Merrily we row along! :)

This one was started a very long time ago, but now it's finally done! A bit about sailing! I heart sailing. It is soo much fun, especially with Amy and the worm. So everyone reading this should know that my family has gone on a couple sailing trips over the years. Perhaps all of you don't know that in my freshman year at SMU I thought I'd be good on the sailing team. Ha. It was doomed from the moment my mom sent me my dad's wet suit to "use". It was from like 1902. The thing literally crumbled in my hands. nice. Anyway, I made it out on the water in these dinky little 12' boats twice. Capsized both times. That was the end of my SMU sailing team debut. When I got to LBS, I heard about the sailing club and laughed, said No Way, and moved on. But then a couple of my friends went on the first trip and had a great time. And when I saw the photos, I realized that the boats are like what we sailed as a family. So I signed up to go on the next regatta trip, but on the "cruising" boat. Amy and I were to just hang out and learn the ropes, but not race. Well, I made a friend the night before we left who happens to be in the group that assigns the boats. On the way down to Portsmouth, he asked me if Amy and I wouldn't mind filling in on their boat as 2 people had dropped out last minute and they needed the full crew for racing. So we stepped up. Here we are in our gear...yes...it's VERY cold!! We learned what to do and got underway. When you're going fast you have to sometimes lean out over the edge to balance the boat better - something about the best angle for the boat to be in the water to get the most speed. We had an amazing skipper who really knew what he was doing! So anyway, the format is that you head out in the morning and do a race that lasts somewhere around an hour I think. Then you make some lunch while sailing around waiting for the afternoon race,

after which you head into port, hang out for the evening, and do it all again the next day. You are ranked based on your best 3 out of the 4 races. So we have 3 brand new people on our boat (me and amy included) and head out to learn how to sail about an hour before the first race. We learned to fly the spinnaker! So cool! Above is a picture of us actually underway with it up (we're the one on the left - the club has our own spinnaker with the London Business School logo on it. Super cool!! And in fact, this pic was taken by one of the peeps on another LBS boat...as we were on our way to a win! That's right! Go us! We won the whole dang regatta! It's been awhile since...I think we placed 1st in the first 2 races, and 2nd in the first race on Sunday. It was really amazing! Here's the winning team on the way into port.
When we were done racing the first day, we headed in to Gunswharf, which is where we moored for the night. It's a pretty cool little water front town. Lots of new development right on the water, with restaurants, shops, bars, and lots of activity in general. This is a picture of the massive statue building thing in Gunswharf. It lights up blue at night and is pretty cool. We had a great time, but I was so exhausted from working so hard all day that I didn't go out with the crew that partied. We slept on the boats and had a good breakfast in the morning. Went back out the second day and as you know, won it all! I got a nice coffee mug as my trophy ;) It says "Hot brew for a hot crew" haha. I love it though. :)

So after that performance, Amy and I were invited back out for the Alumni challenge, in which alumni get together a couple boats, as do current students, and we race in another one of these regattas in the Solent. There were 35 boats entered in this one! And the weather was terrible. Quite a different experience. We ended up tearing a hole in the LBS Spinnaker! boo! Here we are trying to fix it in the boat. We also were experiencing engine problems, which is why there are people in the background looking inside the engine compartment!! Not good! We sailed in the first 2 races the first day, ended up throwing 2 people overboard at one point on a "chinese jibe" - aka, the mainsail caught a gust that threw the boom across the boat and took 2 people with it!! They were ok, except for wet and cold. Then we had the engine problems, and I think the ripped spinnaker happened right around then, too. We had help from the Sunsail folks that night and thought our engine was ok. But when we were between races we had more problems, and our skipper decided to forfeit the last race to make sure we got in before the tides got to strong in case we lost our engine again. The good thing is, this one was about the socializing as much as the sailing. And it was a great time with the crew and alumni. On the left is my boat for this regatta, on the right is Gloria and me with the biggest pint we'd ever seen. Apparantly it's the same size as a regular pint, the glass just made it look ridiculous!

So there's my sailing adventures. Amy and I are off to Thailand for Spring Break with the club...we're going to sail something like 10 days, after spending a couple days on land in Bangkok. I'm super excited and can't wait to tell you all about it!!