St. Pete NOOD 2010

We had a great time this weekend in St. Pete sailing with Team Rock Steady and the Siegler's. This was our first time sailing together and we didn't even manage to get in any practice time before the event.

We arrived in St. Pete on Thursday afternoon and Beth met us at the airport in our very sweet Team Rock Steady van. Cary and Beth do an awesome job with graphic designs and vinyl as part of their GT3Creative business. The Rock Steady van is pretty cool looking with logos all over. We headed back to the St. Pete Yacht Club and met Cary & Seth who were working on the boat and had it pretty much together. We weighed in, launched the boat and headed to the hotel to check in.

Friday was a pretty disgusting day in St. Pete. The Race Committee flew the AP on shore just as we were ready to leave the dock. We hung out on the boat, tweaking things and then heard the America's Cup was playing in the club. We headed inside and watched the giant multi-hulls race. Just before the end of the match, the AP over A was flown (racing was abandoned), so we headed to lunch and a relaxing day.

Saturday was quite cold and the breeze was up. Team Rock Steady had an excellent day on the water with a 10, 7, 6, 5 even though we didn't have the greatest starts. We had an port-starboard incident just before the finish of the first race and definitely would have had a better finish, if we hadn't been hit. Luckily, Rock Steady is strong and the pole of the other boat didn't completely hole us. After dinner, we headed out for some team bonding and indoor go kart racing at Tampa Grand Prix. Seth and Ed were our speed demons, each winning one race in the three we participated in.

Sunday was much lighter and we managed to finish two races. We finished 6th overall in the regatta and are really looking forward to Miami and our next even with Team Rock Steady!!! Congrats to Doug Fisher and team for their win!