The Ahlers

Check out this picture that Steve found on flickr. It's Jim and the gang!

Second Duck Dodge of the summer was tonight, and we ended up second place again. Not too shabby for this early in the season. The same J-109 we beat last week beat us this week, but not by that much. The third place boat, our neighbor Jim and his crew on Elwood, another Melges 24, was about 4 minutes behind us.

The funny thing was that we had a horrible start. One of the worst in recent memory. The winds were really shifty and a couple of really slow boats in our class messed with us which resulted in us getting across the line in fourth place. I totally had written off the race at that point, but by the time we reached the first mark, we had basically caught up with everyone. We had taken a gamble by going closer to the western shoreline and it paid off.

Next week's theme: N'Awlins Fat Tuesday Night!

Travel blogs are a big thing now. Work friends Libby and Brett both have them. I think Brett's will focus on his four-week 'round the world trip; Libby looks like she's shooting for hers to be a mix of personal observations *and* travel experiences.

When we travel, I know my folks would rather hear from me directly, one of us talking to one or both of them, instead of reading about our travel experiences in a blog along with everyone else. But a blog seems like such a better way to share your trip as you go with a larger group of friends and family...

Picture is of Portofino in October 2003 .

The first Duck Dodge of the summer was last night. Now that it's all over, I predict that it's all downhill from here for the rest of the summer. How could it possibly get better than this? The weather was perfect, and the race was awesome.

When we got out on the lake, we were pretty sure we'd be fighting for 4th or 5th place. The fastest boat out there -- which happens to be one of the fastest boats in the area *period* -- was Obsession. It's rated something like a -24, which would mean that it typically would give up about 2 minutes a mile to our boat in the PHRF handicapping system. (We're rated a 99.) Just to give you an idea of what kind of monstrosity this thing was on Lake Union, here's the description from their web site:

This Custom Sparkman and Stephans 70 footer started life as the ultimate racing machine.

Sailing in the IOR Maxi class, she was raced by the top sailors in the US.

70 feet long, 17.4 feet wide, draws 12.5 feet of water and displaces 68,000 lbs.

34,000 lbs of ballast with a mast 92 feet off the deck.

It seriously looked like it was about half the height of Queen Anne.

In addition to Obsession, there was Minor Threat, a 1D35 (rated a 36), which should always beat us, a J-109 that frequently beats us (rated a 72), and a couple other boats in our start that if they had a good night and we had a bad one, they'd beat us for sure.

Long story short, we got an incredibly good start (full speed, in clear air, at the favored end and first off the line by at least a boat length), we rounded the freeway mark first, then rounded the Aurora mark basically tied with Minor Threat, and we mixed it up with them all the way downwind to ACG. (Seattle Weekly did a great article about sailing recently, in which Minor Threat was featured prominently.) On the reach leg to Chandler's, they took off and ended up finishing a couple of minutes ahead of us. We ended up in second.

Where was Obsession in all of this? Minor Threat had messed around with them on the first leg, taking them all the way west to the houseboats on Westlake, which seemed to really throw them off for the rest of the race. They slowly caught back up, but we still ended up finishing in front of them by a few minutes. Sure, they didn't fly a very big spinnaker (they probably had more paying customers on board than crew), and the race was only one lap (not giving them much time to catch up). But we still beat 'em. :)

Best part of the race: on the first upwind leg, we got to call "starboard!" on Obsession. If you've never seen a 70' Americas Cup boat dipping to avoid a 24' sport boat, it's a sight to behold. :)

The SOCKS regatta was this last weekend. We didn't do terribly well, but we had fun. :) Actually, this same regatta last year was our first one in the Melges, and thinking back to how we sailed one year ago, it's impressive how far we've come. We're still one of the slowest boats in the fleet, but we're losing by much smaller margins. :)

Our friend Liesel was on the committee boat for the regatta and took a few pictures of us as we started and finished. The first picture was taken seconds before the start -- you can see two other boats in our fleet behind us, closer to the pin. It's not a perfect start for us, but it's pretty darn good -- we have clear air in front of us, and we have no one beneath us trying to push us over the line early.


This second picture I think was taken as we crossed the finish line in the final race on Sunday. The race committee was kind enough to give us downwind finishes for the last race of each day -- that allowed us to just keep flying the kite back to Shilshole Marina.

On Saturday back at the dock after racing, I ran into Matt Goyer, a guy I used to work with at MS. He and some friends were racing on a new J24 (new to the owner and the crew, at least). I realized that I haven't seen him in awhile -- maybe since I left MS last July -- but since I read his blogs, I feel like I'm totally caught up on what he's been doing. He said he found mine (which happens to be what you're reading right now), but I'm the first to admit I don't update mine too often... :)

Update: forgot to link to the results to show you how much we didn't do terribly well. :)

urbnlivn.com is a new site from Matt, a guy I used to work with at MS.  His goal for the site: "to make it the source for all new condo and pre-sale center information" for Seattle, presumably.  Looks like he's got a bunch of great info on it already.

Subscribed.

This looks like it could be a pretty cool tool. I'm using it right now to write this post.

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