Keowee Cup (part 2, the non-"whoops" blog post)

(Sorry about the fake empty blog post if you got emailed... "Oh, so THAT'S what happens if you accidentally push Enter there")

OK, glossary of terms all racing sailors just know:
RC: race committee, they're on the water in the RC pontoon boat
PRO: principal race officer, person in charge of running the race
bow: the front of the boat-- is that as obvious as I think it is?
mainsheet: the line that controls the mainsail, can crudely be likened to a car's gas-pedal most of the time, pull harder = go faster upwind
DNF: this racer did not finish a race they started
DNC: did not compete, this racer didn't even come to the start area
the helm: a steering wheel for a nautical vessel (that also may be obvious)
tacking: changing course by roughly 90 degrees, putting your bow through the wind

So this last weekend was my sailing club's big regatta of the year, Keowee Cup! The first day... well, let's just say the first day is over. Whew. It was totally bananas. 1st off, we showed up and got Rebooted in the water. All fine. Then we went to the captain's meeting (that's before EVERY race), and got a rundown of what was going to happen by the PRO . Except she didn't cover what the racecourse was going to be in terms us newbies could understand. "It MAY be course 5, but it may also be one of several others [Jeff's never heard of], I'll decide on the water. Ensure you swing by the back of the RC boat right before your start to see." (Now I've got several different racecourse configurations figured out, but apparently there's NINE standard ones I don't know about, so after this, I'm gonna do some homework) PRO: "And if I fly the standard P flag over an H flag after flying the S flag backwards and then raise the Q flag twice while raising the B flag halfway, it means..." (I lost her after that).

So why was it CRAZY? The wind was so strong, several boats had "issues": 1 turtled (turned completely upside-down), 1 lost his mast, we came VERY friggin' close to capsizing once (within about an inch), and 2 boats couldn't miss islands, me being one of them. Yeah, I ran aground. Yes, I failed to miss an island. Yes, I've sailed before. Yes, I... back off, alright?

Let me fill in the back-story. See, with that one ALMOST-capsize behind me, I was playing it on the safe side by keeping the main-sheet out, a bit loose (lubbers: that's one method of going slower). The problem makes itself known when you try to tack without hauling in gobs of mainsheet. The issue was that I had the mainsail out way too far, tried to tack, and once we started turning, it turned out that I didn't have enough forward-speed to carry the boat over to the other tack, so it was "try to turn the boat, fail, try again...". I think I tried that about 3 times (yeah, I'm a quick learner). Finally, it was either tack or run aground, so I tried to tack... with the mainsail still way out (slower, to keep us below capsizing speeds)... and got pushed right aground. OH MAN OH MAN OH MAN. Shoot. Luckily, we de-islanded ourselves after a long while. That was it for us that day though. I was so shaken by hitting an ISLAND, we called it and went in.

Now, that was actually very probably the smart decision, given how STRONG the wind was blowing. We normally sail in 5-10 knots of wind. Sometimes we'll go when it's blowin' 15. Today was 21-30 knots on windtrack, but the RC says they saw 24. HOLY JUNK-BUTTER. My first sailing mentor has told me not to sail in anything above 20.

After coming home and relaxing a bit, I went back down for dinner where I learned some heartening news-- I WASN'T THE ONLY ONE WITH TROUBLES. 8 boats besides me DNF'd, and most of them DNC'd the rest of the day's races, as well as I. 3 or 4 capsized. And I mentioned that one other boat ran aground as well. NOW I feel better.

(And it's not so big a deal, but Nigel Pitt was there & recently joined KSC & I got to meet him! I know you don't know that name, but my memory has been through a serious ringer, and the memory of that name survived the coma. He's like a rock star of the sailing world. Don't believe me?)

So all in all, what I thought was a ruined day was actually a good day! We sailed, we survived, and we learned. I mean, that we were out the in ~24 knots means my recovery is coming along AMAZINGLY in many different areas.

-------------------------------------Day 2-------------------------------------

OH MY GOODNESS. We -COMPLETED- TWO RACES. First time since my car-incident that I've done that (as skipper)! And it was BLOWING a stink. What do I mean by that? 17-26 mph! And someone mentioned that the max for EXPERIENCED sailors in the kind of boat I have (Flying Scot) is 23!!! And I wore a different kind of shoes today, and also had on my rain pants (that go over your real pants) that were so long, I kept tripping over them. Now the fact that I kept tripping over them should have clued me in, but it took me falling down on the boat's hull 3 times today before we got a handle on it. And afterwards, once we had the boat on the trailer on the launch ramp & the drain plug out, you should have seen the ten minutes of water that poured out the now-opened hole in the bottom at the back. And it wasn't raining.

So with all my falling down (imagine the stress for mom & dad since I was on the helm), we were WAY behind everyone else (they were almost into the clubhouse while we were on the last leg)... but dad talked me into finishing what I'd started, so the RC had to hang around for many more minutes until we crossed the finish line. On shore later, that earned me a hug from the PRO for sticking it out and finishing. And we had questions for her yesterday, and had said "sorry, we're newbies" and I thought that was why I got the hug. So I told her "Actually, 2 years ago, I was in a coma." And she said "I know, they told me on the boat."

So between that and the fact that we "fouled" another boat and they were SO NICE when we hurried to apologize on land afterwards... I CAN HIGHLY RECOMMEND KEOWEE SAILING CLUB AS A SUPPORTIVE COMMUNITY (ESPECIALLY FOR THOSE RE-LEARNING TO SAIL)!!!