Strawberry, raspberry, blueberry? An adventurous Canadian who left the frozen north to explore places in the sun, I am on a taste test of the world, out to sample everything I can find. Right now I am first mate on the sailboat "Diva" and alongside Captain Phil, we will be sailing throughout the Caribbean. Come on, hop aboard for the ride!
Two weekends ago I was sitting at the post-racing table talking to another woman who has been sailing for years. At the same time I was flipping through the pictures of the day's races on my camera. She said to me, "Julia, aren't sailing pictures boring? We have thousands of pictures just like those at home."
So here you go. I don't find sailing pictures boring yet, but I haven't quite got thousands either. These pictures were all taken by Captain Phil, who provided his boat, Diva, to be the committee boat (the boat that sits at the start/finish line and records who crosses the line first and who actually comes in last.) It was two days of sailing with three races on each day and little bits of all kinds of weather, except we did escape the rain. Several boats were brought down from the Kingston Yacht Club so there were 10 boats all together. I was sailing in boat #10, and we came in 9th, although on the second day we did have two 4ths and a 5th.
Feel free to go do something else if you get bored...
Lining up for the start line - lots of jostling for position.
It is a timed start, so it is always a trick not to go over early or get wedged out by another boat.
Here's the action in real time video - drama on the start line:
We all go upwind on the first leg of the race.
Hanging my legs over the side to help balance the boat (I have the hat and dark glasses)
The boats kinda look like a strange flock of birds.
Then we all blow back downwind to finish. The spinnaker sail can give you some speed!
This tanker, "the Royal," is a weekly visitor to Mobay and was kind enough to wait until all the sailboats were well upwind before he left the harbour, right through our race course. Some boats didn't even realize it was there!
This is how it looks rounding the mark, with everyone taking down their spinnaker sails. My boat comes in last - we didn't fly the spinnaker on this race because we only had three lightweights on board. The second day we had four bodies and did better.
Another weird flock of birds?
Taking down our spinnaker at the end of the races - I am on the far right, looking up.
This is me sailing Diva, when we went to Negril several weeks ago - you can see it's a whole different vibe!
Hopefully you didn't suffer too much through those pictures. Captain Phil took over 80 pictures on the weekend, so it could have been much worse. Or, for some of you, you could have been sitting in the boats themselves - I thought it was great fun, but I had a couple of bruises that are just fading now.
