking 2nd place in the 14 boat fleet.  SCIROCCO and THATUNA racing back to PT. Photo by Wendy Feltham from SILENT WAY (Results revised Monday, May 14. Norma Mae has been given a provisional rating of 150 and Sea Puppy’s time has been included) Eleven PT boats, and one Sequim boat (Sea Puppy), were ready to challenge Port Ludlow sailors Sunday morning for a race to Port Townsend. Apparently the sight was so intimidating that no Ludlow boats dared to join in, or maybe they are all NBA fans (who knows?). Silent Way was the first to call the RC as they finished. By the time I got to City Dock the fifth finisher, Sirocco, was about to cross the line. A big thanks to The Wizard for taking times in my absence. My GPS time for Sirocco was 14:48:12 and the Wizard’s time on course for Sirocco was 2 hours 53 minutes 12 seconds. To accommodate for this 5 minute difference, I subtracted five minutes from the time on course given for finishers 2, 3 & 4 (Silent Way, The Wizard, & Dorado) so they would be in sync with the 8 finishes I subsequently took via GPS and Sea Puppy’s time which was taken with GPS. Confused yet? In addition to the rated boats, Pleades finished 12th at 15:11:58. 13 boats came out for a beautiful evening on the Bay. Unfortunately the later starting boats missed a great opportunity to top the fleet by remembering that the Sailing Instructions specify staying 100 yards from the ferry terminal EVEN WHEN NO FERRY IS PRESENT. It’s not our idea, but the Coast Guard’s. So we pulled a “PT” and pretended that since the entire fleet was in violation, then “whatever.” Sirocco had been setting a little tet off the ferry dock, but not lately. Not that they are to blame, esp. with two boats sailing inside the terminal pilings! We realize that without a mark, judging 100 yards can be difficult, but if one boat had made an effort to at least demonstrate some respect for this rule, we would have had to disqualify the rest of the fleet.  Click for bigger image
Battles on the ocean are hard. Especially in super light air like what we have had out here the last few days. The chess match is long and painful and very often has stops and starts that stretch out the agony. We are amongst it with CAMPER at this stage and there is a lot of runway left and tons of potholes along the way. First of all, this could not be more unlike every other leg we have had in this race. Dry, cool nights and warm days. T-shirts and shorts always. No hint of a need for foul weather gear. A huge full moon making it closer to needing sunglasses at night rather than headlamps. This game of chess probably has been a bit more like a tug-of-war if you are watching at home. We stretch out to what seems like a “comfortable” lead only to hit the next light air patch and watch the troops coming reeling us in. CAMPER is within sight almost always, making things a bit more tense with constant bearing checks with the handheld compass. |
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