Kibitzing

I haven't been sailing recently; I broke my Classic Moth a couple weeks back and then I decided to modify the daggerboard trunk, so she's been in the shop patiently enduring me hacking and glassing and sanding. The only thing sailing related I've been doing is the kibitzing about sailing; a relative easy thing to do around Annapolis.

Friend Bill Sloan was back in town. He's retired in Florida but comes back once a year to award the Eleanor Ruth Wilcox trophy to the bowwoman for the winning team in the womens Santa Maria Match Race Regatta . I had him and his wife over to the house last Sunday and he related the story behind the trophy....

Eleanor Ruth Wilcox was Bill Sloan's mother; quite an athlete, and she won that trophy at a track meet in Hawaii sometime in the 1940's. Bill remembers the trophy living under the kitchen sink with the detergent, the silver all black, when he was growing up. Upon the death of his mother, Bill rescued the trophy, got a local silversmith to replate the trophy and donated it to the Eastport YC for a "womens competition". When Eastport YC inherited the Santa Maria Cup and turned it into a women's match race regatta; the Eleanor Ruth Wilcox trophy had found a home.

I wandered down to SSA on Tuesday to watch TESOD from the deck and, of course, to kibitz with all and sundry who wandered by.

I asked Ian Burman, Naval Academy Dinghy coach, about the 2010 Intercollegiate Dinghy Nationals held by the Hoofers Club in Madison Wisconsin. Ian was in Madison for 13 days and has never, in all his sailing career, seen absolute calm condition for such an extended period of time. The only way the regatta was completed was they usually got a little breeze just before dusk.....much of the racing was conducted in the last three hours of daylight.

Sean Smith (yes the same Sean Smith that partnered with me on the Nomad sailing excursion ) also sails Chesapeake Log Canoess during the summer. He related how, for the Eastern Shore rowdies/canoeists, the Budweiser 10 oz beers (vs. the normal 12 oz) is the beer of choice. I, never having realized that there was such a thing as a Budweiser 10 oz beer, pressed Sean for more info. According to Sean, Budweiser makes the 10 oz in Houston Texas for the Texas market but it is also distributed (very selectively) in Southern and Eastern Maryland. According to the 10 oz. connoisseur's, the 10 oz Bud tastes better and stays colder longer. More on this story over Here....

And finally, Judy Gebhardt, wife of Laser Grandmaster John (also another boat putterer), related how his shorts magically appear at the washer with epoxy or paint spots all over them. I have the same problem; seeming to forget to change into appropriate "work clothes" when I'm doing some boat work and then, all of the sudden, one of my "Sunday best" has stains here and there. Drives my wife nuts as well.

Amazingly, noone dwelt too much on the slings and arrows of sailboat racing.