Collection of Funny Moments in Sailing

As the author calls it -

Collection of funny moments in sailing. All filmed in last few years at practise and international regattas. Snow was in Athens, February 2004, with -18 degrees temperature. Celebration is filmed after winning 420 Europeans by Croatian team I was coaching, Matija Longin and Pavle Kostov.

I’d call it whitecaps, 420s, shredded spinnakers, rowdy mark roundings, Lasers and mayhem. Decide for yourself. - PW

Starting the new fleet of Hobie 16's

Here is an ad I recently saw on Craigslist. As Paul notes, those old Hobie 16's are cheap and plentiful! Now if there was a way to ship them cheaply!

There are also 4 or 5 Hobies at a house on the island in Big Lake northeast of the club.

16" Hobie Cat Sailboat - $500
Date: 2007-04-19, 9:28PM CDT

You are looking at an early 16' original Hobie Cat sailboat. Trailer is good. Boat has been in the weather but is complete. This is a great deal. Some Maintenance and you have a boat for the summer.

Those tippy FJs

Hello again. I promise not to go on and on about my sailing class, but it was so exciting I just want to tell a little more. We went out again today, Class #2. Wind conditions were about the same as last week, whipping. This time I sailed with a senior majoring in physics, named David. He learned to sail in high school on Cape Cod, but said he'd been out of boats for awhile. Well, he was terrific. We did go over twice, once a turtle that took both of us standing on the centerboard, once just half-way. But we managed to right our boat quickly, really fast the second time.

I'm the exact same age as his mom. Trying to do some of this stuff around these young folk is humbling, but also funny. When things got a little wild and some lively language slipped out from David, he apologized. I just laughed. Later, when we were going over the second time, I let out a choice word or two. He laughed. We had a good time.

Just yet we haven't really been racing. We're working on boat handling. We did a little buoy-rounding course today, but the coaches are working to get us to tack more efficiently and stay on a more direct course. Going downwind, they suggested we forgo jibing in today's conditions. Our teacher is head coach for the racing team, a big guy named Jay Kehoe, and his assistant coach, Amanda, a very tiny but very competent 20-something.

I can tell that I've developed a real sensitivity to the stability of the boat, which is completely unstable. Call it self-survival. We worked on reading the water for puffs, and how to handle them. I need more time on the water to gain competence and get my head "out of the boat," as they say.

Hoping for ongoing improvement. I'll say this; when I'm out on the water on a wonderful windy day like today, I think of nothing else but sailing. When I get back to shore, it is as if the wind wiped out all thought, any mental baggage or concern. I step back on shore as if I just landed from another planet. I have to think: OK, where am I going and what am I doing. Slowly the rest of the world returns.

Hope you are all well and making those plans for summer fun at Big Lake. These pix are grabbed off Flickr and have creative commons licenses, which means they can be shared for noncommercial uses. So I am sending them to you as little sailing postcards to enjoy as you think about sailing soon. Eventually I will send some pix I took...

/Kathleen

Hello from California

Dear Alaska Sailing Club friends,

I finally figured out how to sign on to the blog! It took coming all the way to Silicon Valley for some of the know-how to rub off, I guess.

Anyway, a few of you may remember I took the club's beginning sailing two summers ago with Cathy and Geoff, and sailed a few times, mostly in a little laser. Then I got a chance to go to school at Stanford for a year, and immediately signed up for sailing in the fall, which turned out to be windless. We went out anyway and sculled around for some action. Didn't learn a whole lot.

No sailing was offered in winter. But now that spring quarter is here, I have signed up for beginning racing. Last Wednesday, we had our first day out and the wind was whipping!

My sailing buddy, Doug from Seattle, and I turtled our FJ three times! So did everyone else in beginning racing.

An auspicious beginning. But I'll say this, the more wet I get, the more I learn.

I should be back in Alaska in July and will pay up my dues and get out for a few sails. I hope you all are well. I have been planning to get some shots of the boathouse here, and of some sails. Still working on all that...somehow it seems unwise to bring a camera out on the water just yet! Perhaps the instructor might let me tool around in the launch a time or two for some on-the-water shots.

In the meantime, I grabbed a few thumbnails from the sailing Web site to share. The big building is the boat house. We started off in 420s in the fall, and moved into the FJs for the spring.

Happy sailing!/ Kathleen McCoy

Summer fun at Big Lake

With 3' of snow still in our yard, it's hard to believe that we could be sailing at Big Lake in less than 6 weeks.

So to remind myself and you that it's truly possible, here are links to photos and stories about Big Lake sailing that I've posted on another blog:

• those fickle Big Lake winds


• it really will be green again


• Fourth of July fireworks

Happy Spring and see you out at the club!

~ corinne

p.s. I was inspired by the ASC blog to start my own blog. It's even simpler than I realized. It's been a good way to keep in touch with friends and family Outside.