So we are at camp now. Mel and Greg are signed up for their events. This includes bocce ball, beach golf, and volleyball. Serious stuff. After just two days so far of socializing after a few weeks of cruising minimally-habited islands, Mel and Greg are a bit…exhausted. At least naturalist Mel has finally stopped shouting, “Person!” and adding it to her count, like she was doing with the turtles and birds on Conception Island. She just can’t keep it up with 300 boats in town.
Mel posted a lot of pics from the Variety Show on her BurnettsAhoy Facebook page, and a few are repeated below. Multiple clever songs were sung. Mel is very mad at her family for not allowing her to get the cruising kids together and do a tribute to the Marvin and the Muppaphones act. All she would need is a soft hammer and the soft, fluffy heads of six kids of parents she just met, and her family stopped her. Geez.
Since we rolled into Georgetown with seven months of cruising experience and 3300 miles under our belts, what do we think we are qualified to do? Race the regatta, of course! Because we really learned a lot tacking those…12 times since we started this thing. Greg and Mel have been nerding it up with polar charts and trigonometry, trying to figure out tack angles and stuff. Of course, we realized all of this is futile after going through a couple of questions with the race handicappers: “What kind of (non-spinnaker) sails do you have?” “The jib and the main, what came with the boat.” “Anything else? Code zero?” “No.” “(Pause)….Okay…How much do you displace with all of the stuff onboard?” “Hold on…we are laughing…(Mel spies an 88-key Yamaha keyboard under a pile of full storage tubs)…uh, just add 4000 pounds…”
We have heard there is a guy in the harbor that is rationing his water so that his tanks are precisely empty for the race, and many are leaving their dinghys on their anchors to lighten their loads. Don’t think we’ll be up there with them. Sounds like a pain in the butt. Also, we forgot to take in our trash. How many racecars you know have a giant trash bag in the trunk? That’ll be us!
Of course, Tommy is unimpressed with any of our preparations. We are a family that, previous to this, flew a lot in small planes. “The slow one” cruised at 90 kts. In fact, the only race of large vehicles Mel has ever seen is the Reno Air Races, with speeds up to 450 kts. So our hoping to get up to 12 kts prompts comments like this: “Mom, you can’t expect me to get excited watching snails race. It’s not going to happen.”
We are leaving the kids ashore.
Tomorrow we do the short race of 9 nm, and Wed we do the long one of 18 nm. We have located two other crew. This is mainly so Mel doesn’t have to hear Greg scream, “What are you doing? Pull it like a man!” Of course, this means it is very likely that after the whole thing is over, she will have to initiate two new members into “Sea Story Club.”
Wish us luck!
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