Gardening and Golfing and Sailing Oh My.

Or perhaps,  “Life as we know it”.

I’m coming up a little sparse in the picture department though. The sailing was too lumpy for picture taking and of course, it would have been a good idea to actually take along a camera.  Just as well I didn’t.  Too lumpy.

That’s OK.  We can handle “lumpy”.   Only thing is,  I sort of gravitated up to the foredeck,  which meant that doing a sail change (we were over canvassed with a Genoa ready to go) resulted in getting thrown about like being on the far end of a giant teeter totter.  I’m a wee bit sore in places this morning.  Especially my knees.  Gah!

Just a reminder that I ain’t no spring chicken.  That too is OK,  there’s always Ibuprofen. 

Not that you give a rat’s tiny behind,  but we were also doing OK on the racing end of things,  since there’s at least one boat in our fleet that owes us time,  and my GRAND STRATEGY is,  if we can keep him within 10 to 20 boat lengths,  we can beat him.  It’s that whole handicap thing.

I’m putting these links in here so you can’t come along and say, “I have NO IDEA what you’re talking about.” 

So there.

Anyhoodle,  we could at least see the name on their transom, but we made a fatal error the second time we rounded the mark.   Um,  that one is worth looking at by the way,  as it will become clear just what we did wrong.

Or,  what our skipper did wrong.

He’s too polite.

That’s the conclusion we came to over a beer later that evening.   And by being too polite, I mean he didn’t enforce his “rights” at the mark,  since we were within three boat lengths of rounding and could have called off any other boats bearing down on us,  even though we were on port tack. 

Ya see?  It ain’t that simple,  now is it?

So,  we came in contact with the big yellow inflated thingy that they put out there that you sail around. You’re not supposed to do that. 

That would have meant a penalty of doing a three sixty at some point before finishing the race,  except for the slight issue of having snagged the ground tackle with our rudder!

Well now.  We were then totally screwed.  Ended up having to haul up the weights they had put on the other end of the thing,  deflating it and taking it with us back to the slip.  We made the skipper take it all over to the committee boat.  

Kind of like when your dog has to wear the “cone of shame”?

Later that night,  since we didn’t have our paper bags over our heads,  we got the WTF award. 

I’ll not explain that one.

 

BUT,  here’s what I learned!   That buoy should have had at least twenty feet of chain attached,  going down into the water.  That would have mitigated the chance of getting snagged on the ground tackle and dragging the whole contraption along the bottom.   The chain is heavy, you see.  And would therefor hang straight down.

I think they’ll be changing that.   One of the wise old sailors made a comment at the clubhouse along the lines of, “Those lazy buggers,  they’re supposed to use chain.” 

Hm.

I mean,  we still hit the damned thing,  but at least we wouldn’t have been dragging it half way to Hamilton. 

Possibly a slight exaggeration.

 

 

Well,  I put a couple other things in the title,  but now I’m starting to get a wee bit wordy with all this sailing business,  so I’ll only put in a couple pics for your amusement.

 

This is the joy of having trees.   Sometimes you just have to get up there and try and sort things out.  That dead bit has been hanging around for….a while.

The top of the shed is only 12 feet off the ground,  but I quickly realised just how lousy my balance is.  And no,  I didn’t take a header into the neighbour’s yard,  but man of man I was a wee bit unsteady.   That’s the extent of my aerial  tree pruning.   Just saying.

 

Plus then of course,  there’s the mess to deal with.

Oh,  and I’ve started the process of removing the old fireplace insert/stove/whatever the hell.

 

I now just have to put it on a dolly.  Off you go!

It has to go down the front steps,  but gravity is my friend.

 

And,  in keeping with the title.  (catchy title,  no?)

I’ll include at least one picture from our golf outing on Saturday.

 

Gotta do it again.  Ball swackin’ was fun.

 

I’m approaching my “word limit”.  

 

*thinks*.   That wasn’t really “gardening”,  now was it?  Meh,  whatever.

 

If I don’t check back, enjoy your weekend.

 

Thanks for stopping by.

 

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