Silver Heel Sailing

It happens every year around the middle of September—the end of the log canoe season rolls around.  The summer of sailing canoes is a bit of an enjoyable lather-rinse-repeat experience; each week the programs get the boats to the regatta, duke it out for three (give or take) races, and head home until the next Friday.  The End of Season series is, with a few exceptions, no different, except that there’s no repeating until next July.  When crews take down the fore on Sunday, that foreboding feeling that this week’s mast-lowering is merely done to create the difficulty of next week’s mast-raising fails to appear.  Somehow, though, the knowledge of being free not to raise a mast at 7:30am in a week’s time provides no comfort, because canoe crews secretly enjoy rigging, as rigging is always followed by sailing.

Happy to be rid of my extended layoff from canoe sailing, I was a bit alarmed on Friday afternoon when I realized that practically every sailor I know in DC was either gallivanting elsewhere for the weekend (Common excuses: wine and cheese tour in Vermont, coordinating Federal response to Hurricane Ike.) or otherwise disposed in Washington (Common excuses: work, flag football season opener.).  We were short of crew on the Heel, so this wasn’t the best of weekends for everyone to be occupied, and, worse for me, my prospects of getting a ride to the Shore were getting slimmer as each potential crew member got crossed off the list.  At the last minute I was able to get the ultimate favor for those of us in the car-less ranks—friend and Georgetown Sailing teammate Emilie offered to let me borrow her car for the weekend.  So even if we had to scrape for crew on Saturday morning, I would be filling my spot—thanks, Emilie.

Leaving after work ensured that traffic wouldn’t be an issue getting out to St. Michaels, so after the obligatory stop at Chick-Fil-A (Rt. 50, exit 13A—very convenient for trips to the Shore) and a pit for cheap gas and a Choco-Taco (I only give repeat business to gas stations that have Choco-Tacos in the ice cream case) across the bridge, I was soon walking up to the program’s floating home-away-from-home, the BoJan (so named for my grandparents, Bob and Janet).  I was the last to arrive, so a few people were already at the bar.  After getting settled, though, I was off to the old standby in St. Michaels, Carpenter Street Saloon (aka C-Street), along with the rest of the crew to start the weekend off right.

Stay tuned for race-by-race analysis and more from the weekend.