AYC Frostbite race to nowhere

After Saturday's energetic sail, Saturday night I slept very well with a big grin on my face. My sleep was only occasionally interrupted by the newest member of our family, "DIngus" who arrived on Saturday morning while I was prepping to go sailing.

We are calling our new kittie Dingus for the moment since we have not had an easy time agreeing on a name. Dingus's name may end up becoming Bogie based on Bogart referring to the Maltese Falcon as "the Dingus".

Dingus joins his new to him sisters Trouble and Chloe.

While I like cats, cats are one of my wife's favorite things in life. I admit that I was not in love with the idea of having two cats, let alone three but for Barbara, cats are what sailing is to me, and cats are way less expensive to maintain than Synergy, so i can't complain (and don't).

Sunday was the AYC Frostbite race to nowhere. This was the first race of the second frostbite series. During the down period between the halves, the owner of the boat, and I have worked on a number of tweaks, making some hardware changes and having the mainsail tweaked. Since we had not raced in a while and had some new gear and sail shape changes to get used to, we got out on the course really early so everyone could sort out and get used to the new stuff. There was almost no wind when we got out there, but quickly the wind began filling in nicely so that there was a steady raceable breeze by the posted start time.

Unfortunately, just as things were getting good, the race committee delayed the start several times, ultimately pushing back our start by 45 minutes or so. By then the breeze had begun to call it it quits, dropping down below 5 knots and with holes developing out in the course area. Perhaps 45 minutes into the race, the race committee abandoned the race since the only breeze that we were experiencing came from the tide pushing us out towards the next mark at around a half knot.

By then, we had been out on the water for almost 3 hours and frankly all of us were cold. When I parked my car before I walked to the boat, the temperature on the car dash showed 25 degrees. When we packed it in and started back to the dock, one of the crew showed less than 30 degrees on his ski jacket thermometer. Those are great temperatures for ice boating, but not especially comfortable for soft water racing.

On the other hand, Will Keyworth got some great action shots of Starbird while the wind held. 

Jeff