Fukk Throttle
Today started as a normal, routine day in my life. I woke up in my sweet "penthouse" room which is the entire top floor of our house in Annapolis, butt-fuck early in the morning, and left the house not ten minutes after being awake in foul-weather gear. Clean and I got up so early to trek down to our boat to replace its fuel filters in the cold rain. Like I said, just another average morning.
As a crew, we were pretty set to ensure today was much better than yesterday, coverage wise. It was definitely a get-up-and-do-work-bitch kind of day, and I think we all had that mentality heading out to the race course.
The sun absolutely sucked at life today, by the way; it was cloudy, foggy, hazy, rainy, and a little cold. It was absolutely depressing and unhealthy for my soul, but at least there was a little more wind than we expected, blowing about 12 -15 knots. If the wind had been stronger, the weather conditions surely would have been worthwhile.
The first race got off pretty quickly, with the majority of the boats hanging out towards to middle of the line. I saw this clearly from my new position on the bow where I had scrambled up to be ready to fend off of a race committee boat. Our engines had gone out while we were positioned directly to the right of the starting line, which could have gone VERY bad for us. Fortunately, our engines, which were being fed fuel through our BRAND NEW FUEL FILTERS, kicked back in to save our happy asses. Don’t worry about missing it, though, because we got our driver’s reaction to the whole shitshow on video.
During the first race, we were hopping around the boat, untangling cables, trying not to get in Mer’s way so she could get some great shots, trying to maintain chatter through the mic for the live broadcast viewers, looking for a writing utensil, struggling to get access to the high traffic forums on Sailing Anarchy, and doing the best we could to stay braced for impact and keep all limbs inside the moving vehicle. Our driver even did an impressive gymnastic stunt to pee off the stern without falling in.
The first race ended with a strong push from the top of the fleet finishers. It was cool to see the aggressive competitors push themselves to their maximum to get to the finish first after such a haphazard day yesterday. Uka Uka came in impressively strong, followed shortly by Hardesty on the Atlantis boat and Joefly, who interestingly enough has a caricature of the Jackson 5 painted on his mainsail. Mer and I have been singing Jackson 5 songs for the past 2 days, and if yu have any requests, just send them along through the thread or the justin.tv chat while we are broadcasting live.
Between the two races that took place today, there was a long pause. I went and sat up on the bow of our boat to look at what all the teams were doing and try to figure out what the wind was going to do. I also wanted to have early knowledge of which end of the line was going to be favored. As I saw a lot of teams practice a few short legs starting towards the pin end, I decided that the action would most likely take place on that end of the line. Well, the RC FINALLY got a race sequence kicked off, and we stationed ourselves down at the pin to get some good footage. The race sequence played out, but within one minute to the start, a reset was called!! Wow … we had waited so long to get this race started and as soon as we were amped to watch an aggressive start, the sequence was reset. The worst part was that because of our low-visibility and the lack of communication, we didn’t have a whole lot of knowledge as to when the race would actually get going. So we waited. Again.
This is when Clean and Petey decided it was time to get some rum drinks, and thanks to our newest good friend Ellie Riggs, we got some!! Thanks so much, Ellie! I think this made for more interesting commentary, in the least. Let’s just say that I only got further confused. I think people sometimes forget how dumb I can be. Wait until you see the videos of the race after the rum came out, it is some pretty good footage.
I was so busy plugging stats into my Blackberry that it was hard to get a good perspective on the course as we raced from one end to the other. I didn’t know it was possible to hang onto a captain’s chair with the death grip and still type at the same time. Well, I guess it’s not since apparently I misspelled "Full Throttle" as "Fukk Throttle". I like to think of it as "Fuck throttle, we don’t need that shiz cause we’re a rocket today." Do rockets have throttles? I don’t know, but Fukk Throttle performed pretty consistently towards the top today, with a 5th and 11th place, putting them in 4th Overall with 31 points. That is great considering there are so many star players throughout this fleet.
Racing on the Chesapeake Bay is very tricky, especially this time of year, but I don’t want to harp on it too much. Talking about how the Chesapeake Bay is tricky and inconsistent is like talking about how cool I am. It’s a given; enough said. I would not have been surprised if the sun had come up following a hail storm today. That shit happens all the time. I remember last winter when it snowed one day and was 75 degrees the next. These are the patterns a racer should be prepared for when coming out for anything along the C-peake Bay, whether the upper bay where Annapolis is located, or the lower bay, which is where I grew up in a city actually named Chesapeake.
To wrap up my perspective, I would just like to point out that I did not upchuck off of the boat in the rough water today. See, last night was not Bora’s birthday party, so I was at a pretty high level of sobriety when today began. Additionally, after watching the videos from today, I have to FINALLY admit that I do indeed sound pretty Valley. I have been told this for years, but I refused to believe it. So like, I am totally amped up about the like, racing tomorrow because it’s going to be soooooo cool. Like crazy, dude.
Speaking of TOMORROW, we have a SICK boat to broadcast from, where we will be able to work freely and easily from as many computers as we feel like bringing. I can’t wait to improve our coverage simply by adding a new boat to our OTWA mini fleet in Annapolis. Let’s get it done! We will be working as fast as possible to update the chat and forum, so please stay logged in or keep checking back in for updates.
You can check out all of race 3 and 4 starting with this clip, and results are here. The contests start tomorrow from a bunch of our sponsors, with a new set of carbon Melges mainsail battens from RBS Battens the first of the bunch. Go to the Day 3 thread for more info, and watch the live feed starting at 1030 EST. Contests will be announced in both places – ya gotta tune in to win! And today’s wrap-up viddy…
Thanks to Latis Yachting Solutions, Velocitek, Point Loma Outfitting, Ullman Sails Newport Beach, Saving Sailing, RBS Battens, Ocean Sailing Academy, Eastport Yachts, Charleston Harbor Access, and Justin.TV.
-Katie
