Hey All,

I travelled last Thursday night to the Alamitos Bay Yacht Club in sunny (ha!), Long Beach California to race the F16 at the S.C.Y.A. Midwinters.
My son and i drove the six and a half hours due south expecting to soak up the sun and have some yuk's in lovely La-La land. Our plan was rather train wrecked though , when our southbound optimism raced head long into a northbound weather system right out of the movie - "The Day After Tomorrow"! An Example of just how bad it got: we awakened Saturday morning to lightning strikes, streets flooded to our shin's (from a night of torrential rain) and a Water Spout (that's T-O-R-N-A-D-O folks), a stones throw from the yacht club lawn!The RC cancelled racing for the day due to the potentially lethal trifecta of - small craft warning , dense run off debri in the ocean and an e-coli count inside the breakwater to rival anything north of a Tijuana lemonade stand !
So, i'm bummed out , but things look good for racing on Sunday and downtown Long Beach is a great place to kill a day with your son.
Sunday, sailing out to the course, I got a chance to set my new Goodall kite ; cut with the R and D knowledge gained from
AHPC's F18 - Capricorn project.The new spin has an optimized
retrieval patch placement (absolutely no more bunching), better retrieval design ; is silicon coated (so slick you can retrieve w/ thumb and finger tips); and flattens beautifully head to foot with redesigned shape and camber.Noticeably faster than the previous offering from downunda...
O.K., a quick summary : 6 and 1/2 hours of driving , tornado's, lightning, flooding and the threat of sepsis - finally , i'm in my three minute start sequence with a packed field of two other catamarans (?!) The winds approximate 15kts.,the direction is here, there, and everywhere, the swell is big and steep due to days of high wind and , riding the white caps, are logs , clothing, the occasional refrigerator (real glad I ordered the kevlar hulls)...Periodic jet black cells explode into the bay with enough wind to bend masts (505 was it ?), and get the Coast Guard launch circling.First beat's going well and i'm setting up to jib into my kite set when, the windward hull breaks deep and the tramp scoops up a Southern
California babe who's been bobbing around in the bay for a day or two. She's archtypically blonde , scantilly clad, has a phony smile frozen on her face ; as expected she's mostly plastic. I notice she's missing a leg, but try not stare - i've got a Tornado to catch...Set goes perfectly, I yell to her to get off of the kite sheet, but she just stares implacably forward ,stunned to slack jawed silence by the speed no doubt ! Anyhow , given that i've invested so much to be here at this moment; I naturally, decide to to drive the boat as if i'm sailing on a windless day on Lake Tranquil! On the last reach to the mark I bury both hulls and swing into the sail so hard I drive the bolt rope out of the sail track from tack to the third batten...So ends my Long/Wrong Beach adventure...Limping back to the club I pass my Southern Cali doll - she's floating toward the Farr 40 course with her eye's fixed on the lead boat.
Next regatta in two weeks - can't wait !

PK

I guess it was not only your spi that contained some silicone !

Wouter

Whoa.

Hi PK,

Certainly makes racing in OZ sound boring. WOW!
I think I will stick with OZ though.

Regards Gary.

Yeah but Gary, South FL has you all!!
In other words South FL OWNES!!!!! Take a look here.
http://www.catsailor.com/forums/sho...ew=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1

What about that Tornado in the parking lot?

It was great meeting you Paul and THX a bunch for helping us with the mast raising. Sorry we couldn't get you some better weather for the Saturday. It was a hoot having you there in the 1st race. I kinda lost track of you after the first leg...were kinda busy with our own kite and dodging all the little mono's that were bent on getting rammed. Would have been fun to compare our performances off wind. That poor old Shark didn't give us to much trouble in the 3 races, so we set our sights on the 4 A-Cats that started 3 min. ahead of us. It was really fun closing up and finally catching them all at each finish. We even passed a few at the line, though never did get Pete Melvin on his A2.

P.S. there are some photos posted of the event:
GTS Photos
Just search for "Midwinters" and open the Multihull gallery. Most shots are of the A's...only a couple of me & my crew...hard to tell we're on a Tboat though.

Cheers! Hope to see/race you again one day.

Mike.

I think it had a lot to do with the weather--LA has had more rain than Seattle this winter, and last weekend was a weather mess here in Cali. We even had outbursts of car-damaging hail.

Mike ,

... don't get me wrong, I had a darn good time last weekend despite the cancelled races , life threatening weather and fricken ( i cringe every time i think about it!) idiotic mistakes on the course.Remember that immortal Helen Keller quote, " Life is either a daring adventure - or it is a weekend pulling weeds and doing house chores...", or something...

Might you be in interested in joining a (loose at present), coalition of Hobiephobes trying to cobble together a race schedule for 2005 (our MHRA schedule has gone from ten or so regatta's to perhaps three...) ? Additionally, did you get "Kansas" Ian's e-mail address? He's think'n 'bout buying an F16 Blade and i'd hoped to encourage this before the young man disappears entirely into the L.A. party scene... ?

Good to meet you guy's - maybe see you in August for the "Around the Island" thing....

Paul