Next Level Sailing

I've spent 4 of the last 5 weekends sailing either on Oahu or to and from there.  It's crazy how much you can learn when spending a lot of time doing something.  I learned this back in the triathlon days and it is great to see again through my own experiences.  Here is a little recap of the sailing:

The first weekend, I sailed with two others from Kauai to Oahu.  It was quite surreal to be in the middle of the channel in the middle of the night in complete darkness without any site of land.  This was a new experience for me.  It was actually quite emotional and such a cool experience.  I had a lot of time to think and reflect on life.  I feel like I made some breakthroughs with my personal self on this trip.  The trip as a whole took a little over a day with a stop at the Waikiki Yacht Club for a break for breakfast along the way as we sailed to Kaneohe as our final destination.  Sailing into Kaneohe is so beautiful!  It was a great bay for sailing and the mountains are quite unreal.  I never imagined I would find a place on Oahu I could see myself living, but if I had to...this would be it.

The second weekend was the Lipton Cup.  One boat from each yacht club gets together to see who is the fastest.  This year, only three boats showed up, but it was some fun competition.  The races took place outside Kaneohe Bay in the open ocean.  This was my first experience with open ocean racing and it was great!  Over the course or two days, we did 5 races.  We came close to second place a couple times, but in the end we finished in third.  Hey, at least we finished on the podium!

The third weekend was the Summer Series.  This was 15 races in 3 days.  It's crazy how tired this stuff can make you!  It is nonstop action, fixing issues, constant changes and so much excitement!  These races took place inside the bay so there was a lot less swell action compared to the previous weekend.  There were 27 boats on the start line.  If you have not experienced something like this, it is out of this world.  Having that many boats jockey for position is quite nerve-wracking!  We had some great starts and even led the start in a few races, but overall we finished in the bottom half of the boats.  We sure had fun even if we weren't finishing in the top.  I met some awesome new people at this race and look forward to getting to know new friends!

The forth and last week was the Channel Race back to Kauai.  We start outside Kaneohe bay and sail back to Nawiliwili.  Generally this is a fast race (~10 hours), but the winds were weird so it took over 14 hours.  We hit a couple dead spots and squalls so that slowed us down quite a bit. The race ended with a pretty fun party where we danced and drank all night!  It's been a long time since I didn't get home till 4am!

This is a view from the place we stayed in Kaneohe when we are not on the boat

Sometimes you just have to take a selfie at the dock!

The crew

Gotta double fist it when the drinks are free!

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