Century Club: Sage Leone
With chingona partying it up in Ptown this week, I was left boatless for Rumble until Jake scooped me up onto Ghost. A kinda crappy but fun race for us, getting 5/6, but failing to involve ourselves in any of the many shenanigans, including rounding a mark while touching it the entire time, and nearly smashing a leg between two boats. Yay Rumble, yay current!
i was jib trim and am really really enjoying being more important on these boats and not entirely incompetent! My boat confidence has skyrocketed this year, and only keeps going up as I sail more and am trusted more.
maybe my second to last day out there? windier than I have ever been out, but still not too bad. my first raise of the pole was horrific, but then I got my feet a little bit under me for the gybe and douse. but then, of course, the next race the spin sheet came undone from the sail and we had to douse and give up with the spin for the day. Alex was ROCKING our starts though! our first couple were tough but then we crushed a few in a row. in there with other boats, weaving up and down, heading people up, usually not being headed up ourselves, some clean air.
Learned: to accelerate off the head to wind, backwind the jib, head a little down to get speed, come back up, maybe weight to leeward (and I assume then flatten?)
sail 2!
got to sail with Terry and had SO much fun. More rolltacking (which I sucked way harder at today that last Thursday) and let her skipper the whole thing which did mean we pretty much crushed it, but I was having fun getting my feet back under me on the crew side.
figured out that I can pretty much only have a good roll if BOTH my feet make it ont the side that I am rolling, but then I kept abandoning one of those feet down there and had a really hard time getting both back up to flatten. got to watch a couple of roll tacks that Terry did as skipper too, so hopefully I have more hope there next time I'm skippering. Her trick is that when you reach up to the side to climb up and flatten, clamp that rudder with that hand there, which is basically steering straight, until you're sitting high and pretty, then transfer behind your back.
This is maybe the coolest event of the year (Chesapeake Bay, take notes). My yacht club in Boston, Savin Hill, hosts the ladies regatta every year (third year running), where they get boat owners to donate (or lady boat owners to captain) their boats for a bunch of women to race for the day. You can come knowing a boat or come unaffiliated and they will put you on a boat, "no women left on the dock". It's a huge networking event, a great opportunity to get women sailing and skippering, and a big fun party. This year the totals were 20+ boats and 140+ women out on the water, which is INSANE. turned Man of War Woman of War for the day
CBI has a class called "Guided Sail", which is when volunteers (me) can take other new sailors out on the water to get some hands on practice and make that first sail less intimidating. I became a volunteer this season, and this was the first time I took people out for a guided sail. It was so much fun! I had two students who had both just joined this week and were absolutely incredible. Put up with me not knowing how to do anything since it was my first one, and both got a million times better over the course of the hour and a half. Most of the time was oh no, you're about to go in irons, how do you know? what do you do? or oh no, you're about to gybe, how do you know? what do you do? The favorite factoid was if the boats are moving behind the boat approaching you, you probably won't collide (which I was told and really really hope is actually true)
made the last minute decision to head down to CBI for informal Merc Friday night racing. Ran into Lucy, a fellow Tuesday women's sailor and headed out with her. Made it one and 1.95 races in, full of horrible slow starts and upwind legs, until we were called back for a thunderstorm. I am so incredilbly out of practice and useless on a merc these days. The most entertaining thing was getting everyone in, since we went from a full (nearly 50) boat fleet of Mercs on the water to 0, with 7 coach boats coming out and dragging us back two at a time. First time I've ever seen their safety fleet fully activated (should be a bingo square)! Of course, we were the last boat saved, so we had the pleasure of rocking and paddling forever before the drive of shame back to the dock.
raced with a new to CBI women's group epic college racer Kai. She was so good (although super competitive) and super nice, and had us rolltacking our way through a course, which was very exciting to me, since it has been AGES since I sailed with someone who could take me through a roll tack. Some stiff competition against Terry and Trina, which made for fun races! (although, let it be known, we crushed Trina on the race back to the dock)
did not get on the water today but want to memorialize the concept of "dock sailing" when one comes down to the dock just to observe. brought a book and settled in a new cozy adarondack chair (only to be rudely interrupted by a friend who I chatted with the whole time instead). not windy enough to be worth heading out, and my body was craving a day connected to land