Sailing With Eye Candy

Was invited out to be bowman on the Farr 395 Eye Candy for the Protection Island Race.  Boy, did I make too many mistakes - asymmetrical kites are still too new to me.  I got the tack line lead the wrong way putting the sheets "outside" way too many time (three or four times, I think).  Once I launched the chute with the tack and clew reversed.  I'm not going to take the credit for that one, I think it was packed in the bag backwards.

Anyways, it was a long race with just about ever different sailing condition you can name.  We had a pretty good ride, got knocked down pretty good a couple of times, but keep moving and actually got home quite early.  We corrected out over the bigger boats  and finished eighth.

Picture to come ...

Big Trees, Big Fun

So the wife and I spent the weekend of the 16 - 17 of March on the coast, looking for big trees. My wife was inspired by Forest Giants of the Pacific Coast by Robert Van Pelt which covers Sequoias, Redwoods, Western Red Cedars, Doug Firs, Sitka Spruce, Western Hemlocks, and quite a few others.

We managed to bag quite a few of them on the Olympic Park.  We saw the Quinault Lake Cedar, the Nolan Creek Cedar, and the kalaloch Cedar.  We walked through the Grove of Giants along the south shore of Quinault Lake to see massive Doug Firs, Hemlocks and Spruces.  We looked at the Quinault Lake spruce and the Preston Macy tree.  We looked for, but could not find the Barnes Creek Survivor Grand Fir (so we'll have to go back for that one).

And to top it all off, we spent the night in a bluff cabin at Kalaloch Lodge, on the bluff, but back in the trees.

Nice!

I'll add pictures as I get them tweaked and converted to jpegs.

Nice Ride!

Went out on  John's boat for a race on March 30th. That boat is a nice ride. It's a 1D35.

We won the race.