No Wednesday race

Norm was not available.  I had thawed meat in the fridge.  I decided not to go race. Jimmy was probably disappointed.

Went to Dan's and BBQ Steaks, pork fillets and sausages.

It looks like they just raced for 30 minutes.  Late start (19.14).  Winds were probably shifty.

Finally we anchored

On Monday afternoon we set out to sail in what was supposed to be 12 knots maxing to 23 knots on Windfinder.

Raymarine wind instruments were acting up.  I reset the i70 without any improvements.  Sometimes the wind direction was way off.


We had a nice sail upwind to Baie D'urfie and back and then we settled to anchor at Dowkers.  There was still the threat of 23 knots on windfinder so we tucked in close and put out 50 foot of rode.

Supper was a T-bone steak.






Overnight the winds died and we all swung around.  Quite different from the 28 Knots Max forecast by Windfinder.



















Getting up early we find there was a serious storm approaching Ottawa.  There were no winds. 


I had a conference call with Echosoft at 10 so we motored back, but there was time to go up the mast and clean up and de-spider the troublesome anemometer and another quick pump out.

We washed the boat and went to Ikea.

A microburst tore down a lot of trees in NDG just after 3PM.  What a mess.

Fretless VI

It was quite windy and we decided to go for a sail on Fretless VI.

Nice boat.  Had a few beers aboard Fretless afterward.

We had Koobideh for supper aboard Bellum.  

Winds were threatening to max out at 28 knots.  It did not.

The Annual Regatta

Daniele showed up about 9:30.  She felt like racing and so did I.  We had offers to join Patrick and Richard (Ghost Owl).  We thought we'd go on our own.  Winds were strong.  We were determined to give our first regatta for quite a few years.

Peter had canceled because he had a gig.  Norm had a funeral to go to.

There was one start for all the fleets.  Winds were 11 to 13 knots.

I helmed the first race and half way through, Daniele had problems winching so she took the helm and she helmed the rest of the races.

The first race we started fairly well and did fairly well.

Third race, we missed the start because someone was in the head when the race clock started (5 minutes) and we were 3 minutes late.  But we caught up to Gaucho and Limoncello.

After the race, we went out and sailed a bit but decided to come back since the weather was not good for anchoring.

We had lunch and BBQ supper at dock and slept aboard. Tired and sore of the winching.

Friday Fun race with Sandra, Axel and Anshul

I had no crew.  I went to the club anyway.  Figured I could find a crew.

Had a burger with Scott.

Sandra was going on another boat and that other boat was not available so she came with me.  She bought her Swiss friend Axel.

Alec had another newbie looking for a boat so we got Anshul (from India).

Axel was our expert, but he did things quite differently than I would.

We had a great race.  The boat performed very well.  The first round was sloppy but second round was very good.  We did the race in 30 minutes 43 seconds, very close to Chaos.  That's a first.  The final result was sixth, but that is with the funny handicaps.

The race only lasted 30 minutes so I suggested we go for a sail and everyone was on board (sort of speak).  We sailed to Baie d'ufie and back.  Everyone took their share of helming.

It was dark when we got back to the channel and it was pretty much right up the wind, so we eventually started the iron sail.

Nice docking and I slept aboard.  Daniele did not join me later for the annual regatta.  She came next morning.

Nice Wednesday race - windy

Daniele and I got groceries to spend the night at anchor after the Wednesday race.

Winds were very good 10-14 knots.

Jimmy and Tilde enticed us to take them as crew.  We took off motoring down the channel since winds were about 30 degrees off.

We tuned the rig and had some good practise when I notice that the race had started.  We had 4 minutes to get to the start line with the White Sail fleet. We were about a minute behind.

I took the helm and made Jimmy and Daniele and Tilde handle the lines.

Jimmy tried cranking and releasing, I think we tried him.  Daniele got tired of cranking after the first windward leg.

We ended up third out of fourth.  We don't really know what happened to Borlean

Spinnaker with Goucho

Without a crew, I went out with Audrey.  As we left the harbour, we had engine problems (lack of power).  We returned and did not see anything wrong and tried it again.  No problems so we tried again.  Motored to the gut and set up the sails.

After a little while, we decided to reef the main.  There were problems with rigging that created lots of draft on the main.

We sailed around for a while and returned to the club.  In the channel, we ran the spinnaker a bit and we had an hour glass.  Took her down and came home.

Afterwards, I ran into Julie-Helene who asked if I was a diver.  Her daughter had dropped a line while motoring and you imagine what happened.  They got towed to the container docks.  I got my snorkle and got it untangled in a minute.  We took Exlixar back to her dock and she bought me a beer!

I slept aboard and got up early and came to the office.