Blake Island Cruise

2007 footage of Zoe hauling in 28kt breeze

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCJX73Z2wkY

After winning the first two races the boom
snapped in half while leading the third!!!

Thanks to Rick Fowler for the vid.

Big Wind Blow

Well this week's Wednesday night racing sure made up for last week's! A nice 8-10kt Northernly allowed us two good races, Zoe came in 7th and 5th. Then on the first downwind leg of the third race it came on hard, really hard. Rounding the windward mark our spin had fowled so I was up on the bow with Will, by the time I got back to the helm the puff had hit and we were doing about 8kts says Tim. Under that much sail Zoe almost felt like a dingey: lively, responsive and FAST. A quick look around showed that most of the other birds to windward were either in the process of dropping their chutes or almost being knocked down. We tried to drop ours to, but couldn't with so much pressure on the sail, then our gennoa got wrapped around the forestay when we tried to blanket the spin. At this point we were well below the lured mark and we decided to abandon and just focus on saving the sails. All and all, I feel pretty luckey that we came away with no injuries, manoverboards, ripped sails and only minor damage to the spin pole. The crew: Tim, Katie, Will and Brad did awesome considering it was the most wind some of us have raced in yet. We look forward to the next big wind day on the Lake, becuase next time we'll be ready.

Blake Island Cruise April 25th-26th!!!

I would like to formally invite any and all Tbirders to cruise down to Blake Island with Zoe and Cloud Dancing next weekend. We will be weighing anchor early Sat morning and returning Sunday evening sometime. We will be BBQ'ing non-stop the entire weekend so bring some meat! Feel free to email me or Tim with questions.

Tbird Clinic

Zoe made it out to the annual Tbird clinic out of Leshi today. We had beautiful blue skies, temps in the upper 60's but were lacking in wind. After drifting around discussing sail trim and such with Sunny, our experienced Tbirder, the wind filled in the Southwest corner by the I-90 bridge and we got some great chute practice in. We ended the night in true summer fashion with beers and brauts on the bbq with fellow Tbirders. Big thanks to Dale for setting up the event and to Sunny for the pointers. Next up... Wensday night racing!