(written tuesday night)
long week but a good week.
staying on a friends boat in marina del rey. catalina 30. nice boat. 1/2 mile from cal yacht club where the regatta will held.
played in santa monica on tuesday. have been working up in koreatown (downtown la), manhatten beach, and today in long beach. have been mostly reading and reviewing documents. thought i retired from my hardware and software install business a while ago, but today that experience came in handy, as i solved some good hardware problems that compaq (i mean hp) lead us into. at least i'm earning my keep while i'm out here :-)
sailed last thursday in the starlight series. 3 races. had a complete rookie -- one of the guys i'm working with out here who lives on a boat on the next dock over at marina del rey. sailed, and windsurfed before , but never raced and never sailed a star. was a little green the first of three races, but got better as the afternoon grew, and we finished 6th in the last race to finish 10th out of 25 for the night. pretty happy, especially with a rookie crew.
went to the dodgers-phils game friday. saw a good game. bad pitching. lots of hitting. two homers by marquis grissom, and one by shawn green gave the dodgers a pretty good lead, a grand slammy by pat burrell in the top of the 8th put the phils up by a run... only to have it erased by a 3-run mark grudzalalalalanek dinger in the bottom of the inning. dodgers won. had my beer and peanuts. good time was had by all.
raced in the king of spain -- now i know why they call it the king of pain -- regatta. 75 stars last weekend. light (5-10 knots) and lumpy. sailed very poorly -- all four races. did better saturday than sunday. had a decent crew, just couldn't get our act together. not going to mince words. we sucked! boat's fine, works well and is pretty fast. just kept sailing away from the breeze, which is never a good idea. lots of guys had very tough regattas. won by a relatively unknown 24 year old sailor from ireland. he bested the stacked fleet of olympians and world chamipons (many of whom were in the cheap seats with us most of the regatta!!!!)
played tourist yesterday. went to universal studios for the afternoon. did the backlot tram tour, and went on some of the rides. saw a special effects show. pretty good. back to the future ride was an imax film in a bumpy delorean with 7 other smelly sweaty people. really cool ride. not for the faint of stomach. they had a backdraft special effects exhibit. very cool. blew up a whole warehouse -- while we were in it! started getting a little hot. but i live to tell the tale :-) Terminator 2:3D exhibit was way cool. plenty of good pyrotechnics, and the 3d effects were AWESOME. very loud. i loved it. apparently, the 3 year old girl next to me didn't like it as much as i did. she had her head buried in her mother's stomach for the whole show.... came back, did laundry.
had tacos and beers in long beach tonight with a sailor friend from boston, and her calif. sailor boyfriend.
tomorrow, heading back down to long beach hopefully to finish the hardware stuff, and do some more document reviewing. andy's trying to score tickets to a local music event. could be cool. otherwise, we'll probably hit some bar in venice beach.
thursday is registration day at cal yacht club. that's when i get my sails measured, my boat weighed, my rig measured, and all the nice stickers put all over my boat. eventually, i should get a few nautica t-shirts and hats (spoils) for my troubles. hopefully chris and i will go out for the thursday night series again. he's pretty hooked, which the local Marina Del Rey fleet members like to hear!
ron flies in after all the excitement friday night. don't worry. i'm gonna make him get up nice and early on saturday to put another coat of teflon/wax on the boat before the practice race.
kelly flies in next week (i think it's tuesday, but i'll make sure to look at my calendar between now and then).
homesick? well, just a little, but i've got my computer, my new kyocera smartphone, my car and my boat, so it could be much worse.
not sure how much i'm going to be able to report during the worlds, but i'll do my best. meanwhile, you can keep tabs on me here: http://www.starworlds2002.com
hopefully i'll be closer to the top than the bottom!
g'night.