I spoke with Uncle Joe back in March about this posting. After a few adult drinks, he sort of went along with the idea. This is really the celebration of the friendships we have formed in the EC12 class rather than the hyping of another class.
Our Santa Barbara field trip this year is to San Francisco, Spreckels Lake for the NCR to be exact. Tom Germer has joined in the stupidity of this journey along with last year's participants: Rick West, Dave Ramos, Ken Shaw and me. We had a few additional interested parties. But, real life sometimes gets in the way of toy boats.
Our boats are already in San Fran. Tom sent his to his brother's house while we shipped ours via Forward Air to their depot in Brisbane, CA. Rick and I picked up the 317lb box last Monday with no problem. It's quite a sight to see a pro use a forklift to place that box inside Rick's Yukon. The box made it coast to coast in four days and didn't get lost in Los Angeles this year.
The box fits in the vehicle, but we couldn't latch the back hatch. We set off the Rick's house after placing a handful of rubber straps to hold the hatch shut. Now that arrangement worked fine on the highway. But, Rick's road is just short of vertical. I had this picture in my mind of us hitting a bump and having the box slide out the back doing it's best impression of the Jamaican bob sled team all the way down Dardenelle Avenue. Thankfully, my fears were not realized and the box arrived safe and sound in his car port.
I'll be heading back to SF next week with the rest of the gang. The regatta is on 9/10 & 9/11, which is a Tuesday and Wednesday. My guess is there will be plenty of breeze at Spreckels Lake, but it will be whirly and swirly through the trees. At last count, there were 24 boats registered, which is huge for the S/B's.
We have an extra bedroom in our house if anybody wants to come hang out. There is apparently a little something happening in the bay with some kick ass catamarans.