The Gator Bowl 2011

The unavoidable occurred; we are about packed and ready to leave home and... creepy neighbor (CN) appears seemingly out of nowhere. He is lurking at and around his house under construction right next to ours. Fortunately, we are about to roll so we shoosh him away and head out. The bright side is he wanted to discuss the type of fence that will soon separate his place from ours. My advice; the taller the better to which I get the tilted head puzzled look similar to what you get from the dog. It turns out the cool neighbor on the other side of CN is moving; partly due to CN. Cool neighbor got wind of CN's possible plans of not having a fence at all! Cool neighbor took matters in his own hands and.. OUT!

We are thinking of moving too, but that is a blog topic for another time.

We recently finished a Kay Scarpetta novel by Patricia Cornwell. She has a number of books in the series, the main character is a coroner in and around Richmond VA. The coroner part is pretty interesting but we are both in agreement that her writing style is just too tedious so we are happy to be done with that. For our trip to Jax we are starting a David Baldacci novel, Deliver us from Evil. We shall see. For me, the jury is out on him too, but I am keeping an open mind. I was in the mood for a Thorn book, Robert W. Hall, but our inventory is lacking.

We arrive at the Rudder Club about 2:30 after an uneventful trip. Uneventful is good when considering we are in a new/used RV.

Here we have RV row. We are at right, the Lintons center, and at left we have the John and John/designer/condo/mobile including the much sought-after faux granite countertops.

We intentionally arrived after them for the;

preferred waterfront view...except for the pesky suv's, forest of pines, ratty dock and interstate highway bridge. But hey!

It has become a mini-tradition to gather at Trent's on Friday night for dinner. Trent's is a little dive not far from the club but the beer is cheap and you can eat the food with few ramifications. I think our headcount was 22 which really makes us popular with the hostess/pissed off door cop-ette. Having no real seating choices we settled in on the outdoor patio, outdoor patio in Jax. in Dec. is a lot like the word "brisk". They have one of those gas heaters that went a long way toward keeping us comfortable, until the gas ran out. The staff seemed a little iffy on the refueling process but we had Andy Hayward in the crowd so, no problem.

Come Saturday morning, it was obvious we were going to see a nice turnout of Scot-ticians, 25 to be exact, very cool. There were also a few Snipes and Lasers, this would probably be a good intro to the video that was posted on Youtube so; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZDKiHVl1V8 Pretty cool but my advice is, don't blink.

We did three races in about 12 to 15 that was steady from the NE. Pretty sure this was the most steady I have seen at the RC. Oh yeah, there was a mess of General recalls. A strong ebb current opposing the solid breeze and you get the idea. It was a really great day of sailing with much starting practice so all is good.

Donna and Jon always do a great job with the food and this year they brought in some Cuban chow that was up to their high standard. They got on everyone's good side by handing out free beer, so there you go.

We are expecting a little warmer weather and more sun on Sunday but it seems the breeze may be a little iffy. We wake up to...

Fog...WTF

The warning signal was scheduled for 9:55, so at about 9:50, in about 1.8 knots of breeze the RC decided to bang out the first general recall of the day. Did I mention the current is flowing north against the zephyr of a breeze from the north. Hmmm. The RC strategy worked perfectly and killed enough time for the wind do build to about 4 to 5 so we try again. Blah, blah, blah, racing, racing, racing. It was a good race when it was all said and done, especially for Paul Abdullah (Thistle class champion). He managed a huge comeback to grab a bullet and widen his slight lead from Saturday. Those in hot pursuit were John Aras, Jeff Linton and Jim Egan.

The fifth and final race started out ok, but quickly landed on my personal top ten list of most frustrating races of all time. This also earned the "sailing sucks" tag on this blog post, there are more of those if you care. During the second beat the breeze was fading fast but the current was going strong, an ok combo for a shortened finish at the weather mark but not ok for a leeward finish against the flow. Nuff said.

Hearty congratulations to Paul Abdullah and his crew Alex who bested the previously mentioned group of stars! Results should be up soon on the Rudder Club website.

We FL-ians are always grateful for the company of the Northerners who come to play, the Privateer YC sent three; Rob Fowler, Bill Humphreys and Ed Craig. Ryan Malmgren jetted in from WI, while his able crew, Tom Lawton, drove the boat down from the Carolinas. I like that deal! John and John did the MD and VA rep and of course Charlie and Nancy Fowler dropped in for communion on their way south to the Keys. Despite their best efforts Wally remains a Gator!

Still chasing the Linton's, we are used to it!

Out.