Old Stories reposted

October 26th - 29th 2000 Pensacola Florida and Birmingham Alabama


I brought my boat with me to work on Thursday. I had to park it in front of the parking deck cause 7' just wasn't enough clearance to park it on top the deck. That got some odd looks from people but also some questions and potential beach cat recruits. I left around noon and made a quick stop at West Marine to pick up some real signaling devices since I planned to sail "Big" water on Friday.

The trip down to Pensacola was not bad at all. I got to Doug's house at dusk to pick up the wings for my H18 that were just as promised.. Thanks again Doug. Then I managed to promptly get lost trying to find Big Lagoon State Park... After stopping at about 3 gas stations and driving 1 1/2 hours for the 15 mile drive it should have been I finally found it. It was a nice park but at night you couldn't see much. I found a camp site and began to set up. I called Gerard and Cindi who were coming out for dinner. It was a fun evening. They brought some great Chili and good conversation. I ended up not feeling like setting up my tent and using my hammock and rain fly for shelter. I am converted on that. It was one of the best night sleep I've ever had camping. Of course in rain I guess I'd have to go back to the tent. Friday morning I got up at dawn and took a look around the park. It was beautiful. If anyone has never been to the gulf coast of Florida... Go. It is some of the best beaches I've ever seen. I took some pictures of the park and even saw a red fox, to go with several raccoon sightings the night before.

I met up with Gerard and Cindi again and we went to there community launch. It was a nice little place you could back right down to the water and slide the boat strait into the Intercoastal Waterways. We sailed for about 4 or 5 hours and even got to play around in the breakwaters of Pensacola bay. It was probably 3-8 Mph winds. Which made for a relaxing day. I look forward to sailing with them again when they move here to Atlanta. I am also looking forward to sailing Pensacola again.

The drive up to Birmingham was much longer then I expected. I didn't get in till about 1am. And once again just set up the hammock so I wouldn't wake up the other tents setting up mine. There were around 20 boats there. Not enough of any one type to make a class but, it seemed like there were pairs of everything. There was everything from Prindle 18, NACRA 5.5,6.0 , P19's, Hobie 16,17,18,20's They decided to do a slow fleet and a fast handicap fleet. With 10 boats in each. And start all at once. This was my first race that was not a fleet fun race, so I learned a ton about right of ways and everyone was very helpful explaining who had right of way and why. Since the wind was very light it was easy to hold a conversation with the boats around you and most did. We completed 4 races on Saturday. I think the biggest gusts maybe hit 5 Mph and there was a couple of times I remember it being like someone Paused the whole race and no one moved at all for like 10 minutes. One time Ollie was rounding the A mark and it must have took him a full 10 minutes to make it from 2 boat lengths around and 2 boat lengths away. Over all we were usually moving and it was a fun day.

Saturday night the party was awesome. There were about 12 people in costume and great BBQ and mass consumption of beer. I have the most pictures of the party since I didn't bring my digital camera with me on the boat during the race. Some people gathered up and went to the Knife and Gun club... I'm probably lucky I was too drunk to get into heading on out somewhere else. Sounded like they had fun there.

Sunday's racing was scheduled for 1 race but we had enough wind for 2. It was actually a steady 5Mph or so at the beginning of the racing. It held perfectly at about that till we finished racing Sunday. I am very happy with the last race. I consistently finished in the middle of the pack 5th or 6th. Then in the last race, I didn't get a very good start but somehow got a great line and was the first boat around the A mark. Even in front of the 20's. I got passed by a P19 and was second around the B mark. Down wind I couldn't compete though but still managed to finish 4th behind some 19-20 foot boats and 1st in my fleet. I got 5th overall and got a really cool trophy done by a local fleet member. You can see them some in the awards picture. I'll take a good picture of mine tommarow and put it up in the gallery so you can see what a good job he did.

Over all it was a H17 that won the slow handicap boats and that shows you that it's not always the boat but the sailor makes a big difference. In very light air I think the H16's did very well too because of the fully battened jib keeping shape. As long as they could get it across when tacking.

Thanks Eric for hosting the great event at the BSC and thanks to all on the race committee that made a fun weekend of racing good with only light winds to work with.

I made some new friends and hope to see everyone there next year.

Also I want to plug a race for Carlos and George, this spring in Tennessee outside Chattanooga (Tullahoma) happening around Memorial Day weekend. Sounds like it's going to be a fun one. Damon you ought to come out for it.

And congratulations to Megan and Doug who are also Atlanta sailors that were there and just engaged the weekend before.


Fair winds to all,
-john
H16 #71514
H18 #3838
http://www.hobiesailor.com