Regatta Central

Last week we took a trip out to Maryland to visit our two oldest children. We also brought our youngest (if 23 works) for the occasion. Saturday was a milestone birthday for myself and the whole thing almost did not happen as I was supposed to shoot a wedding on the 23rd. In the last few weeks of the engagement things fell apart and it did not happen so it was off to MD. We got out there early enough on Wednesday for Tom (23) and I to ride along during a regatta in the Chesapeake Bay off of Annapolis MD.

I had been around some regattas in the British Virgin Islands a number of years ago but this was something quite different. In the BVI is was basically a single class race. This was a multi-class with different starting times and course distances that would end us all up in the Annapolis Harbor around the same time.

I took this picture after we had started our class and you can see there are at least two other classes down wind. The green buoy in the center is our turn point. You might be able to make out the red turn buoy on the left side of the image. What is really crazy was when we were had the spinnaker hoisted some of the others were making their way back.



You can see in the image to the right a returning boat coming close along our starboard side.

The boat with the red and blue spinnaker is not in our class but going the same direction.

Take a look at the image below where I have isolated the real traffic. I was shooting with a Nikon Coolpix L22 which did a nice job but even at 1/320th second exposure it did not freeze the motion and so there is some blur here.

Yep the blue and white spinnaker was not the real traffic. The returning boat split the difference between us and the bot that wasn't 30 feet away from us. Everyone took it in stride like it was nothing. Now flying planes has a lot of nautical similarities, this is really where it has to stop. We just don’t run that close to each other, at least not in opposite directions.

Anyhow it was a real blast with all the boats tacking and jibing into the harbor for the end of the race. As the boat owner does not keep his boat in Annapolis we had about 45 minutes to travel before we got it back home. While all the other boats were docked or mored and the occupants no doubt tipping back a few cold ones we had the following experience.

It just doesn’t get much better than that.


Take care... Doug