Travel
Block Island Race Week 2009
Block Island Race Week Dock
I headed up to Block Island Wednesday on the Farr 40 Ramrod to beautiful Block Island. We had a bit of a windy and rough delivery, but all went went well and we arrived early Friday morning. The island is gorgeous and definitely worthy of exploring. Saturday and Sunday, we had very intense practice sessions which went well. Ramrod is ready to go and looking forward to a great week. Today is supposed to be the Around the Island Race, so I’ll have a great view of the whole island. The forecast is for a very windy day, with a steady 20 knots and gusts to 30 knots. Hopefully we’ll be able to get off the dock!
Detroit NOOD 2009
We’re in Detroit for the NOOD regatta this weekend. Both Ed & Becky will be sailing on Melges 24’s for the event. Michael Gavin, who Ed sails Etchells with has chartered a Melges 24 to try it out. Ed’s cousin, Bill Becker is also sailing with them, as is Michael’s good friend, Chris Johannessen. Hopefully there will be enough breeze so that he gets a good feel for how much fun the Melges can be! Becky will be sailing with Greg McCliment on Cujo. The forecast is for the breeze to be 8-15, so it should be a great weekend.
Mt. Gay Regatta & Area K Match Racing Quarterfinals
Mt. Gay Rum Bar in Barbados
Ed is on a plane off to Barbados for the annual Mt. Gay Rum Boatyard Regatta. He’ll be sailing with Robert Povey on his J24 Hawkeye. Hopefully the team will have a better outcome in their home waters than they did at the J24 Worlds in Annapolis! Barbados is a gorgeous place to visit and I can honestly say I’m a bit jealous since I couldn’t go.
Instead, I’ll be heading to Sheboygan, Wisconsin tomorrow evening for the Area K US Match Racing Quarterfinal event to sail with Jennifer Wilson, Krista Paxon & Laura Hagan. Good thing we still have the new Sail22 Winter Hats in stock, as I think we’ll be needing them! We’ll have updates from both events and also try to keep everyone posted using our Sail22 Twitter.
Trip to Trinidad and Tobago
View in Trinidad
It’s hard to believe that I actually thought about not making this trip down to Trinidad. Luckily flights were reasonable and other opportunities arose. Becky lucked out too as her ticket was even cheaper. And it wasn’t until this morning that I was able to add Tobago to the title as we were offered Peter’s place there for a couple of nights. So two tickets to Tobago and tomorrow night we are off. But not until we go to the Zen Christmas party tonight. Supposedly nicer than the places in South Beach. And did I mention that this little island nation has a lot going on. The downtown is very much a big city as there are large office buildings and rush hour is a true traffic jam as I found out after arriving here at 5pm.
The people here are great and the opportunities keep coming up. I will be updating the website soon as we now will be working with the new Southern Caribbean Circuit which includes regattas in Carriacou, Grenada and Tobago. Unfortunately we will not be able to attend Carricou this season but will definitely make the trip in 2010.
But before I forget. The real reason we came down here was to check on the R/P 44 Storm. This is the race boat that I raced on last season in St. Maarten, BVI and Antigua. This year I will add Grenada which I missed last year. The boat looks great as the guys here at Peake Yacht Services have rebuilt almost everything and put new non-skid on and new clearcoat on the spars. I brought down and built new spin sheets and main halyard. The meeting with Jerome about the Southern Caribbean Circuit was planned as well.
