I took thursday off work and took my nephew (aka RYM poster child) to the county fair with my mother. It was really great fun. Henry made it all worthwhile by turning to me and saying ”Aunty Ashley I am having so much fun - followed by a hug - several times I might add! My nephew will break a lot of hearts if he keeps that up

The fair was great fun with ferris wheels, children performing, merry go rounds, lots of animals on show being judged including cows, goats, pigs, kangeroos, chickens, ducks, rabbits perfect for a 2 1/2 year old.

Have a great 4th July weekend.

After spending 8 hours in the swimming pool on tuesday and a few hours on wednesday my hands were very wrinkly! What was I doing you ask..

Well as part of the divemaster exams you have to be able to demonstrate 21 key scuba skills so that you can be called upon by an instructor to demonstrate them to students. You have to have 68 points to pass and each skill demonstration is graded out of 5. My instructor Bruce insists on at least a 4 on each skill and will continue drilling you until you get 4. I ended up with 98 out of a possible 105 points it was hard work and tiring for myself, the other divemaster student and my instructor but it was also very rewarding.

There is also one more test which is called gear exchange. You and your buddy who you basically haven’t worked with before have to sit on the bottom of the pool and exchange your fins, weight belt, BCD and mask. That in itself takes some team work but here is the kicker you are doing this while buddy breathing. Which for non scuba divers is when you have one tank and one 2nd stage and you take two deep breaths of air and then pass the octopus to your partner to take two breaths. While you don’t have the octopus you must breath out. So basically you are task loaded in the extreme. I must admit it took us two goes. The first time we got all the way to the last article to exchange - the mask - before we decided between us we couldn’t hack it anymore. The second time we were smarter and did the mask first as it is the hardest I think. We also took more time the second time and kept a better rythm of handing off the air.

I did a few hours of boat work wednesday afternoon and was on the water match racing for a few hours in the evening. A good match racing practice with some lively discussion afterwards. It was blowing pretty hard up to 30 knots which is hard work in a J22 so we didn’t fly kites.

I wasn’t able to get my act together to take 116 Flashman up to Huntington last week so instead I went up on 106 Numa Boa. We had 5 days of great close racing in mostly flat water number 1 weather. The camping was fun and relaxing despite a few days of nearly freezing conditions. The smores were delicous as were all the great meals put together by Mark and Gilles and their other halves. I enjoyed just having to show up with a sleeping bag and tent and getting to go sailing without all the organisational effort. Everyone learnt more about how to sail Moores and I managed to measure quite a few rig set ups so I can decide what to do with ours. Just had some good friends over for dinner and I am racing friday, a wedding on saturday and racing on sunday.

Have a great rest of the week.

Since I got back from Italy I did
the Spinnaker Cup,
worked on the Saga 409 and we went out for our first test sail,
started sailing in Wednesday night match racing practice races in Tiburon on J22s,
did some Friday nights on the moore 24,
worked with my brother in his yard,
went to the premiere of UP the Pixar animated movie (one of our crew is a fix animator of the movie),
had a great time with my nephew and mother at the beach,
took my nephew to a BBQ at some friends,
been to Monterey for two days of diving and learning how to take apart regulators and tank valves and worked on a bunch of boats. So it has been a busy last three weeks.

Right now I am in Long Beach for a Grade 3 match racing event called Ficker Cup sailing with Bruce Stone. We had practice yesterday against Sally Barkow with Dave Perry coaching. Today we had 5 races and ended up winning 3 and losing 2. So we now are tied for second in points but are third in a count back out of 5 boats. Amazingly for us we beat Dave Perry (the guy who writes the rule books!). Tomorrow will be the second round robin so we hope to keep up the good results.

Today I had to take apart an organiser and the ball bearings were not captive. Luckily I knew this so opened it up over a box. The ball bearings were numerous and they are about 1/8 inch diameter so they are small. So the dilemma becomes how do you get them back into the sheaves. The key is shaving cream! you put the shaving cream in the bearing race and then put the bearings into the shaving cream. It is sticky enough that it holds them all in place while you reassemble the hardware. Then when you are all done just wash the cream out with water. Voila!

I ran across this useful tool on the UK website. See http://www.ukhalsey.com/LearningCenter/irc.asp

After Como we drove over to Venice and stayed with the parents of a sailing friend of mine. I really liked Venice a lot especially running around on the water buses. Talking to people it seems like you either really like or really dislike Venice. So after a day and half wondering around very hot it was off to London for the night to stay with my parents and make an Italian feast. My little brother Myles surprised me by coming home a day earlier so that we would get to hang out. He is now getting ready for Navy interviews having spent the last 8 months on a super yacht fishing in South America.

Next stop was Mill Valley for the night before getting on the Quest 33 for the spinnaker cup down the coast to Monterey. Luckily we got in just as the wind was dying at around 3am. An off watch asleep and drive back to Mill Valley by midday for some time with my nephew and nieces before a week of work.

The Italian vacation was really great fun. The next 12 weeks are going to be busy with work and getting ready for going south the southern ocean!

A very relaxing day in Como with no tourist sites just some strolling around in a beautiful area of Italy. The yellow place in the first photo above the lake is the youth hostel.

This really is beautiful country. The top photo is the view from the youth hostel over the lake. Took 5 hours to drive from Cinque Terre so tomorrow is exploring the lakes day. We did a quick trip over to Lugano so Becca could say she had been to Switzerland!