Tbird333
What can I say? It was a crazy weekend so I’m just gonna dump a bunch of photos up here. Supposedly I’m supposed to do some real article on it for our fleet publication because Fleet President Farber has nominated me Fleet Historian because I am apparently an expert on T-bird history. Yeah, the youngest guy who is the newest and greenest to T-birds should be historian. Makes perfect sense.
An incident occurred with ‘Tuna. Did they hit us, or did we hit them? Or was this just a case of ’shit happens’? Only time will tell or not tell. As it stands now I believe a protest was filed against Cloud Dancing. How could a boat named Cloud Dancing hurt anybody, I ask you? In my mind it’s a pretty cut-and-dry case of RRS 20.9. Check the damage:
Cloud Dancing
‘Tuna
My walk down to the boat.
This is the view of our new slip from the University bridge.
Why do I love the University Bridge so much?
Instruments for collecting data, no doubt. Stored beneath the University Bridge.
Boating culture is misogynist, or maybe it’s the culture at large.
Custom foam.
THE NEW PIMP LAIR!
This our mechanism for launching Jim into the water.
Notice the wet shorts. When we first set this up I looked to my left and I noticed that Jim was doing a perfect swan dive into the water. Read his account:
I have a new T-Bird neighbor at my slip. He was asking how I went about getting a really good hull scrub accomplished at the dock. I jumped at the chance to show my expertise and promptly grabbed the block and tackle that I’d rigged precisely for this endeavor. I was in the process of showing him how to connect the spinnaker halyard to an adjacent dock cleat and yard the boat over to about 25 degrees to better access the keel for scrubbing, when…..the line parted. I was standing over the cleat on the finger pier hauling the line in when boom…the small loop connecting the block to the cleat broke. So there I am, fully loaded line in hand, with nothing holding that fully loaded line to the dock anymore…oops. I’m not a Physics Major, but I did get a quick lesson in: force, torque, load and the righting moment of a 4000lb vessel with a 2000lb keel. If anyone ever asks you, 195 lbs is not enough weight to heel a 4000lb Tbird over at an angle of 25 degrees. It all happened very quickly, and suddenly I found myself with two options: a clumsy feet first entry, or a stylish dive to further exemplify my yachting prowess to my new neighbor. I opted for the dive (of course) and was later told it would have scored at least an 8.5 in an actual competition.
So yes, I have had the chance to sample the water temperature in Portage Bay this season, while simultaneously extolling the virtues of my vast boat maintenance and rigging knowledge, all in the same maneuver…lucky guy, huh?
Alyssa killin’ it at the helm.
I don’t know what these things are called, but they’re essentially miniature 12-meters that one person sits inside of like a kayak and steer the boats with their feet. All these (rich, old) dudes from SYC were out racing in perfect conditions on Monday on Lake Union. Here you can see them ready to go at the Center for Wooden Boats. One of their course boats was the Team New Zealand 2000 tenders, that actually moors by my old dock and one of these days I’ll get a pic up on the blogger.
I was struck by a cyclist while running. She took a blind left into me, biking irresponsibly, and I got six stitches.
Not near as bad as this guy.
After a real struggle even making it to the start with the weedwacker outboard that Jim so generously lent us and no air, the wind finally filled in and the race committee got a race off. Thrilling for our team as for most of us it was our first one-design start. Here are the results:
Looks like I’m doing too much sailing and not enough blogging.
Informal sparring and beer-drinking with Valkyrie and Barbaree.
Center Sound race from Shilshole to Three Tree Point and back. I crewed on Barbaree. Crazy weather with little squalls and plenty of dead air.
Taking the nephews out on Lake Union.
2008 is the 50th anniversary of the Thunderbird. http://www.tbird50years.com/ has some great old photos that people are uploading to help celebrate the event. Our boat’s first name was Hulujimama, owned by Hugh Townsend. The name is a combination of Hugh, Louis, Jim, and Mama I believe which are of course the names members of the Townsend family. These pictures show the original deck and rig, which were eventually replaced in the 80s. 
…and I was in the position of Alinghi or BMW Oracle what would I do? What will the Deed of Gift match look like? A 90-foot catamaran has never been tried with foils. But Hydroptere, the 60-foot foiling catamaran, is faster than anything else you could call a multihull. Looking at the C-Class catamaran championship, otherwise known as the “Little America’s Cup”, you have to note that although foilers have been tried the current champion is a standard non-foiling cat. Another question: Fixed wing, or soft sails? In the big boat mismatch of America’s Cup 1988 against Australia the Stars and Stripes team had two catamarans, one with a fixed wing and one with standard sails. My guess is that BMW Oracle might have an A boat that foils and a B boat that is standard, as well as having soft or hard rig options for each. Because that’s what I would do.
America’s Cup update: Larry Ellison’s crack legal team has won the off-the-water match in New York and Justice Herman Cahn has acknowledged BMW Oracle Racing as the legitimate Challenger of Record. Defenders Alinghi have decided not to appeal and are ready to “settle it on the water,” as Ernesto Bertarelli has responded to the decision. So for the fans that means an insane multihull race hopefully in July of this year, but the exact date has not been settled. Thank you Justice Cahn, the face of grand prix sailboat racing.
Because it’s slow right now in the world of sailing, or at least the blogs and sites I visit, I will give you Romeo, a black wolf that lives in Juneau, AK where I grew up. Beautiful beast. The RC44 of wildlife. 
