Memorial Day Paddle 2014 - Dead Horse Bay (plus why my first sail got postponed until next week and why I was a little bummed about that - they had fun!).

 

Landing for lunch break outside the Marine Park Bridge

Summer may not get here for a couple more weeks, but the holiday weekend offered a preview - it was a fine weekend to be on the water.

I thought I was going to get in my first sail of the season on Sunday; it was going to be a race, which isn't my favorite thing for a first sail of the season, but I was going to go anyways, the forecast was for fairly light winds so it wasn't like some first-sail-of-the-season brain fart was going to send me rocketing into another boat at a speed likely to cause damage. Besides, there'd only been one other Sunfish in the spring series so it was going to be more fun for him if I turned up. Unfortunately Friday was the day that our sailing google group decided that I was a spammer, so my request for a ride didn't get sent out. I sort of realized it but I wasn't organized enough to check with Holly the Sailing Co-Chair, who's also our communications officer - I also wasn't too worried, skipper's meeting was at 11:30 so there was plenty of time to catch the bus to the club.

Except that the bus didn't come and eventually I got frustrated and went home. I'd had a fairly busy Saturday, I'd just unwrapped my living room after a fairly drawn-out wall repair and the thought of going home & just spending the day reading a book and dozing in the embrace of the Evil Futon of Nap was very appealing, plus there was laundry to be done and dishes to be washed, so in the end all that won. It turned out only 3 people showed up to race, but it would've been very entertaining as with a fleet consisting of a Laser sailed by an experienced racer, a less experienced sailor using a Laser with a radial rig, and another pretty experienced guy in a Sunfish, Holly, who was the Principal Race Officer (and in fact probably the entire race committee) set about coming up with some handicaps for the fast guy to even things up a bit. Twelve tacks on the upwind leg, fifteen jibes on the downwind, a 360 here, a 720 there, how about a figure eight before he's allowed to round the last mark - she was telling me about it on Monday and it sounds like she had a really good time trying to keep things lively for him, and she said she did a pretty good job of getting the finishes to be reasonably close affairs instead of a series of routs.

My first sail hopefully won't be postponed for too long. This coming weekend is the first casual cruise of the season, as long as the weather's reasonable I'll join in on that, that's a great way to start the season, nice and laid back. And I did have a really nice relaxing day at home, and I have got clean clothes for the week and clean dishes to eat from so that's all nice too. But it did sound like they had a lot of fun!

By Monday I was itching to get out there and commodore emeritus Tony P had planned a trip that sounded like a perfect recovery paddle after last week's marathon - in honor of the current Triple Crown madness, he'd called for a paddle to Dead Horse Bay. It was a great day, a nice group, a nice leisurely paddle, about eight and a half miles in total, with a long break in the middle for lunch, beachcombing, hiking, and even a little history. It was a gorgeous day, naturally I took my camera, and there's a full photo trip report up on Flickr - click here to visit.