Naval Officer Vistan

I am currently in Houston, TX but this blog entry is about my trip to Austin, TX. Confusing I know, but I will explain it on my next blog entry (hopefully).

Manny, Arnold and I were invited to a corporate kick-off meeting in Austin, TX. After a long trip from Vermont, we arrived a resort in Austin and the first order of business was some fun. We had some ideas that it would somehow involve the lake... I initially thought it would be simply hanging out on a yacht in the lake sipping booze. I was pleasantly surprised that we were divided into 8 groups and given a sailboat. That's right, a true blue (and expensive) sailboat... and we were told we were going racing.

After a few pointers from our skipper on some basic sailboating concepts (like how to man the lines), we were off. As soon as we got out of the harbor the skipper asked who wanted to drive first. And as I was nearest the wheel at that time, I was tasked to man the helm. We practiced the concepts taught us earlier about tightening and loosening the lines and turning the boat (which surprisingly turns on a dime). Then it was time to race.

We didn't have a good run at the beginning as we were a bit off the starting line. We were a little behind a group of boats but we somehow was able to catch up. And as luck with have it (and some good driving by yours truly), we got the inside line on all but one boat going into the turning point. We turned pretty tightly near the buoy, strategically blocked the other boats, and caught a pretty decent gust of wind. There were a couple of boats that were trying pass us but we crossed the finish line ahead of them.

We had another heat, this time with me as one of the lines men. Unfortunately we finished dead last. We had great fun though, and I now understand the fascination of sailing. I am definitely going to try it again when the opportunity presents itself.

a couple of our competitors