This is a special race where each club of the region select 1 boat to compete in the spinnaker class and 1 boat to race in non-spin class. There were 10 boats total on a short start line ready for 3 races of 2 times around the windward-leward marks. All the most agressive racers were out there and the distance between the hulls was often reduced to the minimum. I wish I could have gotten more of it on tape, but unfortunately, since my poor camera got soaked in iced tea, it has not been very cooperative. Anyway, here’s what I got for a video :

Skimmer is the J30 that shows up to most races in Jacksonville. There are 7 (SEVEN!!!!) J30’s around the area as far as I know, we could have a class!! PEOPLE!!!!! COME RACE WITH US!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well, he wanted wind for his birthday, he got more than what he asked for!

An image is worth 1000 words, so what about another video?

If you wondered why we were so far behind, it’s because both our spinnaker and spare halyards snap-shackles blew open when we hoisted the spinnaker… So after fishing the sail out of the water twice, we had a hard time re-hoisting the jib, but finally made it… And everybody else was broaching, but well ahead of us…

This season has been filled with new ways to loose a race, but since we always learned something, we are winners

Thanks guys, I love you all!!!!

This was the Women’s #2 race of the year. Nicole, Andrea, Helen, Joan and I left Julington Creek around noon to have time to scrub the hull on the way there. Well… The storms just came out as we did, so we thought: ” it might not last, let’s just do it at Epping later”. Conditions for the motor-sail were a little rough for even thinking about getting in the water. We were completely wet anyway, but in our foul weather gear!

We docked at Epping, registered and looked around to see when Liberty Call would show up… Hum… Unfortunately, no Liberty Call this time around. We were the only all female crew to race, therefore the only ones in our class. 4 other cruiser showed up: Kara Vela, Lothlorien, Incommunicado and Bernoulli. The rain and strong winds continued to beat through the marina as we were ”supposed to clean the hull” while waiting for the skipper’s meeting. Having no competition made us feel good about our lazyness.

The dock felt just like “home” since I was next to Lothlorien, Diana’s Baba 30 who is my neighbor at Mandarin Holiday. The difference is, because of the outgoing tide flowing through our slips and her full keel, she had the hardest time to get out of there and get to the race course. So we were stuck behind until the dock master came with a power boat to turn her boat around and free her from this docking nightmare. Fiew, nobody touched anything!

Good thing we had no competition, because we did not make it to the start line until 1 minute from the start! Oups… Oh well! Even with the barnacles still well attached we passed Kara Vela early on and led the race regardless of our bad tactical moves (ok Dave, we got it!). Rain, wind, more rain and more gusty winds made us take a reef. We were hauling ass upwind at above 8 kt and the main kept dumping more and more water on our faces in the cockpit. We could have shook the reef out on the last leg, but why the struggle when you just want to finish and get dry. Still, Salsa Verde got her first first place overall !!!

Epping forest dock master was kind enough to allow me to leave her there for the week, since the weather was horrible and we were racing out of FYC the following week. Thank you so much!!!!!

PS: no photos of this race… the camera would not have survived!

The week-end of May 30-31 at the Jacksonville Landing, in parallel to the tall ship festival was the HEART OF SAILING!

I was invited to participate by Graeme from Skimmer (J30) earlier in the week. I had no sailing plans, so I was happy to now have a good cause to go sail for! Luckily Ted volunteered to help me sail Salsa Verde Saturday… (While everyone else was gone camping!)

I motor-sailed Salsa Verde to the Landing Friday night, where I got a warm welcome from George and Graeme who waited for me after setting things up for the event. My ride with the tide, the genoa #1, my “now happy” engine and Ted’s chart plotter GPS (Thank you!!!!!) was the fastest of all the week-end, peaking above 8kt I left Julington Creek just before sunset and “landed at the Landing” 2.5h later.

It was nice to share pretzels with everyone and hear their stories! I also met Skip from the Schooner Mistress, the prettiest boat out there! The rest of the evening was loud… and so kept being the middle of the night! I thought I could go to sleep at 2am when the band stopped, but no, the radio came on for another hour! What do you do when you can’t sleep… You clean the boat!

Saturday morning while George and Graeme were being famous doing a TV interview, I had breakfast at the Landings and wondered around the heavy crowd and the big boats. When they came back, we had one family for the 10 am sail, so we went all together on Skimmer. There was not much wind at the rendez-vous but we managed to play the current to stay out of the way of the bridge. After a good long lunch we had 3 families for the 2 pm ride, so both boats went out for 2 hours. Then another tour was planned at 4 pm, but the people did not show up, so Salsa Verde took the first family available from the crowd. Everybody seemed happy about their experience, even if the wind was not giving its best exposure. All day we had the captain’s hat traveling from heads to heads, on whoever was at the helm… small hands to big hands! Water bottles and cookies were shared all afternoon while kids were wandering around exploring every little corners of my sailboat.

Clic here for tons of picture of the event

Bottom line, Congrats George for putting this together, and let’s do this again in the fall!!!