A cruise with Chestermere school

I did a cool cruise with a group of students from Alberta.  Their school trip was to spend a week cruising around the gulf islands.  Lucky Chestermere students huh?

Here's a video

Enjoying J24 sailing

Part of my sailing work this season has been on a J24 owned by the Vancouver Sailing Club.

Here's a video from a fun day of training with two separate crews.

Paralympic sailing article

The following is the a very good article about the Canadian Sonar team, Tingley Campbell Lutes.  They have consistently been in the top three on the world cup circuit.  This makes them the only Canadian in the olympic sailing events that I expect to come home with a medal.  The rest of the team looks good, but good results for the able bodied sailors are top 10 finishes, not standing on the podium.

The other thing this article does is address the water quality issue.  There is large amounts of raw sewage in the bay where the sailing events will take place.  This creates an obvious health issue.   Sailing specific media has talked this issue to death, but this is the first time I have seen any mention of water quality issues from any mainstream media outlet.

Good job CBC!

Here's the video:

Lee Shore's are bad

A truism in sailing is that Lee Shores should be avoided.  Traditionally rigged boats had difficulties working their way to windward.  Earlier this week there was a really good examply of this.

A pair of M32 catamaran's sailing in the Match Racing world championship event in Marstrand were in the prestart.  They sailed downwind up to a rocky shore, where the competitors used the rocky, lee shore as a barrier to prevent their competitor sailing to leeward of them and gaining the right to luff them up head to wind. One of the boats headed up violently and attempted to tack away from the lee shore, but they muffed the tack and ended up drifting down to leeward up against the shore.

A classic example of why Lee Shores should be avoided.

Here's the video