Sunday, September 8, 2013

Marshmallow skermishes

I was a bit worried about having any wind today. Knowing the weather is going to be beautiful usually means very little wind around here. I showed up to find Troy faithfully working on one of the boats that had suffered some damage in the previous club event. I was excited to bring a friend ,Derek, aboard and was glad to see Mike show up, so I was really hoping the wind showed up, too.

We rigged two boats and drifted our way out of the marina. After skulling around for about an hour I thought it was a good time to open the bag of marshmallows I've been hiding in my sailing bag. I came directly at the other boat achieving speeds of roughly half a knot (really slow) then turned broad side and opened fire. Derek was kind enough to keep feeding me ammo. After some return fire of soggy mallows we all realized that some wind settled in and we were actually sailing!
Proof! We had wind for like 30 minutes and it was glorious! We chased Mike and Troy for a bit until I gave up trying to catch them. At some point they dropped a gatorade bottle overboard that we recovered for later use. I handed the rudder to Derek so I could hide from the sun in the shadow of the sail. I'm such a nice friend that way.
We started heading back to the marina knowing that the wind wouldn't last long. Once it died I had renewed interest in another marshmallow strike. This time we had a secret weapon, the bottle previously recovered would be our kinetic bomb. It went mostly as planned with some shots returned. The sinker bomb was fired and a direct hit.
 It is hard to make out above, but the marshmallows float, leaving some evidence of the battles fought.