Saturday, June 24, 2006

Thursday 6/22

Light wind, which was kinda bad, and then no wind.

Which sucked.

J.R. and Erich watch the air doing nothing exciting.

Adam makes sure the wind doesn't sneak up on us. Not that it had any intention of doing so.

Joyce holds the boom in case we accidently gybe, but since wind is needed for that, there's really no reason to worry.

Listless boats in the prestart.

An Etschells ghosts by while the sun is setting.

Anyway, we finished ourselves at the line after one round, since the RC was at the Charles Island bell, so we took our airhorn and gave it a blast. It was slow going for quite a while.

Only two boats finished after the RC (Larry Welch and John Crissy) shortened the course, and we weren't among them.

As we motored in, I noticed it was nearly sunset. Every day exactly at sunset, the Milford Yacht Club lowers the flag and fires its cannon. It's shockingly loud if you're in the channel when it happens. Joyce usually jumps out of her skin, too, so after I noticed what time it was, I thottled back and whispered to the guys to watch Joyce when the gun pops. I couldn't remember if sunset was 8:23 or 8:26, but we saw the guy getting the cannon ready, so we waited.

Sadly, the guy walked away, and there was no way I'd be able to stall for three minutes without tipping Joyce off, so once we rounded the yacht club, I throttled back up. Three minutes later the gun sounded, but it was far enough away that Joyce didn't get startled. She turned around and mentioned how sometimes it scares the crap out of her, and then she asked, "Why are you guys smiling?"

We started laughing and told her about our evil plan. She shook her head and mumbled something that I can't repeat on a family-oriented blog.

Good fun!

posted by CT Bob @ 10:17 PM