I usually check one of the radar sites any time we're about to head out on the water and of course, today I didn't bother, as I only had in mind to cut the grass.
Nope.
Um, ya. We're right in the line of fire, so to speak. Sure wish the folks out west were getting this rain. I mean, it saves me from watering the grass, which I'm never keen on doing anyway (it's GRASS! It'll grow back!) But we certainly don't need it as much as the folks suffering through wild fires.
Anyhoo, had yet another "weekend on the water", as the Yacht Club that we sail out of had it's annual "Bronte Rocks Regatta" which consisted of three races around the "cans" on Saturday, and then a point to point race on Sunday.
Saturday night, the club puts out dinner and pitchers of margaritas. Dinner was what I thought good value at 22 bucks, while pitchers of margaritas were 25. I'm not overly keen on margaritas it so happens, although I did sip on about a half a glass, just to do a toast.
The club does well selling pitchers of margaritas, but for some reason they closed down the sale of pitchers by about 8:30. We were late coming in off the water, so I'm not sure why they thought to stick to their "schedule" if in fact, they had one. Like I say, selling pitchers of margaritas makes bags of money for the club. No idea.
Dinner was a combination of "cuban" food (can't for love nor money figure out how that was a thing, but whatever) and was very tasty. Often times food served out of a chafing dish at these things can be bordering on horrid, such as was the case last week at Newport. And that was thirty bucks a plate. Dry. Tasteless. And with the most useless plastic cutlery you could imagine. Gawd.
So, kudos to the team at Bronte for a well put on spread. AND, they had decent sized plastic cutlery.
Hey, it makes a huge difference. Gotta get it into your mouth somehow!
There were a couple minor, let's just say, "issues" on the race course on Saturday, firstly as the race committee decided to delay the first race due to lack of wind. Now, we've experienced "lack of wind" before, and I have to say that, there was in fact enough wind to move the boats. So we couldn't figure that one out. Plus, again for some frustrating reason that made no sense whatsoever, they chose to change the direction of the coarse due to a slight wind shift. We just figured, "Know what? It's wind! It might shift!" Sailors can usually figure that out. If you can't, well then maybe next time?
The other issue was, we tore the sh*t out of one of our spinnakers, and by "we", I really mean "me". Pissed me off to no end. The worst part being, there was nobody to be pissed off at, other than just well...me. Sucks when I suck.
Not sure if that one can be fixed. I'll not bother you with details. suffice to say, Old Guy here must be having some cognitive issues or something. I keep saying I'm "too old" to work the fore-deck, but our much younger and more agile Fore-deck Guy was unavailable for the weekend. So that left it up to me.
Like I said, it was pretty much the latest we've ever come in from one of these around the cans type of deals, with the time approaching 5:30. I really wanted to get home and take a quick shower before heading back for dinner, and dinner was supposedly schedule for six. Just crazy. I figured dinner would have to wait, but it turned out that there was boatloads of food to go around. Is that a pun?
Not sure.
And Sunday? Much better. The race was a "point to point", and we only had a sprinkling of rain, even though the weather prognosticators were calling for much worse. Actually, as I sit here listening to thunder all around us, an electrical storm was what they had predicted for Sunday a few days back.
Didn't happen.
I really sometimes wonder about the reliability of some of the weather prognosticators. It's the only job I know of where you can be dead wrong, and still keep your job!
Oh and, Muggins here didn't manage to rip anything.
I did take a few less than stellar photos, and a couple of them are actually worth sharing.
At this point, we had been on the water for well over an hour I would think, and I was struck by the fact that these three boats managed to end up within the same 200 square meters of water. I mean, there were boats spread out over an area maybe a third the size of Rhode Island? They're all heading for a derrick out in one end of the lake, which was the turning point.
Lake Ontario is kinda huge, but you knew that.
You can see that we're at least two thirds of the way to the Hamilton Lift Bridge at this point. Just found this kind of incredible.
Here's the CCIW "spider" out in the Lake. (Canada Centre for Inland Waters) They use if for monitoring water temperature and stuff. (like I have a clue.)
It's kinda hard to explain where this "mark" is, and we typically put the coordinates into the onboard GPS, and then know what landmark to look for when we're sort of getting within sight of the thing.
Point to point racing is heaps easier on all concerned, so I wasn't quite so beat yesterday afternoon when I got home. Still nice to get into the cooler air in the house though.
The thing is, it's ALWAYS cooler on the water, but then as you head back to the slip, you're hit with this wall of hot humid air that's just bloody stifling. For example, Tuesday night we actually had to put on our jackets, it was that cool on the water.
Yet murderously hot inland.
Today is the last day before some of my still working teacher friends have to go back to work, although they've all be in their classrooms setting up over the last week or two. Mostly in non air conditioned schools. Bleah!
We have a tradition of getting together at the pub to toast those who are about to set off on a new school year in the morning.
There's really only going to be a small percentage this year, as there are more and more retirees every year. And sadly, the one friend of ours who was one of the co-conspirators regarding this tradition passed away a couple years ago. We still miss him.
That's it for today I think.
Thanks for stopping by.
