The Shark Intergalatic championships are being sailed in Austria at the moment and as I write this there are three canadian boats in the top five.  Our Heavy Fuel middle man and weather guru, Hal Ebert, is sailing with Greg Cockburn and Christine Forsyth and are sitting in second place.  Just one point separates them from last years world champions, the Shark Poop guys who are in third.

Hal, kick Johan’s ass for us!

Direct link to results.

OMG I can’t wait to be at the stage Katie Ambach and Tara Thomas are at. 

Their boat got delivered to Newport recently.  Read all about it on SA.

It’s pretty cool to see your name in the local media.  A big part of this launch was to hlep with the public awareness in the Kingston area and I think we are on the right track.  Lindsey Fair has done an amazing job of getting the media on board with this project. 

We got three mentions on the local TV station and a couple of mentions on the radio which is good.  I’m going to pick up a copy of the piece on CKWS TV in the next couple of days.  I’ll upload it to youtube if the licence agreement allows.  (It probobly won’t.)

I have to admit that it’s a little weird having everyone know what’s going on in my life.  I’m still trying to find the proper response when people say, “Heh, I saw you on the news last night.  What a cool project!”  I’m generally leading folks to the MST website and the sponsorship page.  (You can download the CYA form for tax deductable donations on that page.)  It is also nice to have some money trickling in.  As nice as it is to be a “celebrity” and all, it really is about raising funds to get sailing. 

Hope everyone in Ontario is safe and sound out of the crazy weather.  It’s nasty out there.

 

Here’s a great interview posted today on bowman Jerry Kirby. 

Kirby has been kind of a hero for me as he has done every major event in sailing as a bowman.  At 50, he just finished the VOR and still thinking about what it next in his career. 

There’s hope for me yet!

Our minister just annouced that e-bikes or electronic bicycles are now legal in Ontario.  Now we are getting somewhere!

Sailing Anarchy is doing a series on weather, which is really good. 

Check it out here.

ok. you’ve had silence for a while now. get ready for a gush of posts….

As usual, I behind on reporting events.  Better late than never.

We had a great first race.  The Race Committee had to postpone until about 1230 before the SSE breeze started to settle in.  It was still holey (is that a word?) and shifty.  Our first race we had a mediocre start, but quickly found our selves in a nice lead coming from the left corner.  We round the first windward, the first downwind first with about 5-6 boat lengths to spare.  At the second windward mar, we had an increase in wind and screwed up the tacking angles, which had us overstood by a few boat lengths.  This mistake gave the second, third and fourth place boats an opportunity and we lost them shortly after the mark.  Lucky for us one of the boats hit the committee boat at the finish and they had to go back and do spins, so we ended up third in that race.

The second race was a bloody tragedy.  We had a good start and found ourselves in a good position on the fleet off the line, pretty deep in the left corner.  We had a great angle on the fleet, but for some reason our boat speed just totally tanked.  We were way deep as we rounded the windward mark, and it was hard to fight our way back.  On the second windward leg we kept getting tacked on and kept having to work our way right, to the starboard layline.  We ended up mid-fleet, so we sailed a drop on the first day.  Damn.
Today is a new day.  We have chatted it out, and i think that we’ve done some attitude adjustment that will help us today.  Generally the boat is fast, points, and is rigged well for manouvers.  (Roundings, tacks, and jibes have gone fairly smoothly, but we still need to be diligent about cleaning up after stuff and making sure that everything is running smoothly.)

I’m going to try and keep these blog entries up, but it’s a little tough as I have to get up early to do this.  If it peters out, than I hope you will understand.

This just makes me sick. Found this picture on BoingBoing this morning.

The Israeli propaganda machine are in full swing, justifiying this war with the images of supportive children who have no idea who the enemy are.

I wonder if these little girls know they could be dead tomorrow from the retalliation that these very bombs will evoke.

Update:  Thanks for the comments that pointed out that this photograph was staged!  That’s possibly even more sickening.

It seems that the photographers or the parents of the children, it is still a little unclear, were trying to set up the frame.   That’s more than a little slimy in such a charged situation.  Gosh I wish we could get real unbiased news from the media.

I’m outta here.  Talk to you on monday