October has been a crazy busy month so far. Two weekends ago, I went to Louisville, KY to visit friends and participate in our annual Phoenix Hill Tavern Chili Cookoff. I’ve been participating in this tradition now for over 10 years. I love that I get to catch up with my friends, see the leaves changing color and have a blast working our booth for Juke Joint Chili. I had a fantastic time, but I was ready to get back home
Last weekend, Corey participated in the River Romp Sailing Regatta hosted by the Edison Sailing Center. Back in June, he went to a week-long Edison Sailing Center sailing camp where he learned to sail an Opti sailboat. Corey still participates in the center’s sailing program once a week on Fort Myers Beach and was invited to sail in the regatta.
The regatta was held on the Caloosahachee River at the Edison Sailing Center’s river location. Since the location was near the Legacy Harbour Marina, we decided to take Blue Turtle there and it would allow us to dinghy over to the the regatta. I was impressed with Legacy Marina, with it’s modern concrete floating docks and tiki bar. They also are located next door to Joe’s Crab Shack, where we dined 2 nights in a row. Staying at Legacy turned out to be a fantastic idea for the regatta since we noticed that the race took place out in the water, far from shore. You couldn’t see much from the beach, but as we took our dinghy we were able to be in the thick of things.
On Saturday, Randy took Corey over to the beach to get registered and settled. He dinghy’d back to the marina to pick me up. By the time we got back to the beach, the race was ready to start. The kids had to put their boats in the water and get them set up for sailing. There were somewhere around 300+ kids participating from all over. We saw sailing groups from Tampa and Orlando to Coconut Grove and Miami. It was quite a site to see all the sails up along the beach as we came into shore. There were around 150 in the Greenies race (which was Corey) with the Opti’s, another 100 or so with the more advanced Opti’s and another 100 in the bigger kids (10+) on the lasers.
The wind that morning wasn’t great and so we ended up towing Corey to the starting line, like many other kids. Once they got lined up, it was ready to race! The first race for Corey was just ok. He ended up placing in the 70’s (out of 150). This wasn’t his fault, he just didn’t know where to go and how the racing worked. By the second race, he had things figured out. He raced 4 times that day and ended up in 42nd position out of 150 kids! He did awesome and it was so much fun to follow him and watch him and the other kids (all called “Greenies” because of their newness to the sport) try to come around markers and tack to get in position to finish.
On Sunday, once Randy came to get me, we met the boats out on the water. The wind was non-existent that morning and so the kids were grouped on their coach’s boats and were swimming and having fun. We waited with the kids, hoping for the wind to pick up. Finally, the call came out on the radio that everyone was heading into shore for postponement on shore. We knew this meant that the kids wouldn’t race due to the early ending time that day. Once we heard the call, Randy drove us past Corey and told him to head into shore. For some reason, the was a race Corey did win. Somehow, he made it to shore before anyone else! I guess it’s true what they say, that it’s “all about the start.”
Shortly after we all headed to shore, it was time to head back to Snook Bight. On the way home, we decided to run the generator so I could begin to clean up the boat and organize. Before starting the gen, Randy decided checked the oil level. Half-way home, he randomly checked on the engines and gen and noticed that there was oil EVERYWHERE in the engine room. We pulled aside on the river and dropped anchor so we could see what the issue was. We realized that he hadn’t screwed the oil cap completely back on the generator. We were both relieved that it wasn’t the main engine but also bummed about the huge mess in the engine room. We pulled up anchor and headed home and decided we’d deal with the engine room later. That’s a whole other story…
Here are a few more photos from the regatta
