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.