Why Sailors Don't Like to Race

Let's face it, most sailors don't race, they like sailing as a lower stress sport. Ask those who prefer to daysail or putter about why they don't race and you get, "I don't know the rules", and "There's too much yelling" and "I'm afraid I'm going to hit someone".

Well what about some racing in traditional sail boats. Surely that's got to be more genteel. Like this video of the traditional Salcombe Yawls of England.



Wow, utter mayhem! The yelling is so loud you can hear it a couple hundred meters away, against the wind. Add a major dose of the wince factor as we watch the entire fleet try to criss cross each other, short tacking inshore, against the current. There is another video of the always interesting Salcombe Yawls buried back in the archives of this blog.

World Cup; USA 1, Algeria 0

I took leave of work to watch this at home. F..king unbelievable! With the Yanks, the skill may sometimes be lacking but the heart is always out there.

I turned on the TV 4 minutes in. Immediately, USA back Jay DeMerit whiffed on a ball inside the box, the Algerian collected and clanged a zinger off the top bar. Whew! Double Whew! At the 20 minutes mark, there was Dempsey sneaking up the back post to put in a brilliant goal.... Wait! Offsides! Not another goal disallowed! Friggin unbelievable! And the frenetic pace of Red, White, and Blue all during the second half when it was known that England had the one goal lead over Slovenia. Dempsey, wide open, another clanger off the far post and he collected the rebound only to knock it wide.........groan, Altidore, Buddle, almost as one on a header right to the hands of the Algerian keeper........AArgh!!!!, Michael Bradley on a free kick, zinging around the wall right into the hands of the keeper...Sh..t!!!!, Dempsey, another swerver punched away by the keeper...my left arm punching the air only to be withdrawn.. another disappointment.... Altidore, parked in front of the goal, knocks one over the top.... Groan.. Jozy...Jozy., face in hands, curses..........

And when all seemed lost; 1 minute into injury time, USA keeper Howard heaves the ball up to midfield for Donovan, to Altidore on the wing, to Dempsey in front of the keeper, Dempsey crashing a redirect into the desperate keeper who could only punch it away to a sprinting Donovan who, zap, exclamation point!, zing, punched it in for the winner..Exclamation point!!!!! Me, some kook all alone, hands up, sprinting around the TV room, hooting and hollering while, Sammy, my old canine buddy looks on, puzzled.

2 and half minutes left, 90 minutes finished, only injury time remaining, tie Algeria and you go home, bye bye, board that flight back to the USA.... and they get it! they finally close the deal, they get the f...king goal that puts them through.....

F...king unbelievable!!!!!

Yanks of the match.

Forget the morons of the media who are always looking for the goal scorers......

Clint Dempsey, amazing workrate, took an elbow, bleeding from the nose at the end of the match, always pressing, always probing... if he hadn't pressured keeper Rais Ouheb Mbouli on that last goal sequence, Landon wouldn't had the rebound. Dave Kelly, Mr. Fulham, this ones for you......

and

Jay DeMerit - excepting his miscue at 4 minutes, he stepped up the rest of the game. A physical, no nonsense presence on D, settled in to deny Algeria many opportunities, and when we subbed in strikers for D in the second half we needed our three backs to be there and they were. We all know, when it comes down to championships, big D, defense is the key.

Ghana next.....

Vamos USA....

Vamos USA

"America the Beautiful" sung at one of the men's urinal's at the World Cup......

Dodging the bullet..... until Saturday

Here in the Mid Atlantic USA, we've been in a very wet period. We've had a string of N'easters in December. These are low pressure systems, carrying a lot of moisture, that usually originate in the Gulf of Mexico and then track up the Eastern Seaboard. They are called N'Easters because the counter clockwise flow brings strong winds from the NE quadrant. In Annapolis, the N'Easters of December were dumping a lot of rain but leaving the snow in Pennsylvania or further north in Massachusetts. That is until this weekend! We got a doozy of a snowstorm on Saturday.

I wandered out early on Sunday morning. The light around daybreak was not really enough for movie making on my digicam. My sister who lives in the mountains above Denver would be scoffing at this puny snowfall (or even my sailing buddies up in New England); but for us in the Mid Atlantic it's a big deal.