Go Team Korea!

Last week I got the dream opportunity to fly down to San Diego to represent GU Energy in a VIP experience with Team Korea at the Americas Cup World Series. This was a great opportunity for me to share the GU gospel with the top professionals in my industry. As well this was a chance to see the boats that I have been obsessing about for the past year and the chance to meet the guys that have my dream job that I have been obsessing about since I was a kid. Ok Ok you get it! I was stoked!The team was amazing from the skipper Chris Draper to Troy, Matt, Mark, Chris B.on the boat, and the guys on the shore crew Tom, Sean, Dan, Cameron, and Sebastian. No primadonna personalities on this team, everyone was very much hands on, dedicated to the cause and friendly as could be. I took full advantage of my situation and asked everyone a million questions. By the end of the day my brain was swollen with information and I had a permanent smile.Oh yeah did I mention I got to go for a ride on the Americas Cup 45 (AC45)! No big deal got to go for twenty minute of so ride. The cat did 15 knots in 7-8 knots of wind! When the guys set the code 0 sail, the acceleration was on par with a jet liner taking off! I have felt the jolt before on my 505, laser and Aussie 18, but man this boat keeps accelerating and accelerating! We did a few laps around the course and dialed up with another boat before I had to hand my helmet off to Brian Vaughn the owner of GU. He got the best ride of the day, a practice race with five other boats in some extremely close and fast paced racing. My view was not all that bad sitting on the bow of the Team Korea's support rib ripping along struggling to keep up with the fleet. Good Times! It has been four days and I still have not slept very well just thinking about the experience. Needless to say the guys on the boat work their butts off on the water and it very apparent that the GU products will give them a huge advantage over the competition.

I can't wait until the teams come to the bay! I wish Team Korea the best of luck and I look forward to working with and or hanging out with the guys in the future. I want to thank Brian at GU Energy for Supporting me over the years and involving me in such an amazing opportunity. I also want to thank Chris Draper and the rest of the guys on Team Korea for their great hospitality and for my smile, that wont go away!

Great Pumpkin!

Pumpkins?

So there we were in the top three out of two hundred and thirty boats sailing in the 2011 Richmond Yacht Clubs Great Pumpkin Regatta Pursuit race! This was the fourth time I made an attempt at this race and in the past I took it a bit to serious and it sucked the fun out of it. It is a long pursuit race from Richmond around Alcatraz Island, around Angel Island and then back to Richmond with the chance of picking up floating pumpkins that subtract time from your score. All four years that I have done it has been light and fluky wind with a ton of current and i have never seen a pumpkin This year was not much different, though my attitude was different. This year I did the event on Luther's J24 "Little Wing," with Marnie, myself and of course Luther. Short handed and plenty of liquid refreshments. Somehow with in the first hour of the race we found ourselves in the lead of the race looking like we were going to be the hero's of the day! We had our kite up the beer was rations were still plentiful and the rest of the fleet was stuck in a hole at the start! With in minutes we found our selves caught off guard. the wind shut down and the current was ripping, oh yeah and the entire fleet caught and passed us...
We still had a good attitude and made a sacrifice to the wind gods and pushed on. Over the next hour we tacked a few hundred time as well we did a dozen sets and drops only to move a half mile. Our hard work and sacrifices payed off by the time we rounded the front of angle island the breeze was on!15+! One more sacrifice to the wind gods and we rounded Alcatraz in a hurry with the finish line in sight, oh yeah and I finally saw a pumpkin! Unfortunately all of the sacrifices and wind dances could not make up for the fact that we chose the wrong way to go around the islands. We finished third in the J-24 fleet and 151st out of 230. It's all about next year!