As if it wasn’t obvious, I can no longer keep up with this blog. I still get on the water some, but not as much as I used to, and it’s pretty hard to blog about sailing when you’re not doing much of it. Having moved to the west coast, I sort of lost the intimacy of my relationship with the local readers as well. I enjoyed everything while it lasted, and I’m sorry that Seadated went out with a ‘thud’ instead of a ‘bang’. Thanks to everyone that participated in this blog for the years that it was active. I love you all. Sail fast everybody, and hopefully I’ll see you on the water.
So, I somehow got hooked up with a group of people racing a Beneteau First 40.7 called Phantom Mist. (Actually, I shamelessly posted myself on some crew listing site out here.) The skipper contacted me last week, we talked for a while, and I’m headed to Alameda on Friday, after work, to see what kind of a fit I might be for the boat. Friday’s race is a beer can thing, so I should be pretty comfy. Provided all goes well, Sat and Sun are real race days, and I will rejoin the crew for some “real” racing. I’ll see if I can snap some pics, and I will definitely write up a post about what my first experience sailing the SF Bay was like… Till then, Ciao from SF!
So, in the past several months, I have been pondering the fate of Seadated. I haven’t been sailing nearly as much as I would like, and when I have gone, I haven’t exactly felt like writing about it. Being out of touch with the Chesapeake Bay racing scene led me to not care a whole lot about getting results posted in a timely manner, and I’ve been bouncing around between a bunch of different laptops and desktops, none of which have I bothered to dump all of my sailing feeds on to. I guess you could say that I have just simply suffered a total Seadated burnout.
But, as they say, the plot has thickened. I recently took a job on the west coast - San Francisco, to be exact. I moved last week (July 11, 2007), and as I write this post, I’m sitting at my desk in my new office in SOMA. SOMA is the area in downtown San Francisco that is “South of Market St.”. It’s a pretty cool office, in a pretty cool part of town. We have a balcony, we’re on the top floor, and there’s a ladder on our balcony that goes up to the roof. (I think there’s probably a hot tub up there, but I haven’t checked it out yet.) I’m living in the Upper Haight, near Golden Gate Park and the Panhandle. I haven’t bought a car, and don’t plan to for a while, as the public transportation here is pretty good. I’m told there’s some big ass body of water here that folks sometimes go sailing on, but I am yet to do that. Which leads me to the next part of this post - the future of Seadated.
I’m in a different part of the country, and as much as I love the Chesapeake Bay, and all the people there, I’m not sure I’ll do any better at writing about what’s going on there than I have in recent months. I AM still a sailor though, and I DO tend to enjoy writing about it when I have the time. So, I’m thinking I might redesign the site, and make it more of a personal sailing blog, rather than news oriented. I’ve been in touch with several skippers in the area, and have my name on a number of crew lists. There are a lot of potential rides for me out here, and you can bet your sweet ass I’m going to be on this Bay real soon. It’ll be a little while before I’m up and running with this, but I’m gonna do it, so stay tuned. I hope everyone back home is doing ok, and to everyone else that reads this blog in other parts of the world - if you were interested before, it can only get better. I’ve got a lot of new experiences ahead of me, and I look forward to sharing them. Until then, live slow, and sail fast. 
Many of you probably know this already, but I’m in Florida, doing my duty on the Race Committee for the 2007 Tybee 500 catamaran race. I had hoped to blog some on here, but between my duties running the race, and my duties running the race website, I haven’t found much time for Seadated (seems to be a recurring problem lately eh?). So, if you want to know what’s going on, and what I’m up to, check out the Tybee 500 website at http://www.tybee500.com. I’m posting all of the results, as well as all of the race news, so you’ll be getting Seadated flavored coverage of the Tybee on the official site. Cheers!
I know, I know. I haven’t posted in months, and all of a sudden, I’m posting like crazy in the middle of the morning. There are a couple of reasons for this. First of all, I bought a fancy new laptop in January. Secondly, I’ve followed the Norfolk stopover of the Velux 5 Oceans race pretty vigilantly, but I’ve been too lazy to post about it. The arrival of Graham Dalton, however is rather special, and I feel that since I’ve got the time, and the computer, I had might as well cover it.
Graham is sailing in honor of his son, who lost his battle with cancer last year. Graham has been through the ringer to get here, and technically isn’t even in the race anymore. Still though, he presses on, determined to complete his circumnavigation. On his way to Norfolk from Freemantle, he has lost his keel bulb, had all of his electronics stolen off of his boat, and endured numerous hardware and equipment failures. He came the rest of the way here from Brazil (about 3000nm) navigating by only a handheld GPS. This guy is a real trooper, and is a testament to the spirit of a race such as this. I’m glad to be a part of this race, as well as this specific arrival. I’ll get some pictures up as soon as I can. In the meantime, I have to go greet this weary skipper. Cheers!
I’m happy to report that although I’m still at Waterside, and Graham is still not here, there are a few more knuckleheads hanging around here with me waiting to greet our “tenacious” kiwi guest. More to come from Norfolk when he’s actually dockside…
I’m writing this post from my phone. Thank god for my blackberry pearl! Anyway, i’m at the Waterside Marina in downtown Norfolk, and it’s 0220 (EDT) on Wednesday April 25th. Graham Dalton is set to arrive at around 0400, last I heard. I’m the only person here. I wonder what it would be like to be racing around the world, in memory of your son who lost his life to cancer, and you suffered immeasurable hardships along the way, only to finish in Norfolk after the rest of your fleet had restarted, and the only sorry sap to even bother to show up when you arrived at the dock was some nobody named Claude Nix. I guess I’ll have to ask Graham about that when he gets here…
Hello to my Mom, and the other two people who continue to loyally check this site, hoping for some new content. The sailing season is upon us, and I think I may have more to talk about in the coming weeks. In the meantime, sorry for the lack of activity around here, but thanks to those of you who continue to stick with me. It really means a lot.
I have really enjoyed participating in all the Velux 5 Oeans events in the past several weeks, and meeting the skippers as they arrived. It was a really unique experience, and I was very glad to have been a part of it. They took off today, and I was sadly watching from my office as they had a minute of silence with an American Flag at half mast, honoring the tragedy this week at Virginia Tech. They then departed, one by one, heading out for the starting area, just off the carrier piers. Best of luck to all involved, and I’m sure I speak for all sailors in Hampton Roads when I say that we really enjoyed having them here, and we hope to have them back next time.
The Tybee 500 is coming up next month, and once again, I’ll be serving on the Race Committee. That is a great event, and I really enjoy the sailors, and the R/C team that I get to work with. The communities we visit on our way up the coast are awesome, the residents are excited to have us, and the camradarie simply can’t be beat. Look for lots of coverage from there, starting on 5/11/07. http://www.tybee500.com will be constantly updated, as well as this site, so check it out. There are twice as many boats registered right now, as we had total, in last year’s race!
Lastly, I want to explain a little about why you haven’t heard a lot from me lately. First of all, I sort of have a new job. Since September 06 (hmmm… anybody remember when I stopped posting?) I have been working in my new “career” as a web developer. It has taken up a a fair amount of my time, but I find it challenging and enjoyable. I have this blog to thank, for my move in that direction. During this same time, however, I have been working on a(nother) personal project. I have been wanting to do something meaningful with the internet, and the sport of sailboat racing, for a long time, but really haven’t come up with anything that special. I think that’s about to change.
I have built an online “Regatta Management System”. It’s still in pretty crude form, but good enough to have folks start using it. The idea is to provide regatta organizers (who aren’t themselves web developers, and don’t have the budget to hire them) with the tools they need to promote their events, register racers for specific events, upload race documentation, create news posts, and overall, bring a higher level of interactivity to their participants. There are a lot of things that I have planned, but for now, it basically serves as a way for a regatta chair to get his race online, effectively communicate with race participants, create custom online registration forms, with automatic scratch sheets, and share race documents like NORs, SIs, results, etc. It will have several tiers of service, always including a FREE version. I invite anyone who is in this position with their club or association to contact me, and I will set you up with exculsive beta access to the software. I am anxious to receive feedback from users of the system so that I can improve it, and make it the best way for clubs to bring their events to the world. Use the contact link on the nav, or just click here to shoot me an email about this.
Ok, so that does it for now. Oh yeah, I hate this site theme, but somehow, I broke the other one, and this was sort of ready to go. I don’t have a lot of time to work on the site, so I guess we’ll just have to deal with it for now. If there are any design gurus out there that would like to re-design the site, by all means, send me your mocks, ideas, code, whatever.
Keep your eye out for Seadated… good things are happening, I can feel it!
Once upon a time, I did a shitload of sailing. I probably spent as much time on the water as normal people spent at work. I was all about it. I even found time to write about it when I wasn’t doing it. I’m not sure what happened to those days. I haven’t been writing, because I haven’t been sailing. With the weather like it has been on the East Coast this winter, I’m probably the only poor sap that truly loves to sail and isn’t out there doing it. Saturday, I changed that. I had a fine sail on a fine boat. My brother got a Pearson 28 last year, and has been less than enthusiastic about it until recently. (She needs a little love, but is definitely a good boat) We went out on her on Saturday in about 18kts of breeze, and had an awesome sail out to the Newport News Middle Ground Light and back. What made it even better is that we had company - a little known (wink wink) Pearson 26OD called “Wiki Wiki”. He passed us on the way to middle ground, so we took full advantage of our unwritten “Wednesday Night Rule” and turned around as soon as Wiki Wiki got there, and gave them a run for their money on the way back to Scott’s Creek. He got past us when the breeze lightened up just off the Portsmouth Marine Terminal. Bugger. Most people are used to being behind that boat, but not me. I’m used to being at the helm. *Sigh* Oh well, those days are gone, and brighter days are ahead. (This BS helps me sleep at night, so shut up)
I think I need to make more time for sailing, and figure out how to spend less time working…
I think I’ll stick to the Chesapeake Bay for now
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