Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.
September is here and while it’s still unpleasantly hot out, the end of the sailing season is not far off now for me. Our sailing season wraps up in early October and cooler weather will be here soon. It’s been a busy summer for us and while the pandemic continues, we have been fortunate to be able to attend most of the usual regional regattas. We have also been able to spend a lot of time at our sailing club enjoying local sailing. We really enjoy the sailing scene in Annapolis.
Earlier this summer, a really large wooden boat moved in at our club. I had been ogling it from the start and hoping for an invite. The opportunity came this past weekend when the owner was short crew for a race. We jumped on the opportunity. The boat is called the Easterner and it’s a 12-meter built for the 1958 America’s Cup. I have sailed Hobie Cat’s and other small boats for a long time, but this was something different. We were entered in a classic yacht race for boats built before 1970 and constructed primarily of wood. Interestingly we were not the largest boat. There were two schooners that were even bigger. With ten crew on board, we had a really nice day sailing something completely different. 30 tons of boat and we had it going 9.5 knots in moderate winds. Sometimes the theme from Ferris Buller is right on.
What’s next for me? We still have two Hobie regattas left before the end of the season. The Hobie will go in the garage after that for the winter. As usual in between sailing season and ski season is “home improvement” season and I have few projects lined up.
