I didn't do as much sailing this season as I would have liked. Seemed like I always had something else scheduled.
Our club has several fun events every year. Two of them are variations on a single idea. These are not a good idea (and may not even be legal from a "littering" perspective in some areas) on anything but a closed lake.
The Captain Morgan Race involves a power boat going out about 15 minutes ahead of the harbor start time. It has about a hundred sandwich sized plastic bags with one or more plastic "doubloons" in each. They blast along tossing the bags overboard. Then the fleet heads out and has one hour to gather up as many as they can and get back to the clubhouse with the treasure each has collected. The boat with the most doubloons wins a fifth of Captain Morgan Rum.
The other is the Poker Race. Same concept, but using playing cards instead of plastic coins. The goal is to make the best 5-card poker hand.
The problem with both races is that the fleet only recovers about half or less of the bags thrown in. Obviously not good if wildlife will be harmed and could create a litter issue on the lee shore. In our case there's a road all the way around the lake, so the roaming bags can be gathered after a few hours when the drift to shore.
Gloria and I came away from the Poker Race with a bottle of spiced rum.
The other Event race was the long distance race. Now having a long distance race on a circular lake that's just a mile and a half across might seem tedious. But there are buoys spaced around the perimeter and we set up a course that zigzagged around for something like 16 miles. To make it more interesting, we applied the handicap to the start times. The slowest boats left first with faster ones leaving when their handicap said they should. If all worked right everyone would get back to harbor at about the same time.
Then, just to take it up another notch, start right at sunset so much of the race is in darkness. There are few other boats on the lake, so traffic is not an issue. The fleet gets back about 11:00 to well after midnight, and there's a hearty breakfast at the club. In short, it is always a blast and we look forward to it.
But now, with Serene Dream in her dry slip, it's time to start those projects that I didn't have time for during sailing season.
Our club has several fun events every year. Two of them are variations on a single idea. These are not a good idea (and may not even be legal from a "littering" perspective in some areas) on anything but a closed lake.
The Captain Morgan Race involves a power boat going out about 15 minutes ahead of the harbor start time. It has about a hundred sandwich sized plastic bags with one or more plastic "doubloons" in each. They blast along tossing the bags overboard. Then the fleet heads out and has one hour to gather up as many as they can and get back to the clubhouse with the treasure each has collected. The boat with the most doubloons wins a fifth of Captain Morgan Rum.
The other is the Poker Race. Same concept, but using playing cards instead of plastic coins. The goal is to make the best 5-card poker hand.
The problem with both races is that the fleet only recovers about half or less of the bags thrown in. Obviously not good if wildlife will be harmed and could create a litter issue on the lee shore. In our case there's a road all the way around the lake, so the roaming bags can be gathered after a few hours when the drift to shore.
Gloria and I came away from the Poker Race with a bottle of spiced rum.
The other Event race was the long distance race. Now having a long distance race on a circular lake that's just a mile and a half across might seem tedious. But there are buoys spaced around the perimeter and we set up a course that zigzagged around for something like 16 miles. To make it more interesting, we applied the handicap to the start times. The slowest boats left first with faster ones leaving when their handicap said they should. If all worked right everyone would get back to harbor at about the same time.
Then, just to take it up another notch, start right at sunset so much of the race is in darkness. There are few other boats on the lake, so traffic is not an issue. The fleet gets back about 11:00 to well after midnight, and there's a hearty breakfast at the club. In short, it is always a blast and we look forward to it.
But now, with Serene Dream in her dry slip, it's time to start those projects that I didn't have time for during sailing season.
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