"Death's Door" Challenge Part 2

Exhausting and exhilarating is the way I would describe long distance sailboat racing.
We finished the race but out of a fleet of 45 boats, 22 didn't, and I don't blame them. The race started Saturday in a misty rain and by that night we found ourselves in bad weather with a major storm system to the South of us, and another one to the North. A number of boats were caught in them, and many dropped out then and there. Thank God nobody was hurt.

We experienced every kind of weather you could imagine, fog, rain, gusts, storms, and sitting with no wind, a hot sun, and biting flys.

But sunrise off the Door peninsula is a beautiful thing whether you've had 2-3 hours of sleep or a full night. And making it though Death's Door and knowing that our destination was only a few hours away really lifted our spirits.

We finished 2nd in our division, 13th over all. But more important was knowing that we had done it.

Bill

The Hook- Deaths Door Challenge

While the big sailboat race this weekend on Lake Michigan is the 100th running of the Chicago-Mackinaw race, a shorter but more technically difficult race is running at the same time.

The Hook, also know as the "Death's Door Challenge" sails from Racine, Wisconsin, just south of Milwaukee up to the "Death's Door" passage at the tip of the Door county peninsula, into Green Bay and across to Menomenee in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

While it is shorter than the Chicago-Mack, the navigational hazards are greater. The Death's Door passage's name fits with the fact that the area has one of the largest concentrations of shipwrecks in the Great Lakes.

I'm crewing on the Alchemist, a Catalina 380T, skippered by Steve Magennis. There are 8 of us total on the crew, and the plan is for 4 hour watches, just like tall ship navies of old.

We will leave Racine around 10am Saturday morning and be hitting the straight some time around Sunday evening or night, and hopefully pulling into Menomenee Monday morning.

Prayers would be appreciated as a stationary front is sitting over the north end of Lake Michigan and both fleets will be sailing into what could be foul weather.

I've linked the post to the Wikipedia entry on the passage for those who would like to know more.

Bill

So busy I can't get anything done

Sorry for the lack of posts lately. A series of June storms hit causing record high water on our lake and some minor flooding in our basement. Which was the perfect excuse to rip out the scary 1970's carpet. The question was what to do then, and the answer was... TILE.

I picked up a tile saw off Craig's List, and we bought 400sq ft of clearance tile from Lowes. That weighs about 2400lbs, and we had to rent a truck to get it to the house. Hey, our Lowes doesn't rent trucks, but Home Depot does!!! I wish we had gotten a picture.

So after a short vacation to Chicago where we spent 2 days at the Museum of Science an Industry, we spent the rest of our vacation learning to tile.

The thing that has been the worst about this project is that the carpet was adhesive backed, and you need to have enough of a porous surface for the tile cement to adhere. After trying various combinations of scrapers, chemical strippers, and floor sanders, I finally hit on the right tools.
An angle grinder and 6" diameter wire cup brush. Keep the area you are working on wet to minimize the sparks and dust. Unfortunately I didn't discover this until the first room was done.

The rest of the project is languishing while I get caught up on other things.

Of course if you are going to take a week off work in my case, it just means I have to work extra before and extra after I get back. So one week after getting back from vacation, I was scheduled for 4 days of intensive CAD training. You see, a few months ago I had what I like to call my "Middle Age Computer Comeuppance Moment." Nothing like getting $10k worth of new computer design software and discovering I couldn't even draw a line. However my 19yr old assistant made the software sing.

Time to go back to school.

So after 4 days of cramming my brain so full that I was useless at home, its been a week playing catchup at work again.

And tomorrow, I leave work early for a long weekend of sailing.

More on that to come....

Bill