Last weekend was a sailboat race called "Race Your House". It's put on every year by the Sloop Tavern Yacht Club. The only entry requirement is that you have to be full time live-aboards, which we are, so we figured we'd try it.

We convinced our friends Heather, Rosie and Christy to come out on what turned out to be a cold, foggy, rather low wind day. These turned out to not be ideal sailing conditions for us, especially the low wind part.

After a terrifying start - what with the high number of other boats (46 boats signed up) in a small area, the low wind making it hard for us to make upwind progress toward the starting line, and the fact that this was our first ever race - we found some open space to work in, and slowly made our way upwind to the first mark.

After rounding the mark, we headed back downwind. This turned out to be pretty slow going, as what little wind we did have disappeared for a while. Luckily, we did still have the current with us, so even though our knot meter said 0.0 knots, we were actually still doing about 0.5 knots toward the next mark.

Eventually we did make it around the second mark and then the wind picked up a little as we shot back upwind, through the path of what seemed like a hundred other boats, and across the finish line!

We didn't win, but we finished without hitting anybody or sinking our house, and we learned a lot, and had fun.

So now we're ready to come back next year and dominate!

Posted 10/26/2013