Century Club: Richard Eggert

We had six boats participating in the last DSC Friday Night Fun Race of May, with sunny and comfortably warm weather and winds at 10-15 knots. Jen and Matt crewed for me, and we started off strong, holding in about third place during the first leg and taking the lead near the NH buoy. However, our rounding of the R2 buoy was less than perfect, allowing Oleg's boat to shoot ahead of us. While we were jostling for position with Oleg, Steven took the opportunity to jump ahead of us as we came back around the NH buoy, and a sudden header in front of Domino Sugar that caused us to tack unintentionally and get swamped sealed our fate in third place. It was a very competitive and extremely fun race!

Highlight reel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ql_tTwIemQ

Our planned 3-day, 2-night trip to Oxford for Memorial Day weekend was shortened to a 2-day, 1-night trip to Dobbins Island for weather and logistics reasons. On Sunday I was on the helm on Sweet Dreams (with Albert as skipper and Snow as crew) for the entire 5 hours or so down from Baltimore to the Magothy River, during which we were under sail for nearly the entire time, cruising along at 5-6 knots in excellent wind. Once down there, we did some sight-seeing around Eagle Cove, then rafted up with Akimbo at Dobbins Island. We fired up the grill and had dinner, then spent the evening playing Exploding Kittens before turning in for the night. We woke up on Monday morning in dense fog with almost no wind, so we motored back to Baltimore. For most of the return trip, Albert was on the helm while acted as lookout on the foredeck, though once we were in sight of the Key Bridge, I took over on helm to get some practice docking at Inner Harbor Marina so we could refuel and pump out the sewage tank, then docked back at DSC.

I took Bhavani and Allan out in a Sonar so Bhavani could get some POB and docking practice. On our way out and on our way back in we watched the Thursday Night Races. 

Conditions were drizzly, but we had good wind, though we ran into some technical issues with the mainsheet on the Sonar during the POB drills. At the end, I coached Bhavani through parallel parking downwind with a slight adverse crosswind.

I spent the weekend teaching the Intro to Sailing course to Fernando, Dan, and Kyle. Winds were light on Saturday morning, but picked up to around 15 knots gusting above 20 knots in the afternoon, which made for some very interesting sailing with a bunch of newbies. Sunday the wind was more stable, with steady winds in the morning that picked up in the afternoon, though they were not quite as gusty as on Saturday. Weather was sunny and temperatures were in the mid 80s, so it got pretty warm out there, though the wind kept us from overheating.