Sailing Weekend! ! ! ! ! !

SHIP'S LOG:

It took Friday and Saturday to get ABISHAG ready for her job as the "WEATHER MARK BOAT" in the 2009 Governor's Regatta on Sunday. It was mostly clean up and arranging things in the boat so that it wouldn't look as though a tornado passed through. Getting the boat up to speed and really ready to trip, doing all sorts of little jobs consume a lot of time but with not much effort. That is a good things as my right knee isn't feeling well. It seems slowly getting better and, though it hurts, the good point is that it makes me forget about my hip. Strangely, the outlets that run the 110volt tools and chargers have stopped working. It took me two days to figure out that perhaps one of the local thunderstorms that have been passing through the area, somehow trip the circuit breaker in the inverter. Hopefully correcting the problem will be as easy as flicking a switch to get everything back to where it should be . . .a new inverter is 3 marine units and I really, REALLY don't have them.

Being a "Mark Boat" for a sailboat race can be both a lot of fun and a total bore. You got out to the area where the race will be held hours before the start of the race and wait as the race committee monitors the wind to see if it is clocking around in one direction or if it is oscillating back and forth. When the have a handle at that, they will send the "weather mark boat" . . . . in this case ABISHAG . . . dead up wind for a couple of miles and once there, we dropped a large, very orange tetrahedron tied to an anchor. This mark will be raced to and round twice by the fleet. After dropping the mark, the mark boat anchors a 100yards off the mark and watch the boats as they round the mark to make sure 1.) the go around the mark; 2.) that no one hits the mark; 3.) if a boat hits the mark, make sure that they do the penalty turns required; 4.) take note of any contentious incidents between boats rounding the mark in case they is a penalty challenge so that we can provide evidence for the hearing following the race.

It sounds exciting and it is, so long as boats are rounding the mark, but that doesn't happen for the whole race. In fact, the first boat didn't even approach the mark until the race was already an hour old. It took about 30-45minutes for all the boats to round and then it was a 2 hours wait before they all came back to round again. In between there isn't much to do. If the weather is clear and you are armed with some decent binoculars, you can follow the race around the course. Sad to say, the weather alternated between foggy and hazy which limited one's vision to about 150-200yards, so watching the race was all but impossible . . . . except when the boats were rounding our mark. Aside from those moments, it was like living inside of a light bulb for all you could see. Of course, stationed near the ferry dock at Fisher's Island, we were several times honked by the ferries going in and out. Sitting in the foggy weather, you could hear boats all around, along with gongs and bells and horns and whistle marks going off like a bad nursery school band.

It wasn't the most exciting race committee work I have ever done but the party afterward was well worth it. Plus we didn't get rained on, which is always a plus. Mount Gay & Tonic!!!!!!!

MASTER'S PERSONAL LOG:

It is hard to described how great this weekend was, sailing wise. It is funny that with all the motion of the boat, which everyone seems to think will complicate moving about on a bad hip (and knee). Truth be told, I have really not had a problem moving about. In fact, because it is a sailboat, ABISHAG has been designed with all sorts of multiple handholds all over and one moves from handhold to handhold in safety. And for some reason, the hip really doesn't hurt like it does on the hard. The weather for the coming week is not predicted to be all that great, so I will take it day by day, sailing on the good days, restocking the boat and doing maintenance work on the bad. How bad is that?