Winter Program

In past winters I've done sailing in a sunny destination but this year is a little different.  If you've been following the K3 blog, seen the recent pictures on facebook or noticed that I haven't been around in the evenings or weekends (sorry Erin), you know I'm getting a new K3 I14 for next year.

On Monday Patterson Composites started building my boat using the design and build specifications that Jason and I have been developing with Steve Killing for over a year!  And I've been known to show up in the shop and get my hands into the carbon and glue too.  Three days later and we already had the first part out of the mould.

Its been a BLAST working with all these people who are so dedicated to making this the highest quality, fastest boat in the world! And having a lot of fun doing it too.

Fun and Embarrassing ...

GoPro captures all....

i14 Crew Abuse from Hudson on Vimeo.

what?...

i14 Sailing - November Dip from Hudson on Vimeo.

Happy Halloween!

What a wonderful fall weekend, the boats are back from the UK so why not go sailing?

Is that Justin Bieber?

Windy Weymouth Wrap Up

John and I were really happy to back on the water and do some sailing after way to many days on the hard.  Even though we arrived with a lot of time to practice it didn't seem to matter after several days of extremely high winds.  Luckily we were able to get some solid racing in during the last few days of the regatta and make up for lost time.

I had some personal bests at the regatta including an 18th and 26th place finish.  A 35th overall is also a PB but of course I was hoping to crack into the top 30.  John and I found that we were going best when the wind picked up, which is a surprise since we weigh 290 combined...  Thinking about it, John and I both love the big breeze and we've made an effort to practice and set the boat up for those conditions.  Who would have thought that we would be sailing in light air at the same regatta where we couldn't sail for 7 days because of too much wind!  We will be looking to improve our speed in the 5-10knt range in the future.

Lucky my crew kept fit when we were waiting for the wind to moderate:

Squeegee Squats

Race 1 and Another Tropical Storm

After the first race day was abandoned with 30 seconds to go before the starting gun, due to increasing breeze, we managed to get one race in on Friday.  Ironically, it was a light air day 8-10 knts of breeze.  Everyone was excited to get racing and we started the day with a general recall.  At the start, John and I setup early in a nice spot on the line and found ourselves swarmed with boats with a few seconds before the start.  We weren't able to punch out and had some catching up to do.  After some good down wind legs we clawed out way back into 37th place.  Looking around we found ourselves racing the usual suspects with Canadian teams in 31st, 33rd, 36th, 37th and 44th.  One exception was the K3 which was launched.  Top 3 until a crab pot caught on the boat sent Billy for a swim.  Still a nice 9th place finish for them.

We started a second race and we were very happy with our start this time around.  We found ourselves just behind the leader (Archie) when the K3 on a port tack start flew across our bow.  We tacked to follow them to the right and found ourselves in the top 20 (in front of Archie now) coming into the bottom mark but the result wouldn't count.  A 70deg shift resulted in an abandoned race, fog rolled in shortly after and we headed for home, which was a bit hard to find!

Today, another tropical storm caused racing to be called off.  It looks like another few days of very high winds.  

25 - 28 knts in Weymouth

Hello Irene! 

John and I have had a great few days sailing and training for the Worlds here in Weymouth that was to start today.  However the left overs from Irene came ashore here in the UK and its WINDY!  Too windy to sail so we are all on shore getting ready for the real shock tomorrow when the forecast is for 45 knts.  Some people are packing their boats back into the container!   Looks like the next few days are going to be on land.