Saturday -- Travels and the Wedding

At approximately 04:00 Saturday morning (after ~ 3 hours of sleep), Olav woke me up, informing me that it was time to go the airport for what would end up being a very long day. Olav's flight out was at 06:15, and mine was at 06:45. Poor John volunteered to drive us over the airport (only a few minutes away from the villa at which we stayed). I had needed to fly out so early so that I could get back to NYC for Ted and Alyssa's wedding at 19:00 EST. As scheduled, I would arrive at JFK at 13:20...

I arrived to get into the Alitalia line at approximately 04:30. I can understand why they're practically bankrupt and losing about 2 million euros per day. There was only one attendant checking people in, and the first couple took about 30 minutes to get their boarding passes. Three other attendants came at 05:00, fortunately. I received my pass, breezed through security (short lines, not surprisingly), and sat down near my gate along with a bunch of other 505 sailors going to their appropriate homes.

My flight to Rome was pretty much uneventful. I was fortunately able to find some shot glasses in the airport there for my coworkers and nicely paid for them using my last Euro cash. Rome Fumincino airport (as did Charles de Gualle in Paris) had a pretty ridiculous shopping experience. Every major fashion label had a decently sized store. I'm curious to know what kind of traveler drops 1000 euro a Ferragamo handbag in an airport. Needless to say, it was interesting to watch people just browse.

While the Rome flight was pretty tame, my flight back to JFK was painfully long. Alitalia clearly flies much older planes than AirFrance (I had been pleased with my flight to Paris). Much smaller overhead bins, less comfortable seats, and no in-seat entertainment system. The in-flight movie was Get Smart. Bleh. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to sleep to much, and the food was pretty pathetic. I didn't even nibble on the tuna salad sandwich.

The flight to JFK took longer than scheduled. We touched down at 13:51, and even sat parked on the runway for 20 minutes. I started to get worried, as I usually do when it looks like I'm running late. Fortunately though, there were no lines at customs, and I waited for only 5 minutes for our bags to come down the tubes in the claim area. In a hurry, I opted for a cab to NYC ($60, ouch) rather than the available mass transit options (bus, subway).

I arrived at the hotel around 15:00. I was doing pretty well on time, and things were looking good. The hotel staff at the front desk informed me that my little sister had in fact delivered my tuxudo that morning. She even had it pressed! What a good sister! I bolted up to my room, dropped off my bags, and went around the corner to the closest barber shop for a trim. I ended up back in the room at 16:30, running right on time. I got dressed and walked over to where the wedding was (the very nice Essex House). Unfortunately, my bowtie practice back in DC wasn't good enough, and Phil ended up helping me out. Anyways, I made it to the wedding without a hitch. In spite of all the potential logistical hangups, I arrived perfectly. Here's a photo of the four of us in the hotel lobby.

The wedding was great. Alyssa was very pretty, and Ted was very happy. The speeches were particularly cute. I had a wonderful time, and I looked dashing in the tuxedo.

Friday -- No wind, container loading, rain, and awards

Friday was supposed to be a big day for racing. All throughout the week, forecasts for Friday had looked solid in terms of breeze (10 knots or so) as a front was to move through Mondello. Racers had all been somewhat excited going to bed Thursday night.

Upon waking up Friday, I looked outside from our villa to the bay. It was complete glass. I cursed loudly and began to make my breakfast. We arrived as usual at the club and rigged up the boats. 11:00 came around (the normal launching time), and the AP (postponement / cappuccino) flag went up. For what seemed like the 20th time, everyone grabbed another cup of coffee. Of all the days though, this was looking particularly bad in terms of breeze. There just wasn't much of it, and nothing was creeping in as it had the previous few days. In fact, the Chicago boat (the Long's) actually started to de-rig immediately upon arriving to the club.

One benefit of this lack of breeze (and this is something that Pip Pearson noted to me) was the large amount of time the competitors spent talking to each other ashore. He commented that it was good for the class and helped generate new ideas. Here's a shot of people doing exactly that. Around 13:30, people started to de-rig their boats entirely. The RC fully canceled sailing for the day a short bit later due to lack of breeze.

This early cancellation did provide one small benefit: it allowed us to begin the container loading process that much earlier. Loading the container generally takes 2 hours, and it pretty much did. I noted that we finally closed the doors at 16:25; one of the German containers finished loading a bit faster, but I was still pleased. It had started to rain right around when racing was canceled, but it wasn't much breeze at all. Note that Friday's rain was the only precipitation we had seen other than the first day of arriving in Palermo. Again, Sicily is beautiful.

Having packed the container, we then returned to the yacht club for celebratory beer (container loading is a lot of work). Fortunately, we had good help getting the eight boats, dollies, and bikes in, so it wasn't too bad. I packed in a lot of gear that I won't be using back in the U.S. (wetsuit shorts, for example). The container should arrive sometime in November hopefully.

The closing awards dinner and ceremony took place Friday night over at the villa portion of the yacht club. Each country took a group photograph of its competitors (I'll try to post the U.S. one). Team Canada was represented by just one boat, sadly. Lots of German and Aussies. A few comments on the rest of the dinner:

• No free beer at dinner. Big mistake, though I believe it helped force the postawards debauchery to move elsewhere.
• Reading of names. As with Europeans, all competitors were read off, beginning with the last place boat. Team Interstate 95 finished in 117th out of 122 boats. Certainly not the greatest finish, but we did have a DNF and DNS. I likened the reading to college graduation. Instead of saying, "Hey, I knew that guy from English class," you said, "Hey, we passed them at that mark." It took a long time, but I still think it's a good idea. Others had mixed opinions. Reading off the top 25 would probably suffice.
• Awards: All competitors received a ceramic dish. A nice touch. Mine can be used to hold spoons used for soup. It was good to see the awarding to Ian Pinnell and crew Carl Gibbons. For the 8th time, Howard Hamlin (with crew Andy Zinn) finished in 2nd. That's a pretty ridiculous statistic.
  
• Dinner: A made rush as possible. I hope future regatta organizers figure out a way to orderly serve 300+ people. The 4-station Italian operations did not work well. We actually blew out of there to go into town (Mondello) to have a "proper" seafood dinner, as we had grown tired of the usual crowding and such. We ended up drinking wine with East Coasters and Andreas' friends (Fulvio, etc.) until about midnight, had some gelato, and returned to the yacht club, only to find it pretty much deserted. Many sailors were taking early flights out of Palermo the next morning, so we assumed that many rolled home early.

Final comment: after receiving our prize, I was pulled aside by an Aussie family member who had been reading this blog. She had the link forwarded to her by another Aussie back home. She commented that it was "excellent." Good to see that I'm having such an international influence.

Thursday night

Thursday night was the International 505 Class's annual membership meeting. These meetings are always held at the World Championships so as to get as many members together as possible. Some topics that were discussed:

• Class president Pip Pearson led off the meeting with a proposal that the boat should be made simplier. He didn't outline any specifics, but this was more or less a challenge to the class. I believe his basis is that the boat is too complicated for newbies and also too expensive. It's unclear what'll become of this proposal, but it has already started some discussions among sailors. Friday in the dinghy park, some ideas were being thrown around that focused on attaching a fixed spinnaker pole to the bow so as to have an asymmetric kite (i.e., no poles, etc.).
  
• An update for the 2009 regatta at San Francisco was made. It'll be windy.
• The 2011 site was selected, with Hamilton Island, Australia beating out Thailand. Both venues would be awesome, but Australia I think is more family friendly.
• An Aussie is overhauling the International class website. I'm pleased.

Following dinner, we went over to Mondello proper for some food. I had a grilled squid. Good times, but a bit touristy.

Last day

And still no breeze at 0900...

Thursday afternoon

Thursday presented yet another day of light air. The RC postponed us ashore at 10:45, and then sent us out at 11:45. John decided to go for a haircut (not sure where this occurred, or why it couldn't wait until Monday, or why he even attempted a haircut and a beard trimming without being able to speak a word of English). I frantically called his mobile and he scurried back. We ended up making it to the course with about 20 minutes to spare. We're actually sailing about a mile from the club, which is technically too close to shore according to the class rules, but this is Italy, and complaints generally go unheard.

Anyways, we arrived out there only for the AP to go back up. We bobbed around for about 1.75 hours before the RC sent us back in. Once there, I joined an adhoc game of cricket on the beach being played by a few Aussies. As it turns out, taking a baseball stance and swinging like it was baseball worked out pretty well. I tried bowling (pitching with a straight elbow) and that worked alright, though I certainly felt some strain on my shoulder. I hope to heal in time for next year's company softball season. We were ashore for about 40 minutes before the RC finally cancelled sailing for the rest of the day.

John and I dropped the sails and finished washing everything off. I changed, hopped on my back, and rode into Mondello proper. I found a nice little ceramic shop to purchase some shot glasses for coworkers and gifts for the lovely roommates. Hopefully they'll like them.

We're back now at the club, waiting for the pasta appetizer (in 10 minutes, I hope). Following that is the Annual General Meeting of the 505 class. The last one I attended was back in Santa Cruz in 2004. Hopefully it'll be interesting. It's unlikely there'll be any major debates / discussions (like on carbon masts), but we'll see.

Dinner tonight is either going to be at the pier restaurant ("The Charleston", which sounds like some kind of old man's club where you go drink Scotch with your bond trading friends from West Egg) or the restaurant where I had the tasty grilled squids. I'll let you know how it goes.

Thursday, sigh...

The first day back from the layday at Worlds started well for Team Interstate 95. We had a really good start, getting launched out off the starting boat, pointing high and sailing fast. The breeze had come in from west of north touching about 10 knots – a great breeze compared with what we had seen so far. The breeze had shown up quite a bit later than normal – the RC kept us ashore for 2 hours with a lack of breeze postponement. The fleet now refers to the AP flag as the “cappuccino flag,” as everyone goes back to the yacht club for a cappuccino when it goes up.

Anyways, after getting off to a great start, we found ourselves probably in top 30 about 2/3 up the first beat. Then, John and I returned to our human forms and slowed dropped down through the rest of the race. We’re still losing boats upwind and catch the occasional boat or two downwind. For example, we caught 3 boats at the jibe mark by rolling them to windward (i.e., getting me up on the wire and powering over them). We seem to be pretty good at catching boats stuck in inopportune situations such as being outside at the leeward mark (during the 90 yard beat to the finish) or at the jibe mark. We finished the race back down in the 100s, our usual position. We haven’t been able to put together a great race.

Well, after a 2 hour delay in the morning and light breeze, there was no time left in the day for the second scheduled race. We had 3 races remaining over the past two days, and the breeze does not look to be cooperating. The Mediterranean Sea currently looks glassy, as usual. Tonight is the Annual General Meeting of the Int’t 505 class. I’m not sure what’s on the schedule. I may ask some questions about the international website, which is pretty poor.

Ian Pinnell and crew Gibbons (?) continue to dominate. Yesterday’s race looks to be their drop (still only a 9). Howie Hamlin and Mike Zinn are still in contention, about 20 points behind. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like we’ll see much more in terms of breeze.

Italy continues to be Italy. We dined last night at the yacht club with other US East Coast sailors. It was tasty, though certainly not as exciting as some of the other dining venues. Friday is my last full day here. We have one race and then need to start packing the container. We’ll have 8 boats going in, which makes it a pretty tight fit.

Octopus photo

People have been interested in seeing what the octopus looked like at dinner a few nights ago. Here it is. Jesse commented that "at least it was garnished with a lemon."

Yesterday was the layday. We spent the morning walking into Mondello to send postcards and getting some sun at the beach. The afternoon was spent at a private walking tour by the brother of a Fulvio. He's an architect and had worked on some of the restoration projects that Palermo has been undertaking. He knew a lot of the cultural and architectual significances of the individual buildings and piazzas throughout the city.

Sadly, it looks like it won't be able to see the cathedral at Monreale, which is supposed to be really nice. I'm also having issues finding shot glasses for coworkers. Ug.