First,
I've been spending my weekends sailing my boat. Practicing on tacks, gybes, and pitch poling on reaches :-). I have also done some work on the old dog - replaced some string and made my boat water tight (so I hope!).
Second,
The manual labor I've been doing was for a plane ticket to the East coast for the IC North Americans in beautiful Ram Island, Marion, MA. I managed to scrape some money together last minute by working some construction for Del. It wasn't easy, but I got my act together and on Thursday, July 19t, I was on a plane to unfamiliar waters. It was awesome though! I met some amazing canoe sailors and all of them were really nice people. I also saw some amazing canoes and sailed in some awesome conditions (15-18 knots of wind and nice chop (just like home!)). The racing was close, with 13 boats on the line. Unfortunately, I was plagued with some gear issues - I did not have my own boat out there, instead was graciously lent one. I had to drop out of two races and I had to limp to the finish of one race putting me in last place (what can you expect with a unfamiliar boat?). But after six races, I came in a respectable 9th place. Iwas honored to sail against some serious canoe heads. Several times I managed to dial in and started to move very quickly, which was rather hard with a boat that was unknown to me. But all in all, I felt good about my results and had a lot of fun.
