|
|
|
Excuses, Excuses. Boy is I having one of those road trips. Nothing seems to go right. First off I am getting my ass kicked. But hey, on the bright side some valuable lessons are learned so as not to repeat in the future. Met a few anarchists and Sean Cody flew in from Texas and is dong a great job on the bow. Here is a run down of the circle jerk. Two months ago we agree to get the boat to St. Pete by the 5th. I flew in on Monday the 4th to meet the boat. Well the yacht arrives on Friday (only a week late) and we miss lots of tuning and sail time. When the guy at the St. Pete sailing center stepped the mast he found one of the spreaders bent. He straightened it and OOPPS put them back on upside down. So now our spreaders had a few degrees down instead of up sweep...it only gets better. It's too late in the day to change it and races start at 9:30am the next day. Oh well, now we only need to get someone who can jibe a chute in 15knts. Only we could be so lucky after such bad luck. St. Pete has a great youth program and there were several 420 sailors around. Started talking with them and we scored a 13 year old bow girl. I called her parents to make sure things were ok. They talked to her principal at school and he gave the ok to miss school and sail with 3 disabled guys. Score, after the first day we got someone up the mast and I was at the sailing center till dark retuning the rig after getting the spreaders fixed. But it only gets better, friction the all-ruining thing that seems to pop up on boats that race. One of the guys, who didn't pay for anything (his parents paid his airfare), starts thinking he is in charge. Things get progressively worse as the regatta continues. The bright spot was Rachel our bow girl. She could set, jibe and douse (cute too). After talking I found, she is going to the 420 Midwinter's the following weekend. We had dinner with her parents and found that the human race has redeemed itself by producing some very nice people. We ended up the 3rd disabled American team, I can use this for the ranking system but it wont help. The other teams are so well funded and their teams are set. I have made a command decision after talking with Gib, the owner of the Sonar, who also towed the boat from Frisco just for us to sail. That decision is to not travel until we have a viable team that includes the 3 disabled sailors, one shore support, one BN and the all-important Coach. Almost all of the teams (the ones with a chance) have this in place. Oh, I almost forgot MONEY, a basic campaign with no frills cost 50K per year. When I think of the logistics and work needed to accomplish this goal…. I almost say to myself fuck this. I cannot do it alone. So now we are into the NOOD and Sean Cody is here. Really good guy, Great on the bow, I think I will invite him to race with me on my R23 tall rig in the SD NOOD…That would be fun. The weather sucked the first day huge shifts and we went from mid fleet finishes to almost last. I feel bad for Sean but he is in spirits. Me and the other guy are still in conflict and I cannot wait for this trip to end. I will never race with this guy again…if I could I would stick my foot up his ass. Soon I will be home and in familiar surroundings…for a disabled guy that is really something to look forward to. BOW
WOW |