Tag Archives: #photos of sailing

A to Z: Sailing

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Today’s post for the A to Z Challenge is on sailing.

I’ve been a sailor since I was a kid. How about you?

I grew up on the beach in Florida. At my dads house, the backyard ended at the bay. He kept his big old schooner at the dock right there. I had my own little Sea Snark sailing dingy.

I had so much fun with that boat growing up! I would go out by myself, just puttering around. I might take a friend or two. It was always a great way to spend a couple of hours.

I went to school on a couple of large, traditional sailing ships. I went to a high school that also included a sail training program along with cultural studies, languages and international travel.

I decided while I was there that I wanted to be a ship captain! I wanted to sail around the world and get paid for it! I’m still trying to do that.

Over the years, I’ve managed to find work at sea until being laid off recently when the price of oil hit the skids. It hasn’t been on sailboats very often.

I still go out on those for fun tho. 😉

Just Jot It January: Frozen

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I’ve joined in Linda’s blog challenge of Just Jot It January. I’ve been posting every day so far but today is the first time I’m using one of the prompts. Today’s prompt is: frozen.

I can’t help thinking about yesterdays Icicle Race out on Galveston Bay. One of the guys who was out on the boat with us was just about literally frozen the whole time! Unlike myself, he’s a skinny little guy and has no natural insulation. 😉

He’s usually the most enthusiastic sailor of all of us. He’s constantly checking the sails and tweaking the trim for every last bit of speed he can get out of the boat.  But yesterday he stayed holed up down below through most of the race. Even the standard sailors cure (a shot of rum) didn’t do much to help. 😉

We joked about the ‘wind chill factor’ the rest of the afternoon, how it was so much colder on deck with the wind (since there really was not much wind). We finally gave up on the race when the wind died down to only 2-3 kts, and motored the rest of the way in to the dock. We got there in good time for the crew party at the clubhouse. The hot chili and a few more shots of rum finally did the trick. 🙂

What I Did for Labor Day

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I know everybody’s out there enjoying the holiday weekend. 🙂

I went sailing again. Not racing this time, just a nice, relaxing cruise. I went out with the Sail La Vie meetup group. We went sailing for the day and then came back to join a BBQ party in progress on the dock.

Things didn’t start out too well. It was pouring buckets on the drive up to Kemah! I had to slow down to 30 mph a couple of times, just to see where I was going. It was still raining when I got to the dock, but just a light rain so it wasn’t too bad to unload the truck and get down the dock to the boat.

We had a full crew for the Paradise,13 including Capt Kent. Everyone was in good spirits, even if they were all wet. The mimosas helped quite a bit. 🙂  No fair weather sailors in this crew! We checked the weather online and saw there was a pretty big squall line right over us. We decided to wait out the rain in the cabin before leaving the dock.

outbound, waiting for the rain to stop and the wind to start

hoping for the rain to stop and the wind to start

We got underway and headed out into the bay. Capt Kent brought along his dingy. The plan was to sail for a while and then take the dingy in for lunch. Once we got out of the channel, we put up the mainsail and found out there was no wind. 🙁

The weather was still against us, so we decided to go ahead and have some lunch and hope the weather would improve. We put the sail back down and motored over to ‘Noahs Ark’ in Bacliff. It was a little hard to find it, but with the help from the internet (google maps) and a good lookout, we found it pretty quick. Kent had to shuttle back and forth a couple of times to get everybody over there. He had a little trouble with the outboard, but eventually managed to get us all over (and back). 🙂

Gary and Bill dropping the anchor

Gary and Bill dropping the anchor

It didn’t help that they insisted they wouldn’t allow us inside without ID! (How ridiculous is that?! I never heard of anything like that before. Yeah, I know you can’t serve alcohol to someone without ID, but FOOD??) They lost some business over that cause a couple of our crew didn’t have ID. I never thought the USA would devolve into a state where ‘let me see your papers please’ was the accepted reality. 🙁

So, a couple of people had to stay on the boat, but they took it pretty well and there were plenty of drinks and snacks so they didn’t starve. We had a pretty good lunch ashore. The music was just right for our bunch, lots of Jimmy Buffett and 70s-80s stuff. We liked the décor, open air palapa bar, lots of funny signs and pictures around the ceiling, nice underwater painting. The food was good, I had a patty melt with onions (but it didn’t come with mushrooms).

Nice choice for lunch (except for the thing with the IDs)!

Nice choice for lunch (except for the thing with the IDs)!

By the time we were ready to go, the sun was shining and the wind picked up enough that we could set both sails. We had a great sail back to Kemah. We had good music,  good snacks, good conversation, good wind, plenty to drink and not much traffic. Not more to ask for on a day on the water.

Alright! Now we have both sun and wind!!

Alright! Now we have both sun and wind!!

Capt Jill teaching Kim how to steer a course

Capt Jill teaching Kim how to steer a course

We dropped off the dingy and motored into the dock around 6:30 and then headed over to the Sail la Vie BBQ party. Our chefs for the event Vic and Paul had some special recipe chicken cooking and there was plenty of fruit, macaroni salad, chips and dips, cookies and drinks to go around.

Vic and Paul explain their selection of BBQ sauces

Vic and Paul explain their selection of BBQ sauces

It was nice to meet some of the other members and catch up with some I hadn’t seen in a while. I haven’t been going to the meetings for a while, mostly because it takes me so long to get up to Houston and home. I don’t go up there anymore unless I have more than one thing to do.

I wound up getting home about 11:00. Too tired to do much but hit the sack. It was so nice to sleep in today. I plan to do it tomorrow too! 🙂

That’s how I’m spending my holiday weekend (nope, nothing about remembering what it’s really all supposed to be about- LABOR day and all that). Just chillin out and enjoying the time off.

How are you spending your weekend? Let’s hear it. 🙂

 

Rum Race #7

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I’ve been busy. You would think things would slow down around here since I’ve been laid off, but nooooo… I’m just as busy as ever!

Saturday I went out with Capt Vic on the Bat Boat (she’s a C&C 38). We were a little late getting underway due to some trouble with the battery (it was dead). We made it to the starting line right on time (actually about 2 minutes early).

It was a gorgeous day, there were lots of boats out sailing. Capt Vic said about 60 were in the race with us. A few different classes of boats. I’m not really sure what they all were, I’ve really only started learning about racing sailboats.

These races are set up through the Galveston Bay Cruising Association. They have all sorts of races, regattas, cruises, etc. I don’t know much at all about how they run these races, just that we were one of the bigger, heavier, slower boats. Not using spinnikers.

The sun was out and the wind was about 10-15 kts for the first part of the race. It slowed waaaay down after we made the turn to head back towards Kemah. We took down the jib and put up the ‘gennaker‘ (the bat sail) and it actually helped a lot in the lighter winds.

We did lose some time, mostly because we were not used to setting that sail and it took us a while to get it working properly. Once we got it set, we had a nice, leisurely sail back towards Kemah. We were doing pretty good in the race til then, but we fell behind while we were messing around with the gennaker. 🙁

We made it to the finish line right before sunset and got to watch the sun go down and the full moon rise over the bay. The sunset was nice, but the moon was absolutely stunning! I wish I could have taken some better pictures, but I was on the wheel at the time and couldn’t concentrate on the camera, I had to pay attention to the traffic in the channel.

It was getting dark by the time we got to the dock. We fought off the mosquitos while folding up the sails up the dock. Once we got everything secured, we could try out the ‘dark and stormies’ we had been hearing about all day. D. came up with some mosquito spray and we had our 1st rewarding rum drinks out in the parking lot.

Not too bad. 😉

We slowly made our way over to the clubhouse for the afterparty. The Rum Races are sponsored by Cruzan Rum and so we had to head up there for the end of the race announcements. We had to see who won (even if we knew we didn’t), we could still enjoy the rewards. Free rum and snacks to go with it. 🙂

It was fun to hang out for a while and talk over the race with the other sailors. Everyone was friendly and in good spirits. The free rum helps with that. 😉

Some of us decided to go out for a more hearty snack from there and we met up at Sam’s Boat for nachos, sliders, chicken wings and more good stuff. 🙂

I made it home about 3 am. Days like that really make me appreciate the life of a sailor. 🙂

Icicle Races

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I went to the Sail La Vie meetup last week hoping to sign up to go sailing on Saturday. I haven’t had the time to go out for quite a while and was really looking forward to taking a leisurely cruise around the bay.

I was really disappointed when I found out that they didn’t have enough people signed up to charter a boat for the group. Luckily, one of the members had a boat entered in the upcoming Icicle Race and offered a spot onboard to me and the 2 others who had been looking to go out on Saturday.

I had never been in a race and was a little apprehensive about it all. I wasn’t really enthused about the idea of rushing around, tweaking the sails for every tiny little advantage we could get out of the boat. I’m MUCH more into just relaxing and enjoying a day on the water. Listening to the soft sound of the waves passing by and the calls of the seagulls following for scraps as we drink some wine and dispose of our uneaten chips. 🙂

I think we must have got lucky. The wind was very light to start, only about 4-6 kts and then for a while it dropped off to nothing. The whole fleet was becalmed. I’ve never been in that situation, a couple of dozen boats all drifting together, so close you could reach across to share a beer.

The wind picked up a little bit just as we were coming up to the first mark. We slid around on the inside of a big bunch of boats and managed to skip ahead of the crowd. It was pretty exciting there for a few minutes. 😉

The crowd thinned out as we made for the next mark, but as we closed in on it, the boats bunched up again. Everyone was trying to cut it as close as possible. We heard a loud bang and CRUNCH ahead of us and watched as a couple of boats tried to get their fenders in place, but it was too late. I’m not sure how much damage was done, but ANY work done on a boat is expensive!

We made that turn on the inside of another big bunch of boats and then made for the finish line. The wind was shifting so we had to tack a few times. It was a challenge to try and figure out how far to go on a tack before coming back to the course for the finish line. I think we made some time up with good estimates on that part of the race too.

As we were coming in to the finish line (between markers 1-2 to Kemah), we were cut off by another boat. They cut right in front of our bow and I don’t know how we managed not to have a collision. I don’t know what they were thinking on that boat, but as we were yelling at them, they called back to us that WE were supposed to stay out of their way. Huh????

Overtaking vessel is ALWAYS the give way vessel!

After that last shot of adrenaline, we took in the jib and headed back in to the marina. We made it home in one piece, without any damage, and I think we did pretty damn good! Capt Vic said we did better then ever before (in this race) and I know we still had a pretty big bunch of boats still out there behind us when we hit the finish line. 🙂