Terry Schmitt's Blog

I haven't been posting much about my sailing... I'm still doing foredeck on Cheetah and we usually sail every Wednesday in addition to the races. The PHRF Fall series has started in Jacksonville and we took a second place in race #1. Race #2 was yesterday and what a hoot! It was a Nor'easter blowing 20-25 knots all afternoon and made for some fun times. I love these conditions. There were only 5 boats in the spinnaker class. I'm sure the weather kept many boats at the dock. Wimps!

I took the Flying Scot back down to the Rudder Club on Wednesday. I got it rigged up fairly quickly, even though I left my tools at home... Grrr... No one showed up for the Wednesday night races, but John and Hoss where taking out the J/29 and asked me to tag along. It was really blowing and we probably had too large of a head sail up, but it was a blast. A wee bit wet as the river was pretty choppy and the J/29 does not have much freeboard. I really liked the boat and hope to go out on it again.

Well... The Mug Race has come and gone... It was a slow drifter for us on the North course. It took us 2 hours just to get from the start line on one side of the river to the other side! That's only 3 out of 38 miles!

We continued on, but the wind never really picked up for us. Captain Ron threw in the towel around 1:30pm and we fired up the engine for the trip home.

The wind did finally pick up in the late afternoon and the RC's came screaming in followed by the rest of the cat fleet. Many of the mono-hull boats didn't finish until 7 or 8pm. Only about half the fleet finished.

Here are a few pics that I took.

I've got a crew position in the Mug Race May 5th! It's a 38 mile race on the St. Johns River in the Jacksonville, FL area and is being put on by the Rudder Club.

Finally! I haven't sailed for about 5 years, but I'm back in the game!I've sailed a variety of different boats over the years, but hadn't sailed since we moved back to Jacksonville, FL in 2003. I found the Rudder Club on the St. Johns River and joined up about a month ago.