Slip shopping, Steve Earle, sailboat racing–It doesn’t get any better than this!

I had a great weekend. Friday night I kicked back with the wife and kids. Saturday morning I got the kids up, got them dressed, and then headed out to give mom a break. We took Dad over to Pier 121 to shop for slips for his new boat. It was windy and cold but the kids had fun looking at the boats and it was exciting looking at slips knowing there’s a boat in Marina del Rey with Dad’s name on it.

Saturday afternoon Dave rolled in to town. He came down for the Steve Earle show. It’s always good to see Dave. He played with the kiddos and we got to talk and swap music. He also brought his Apple powerbook and he showed me a few cool tidbits in OS X. It got me psyched up about the G4 we appropriated to use as part of our internal KM efforts.

Now, that right there would be a great weekend. But Sunday Dad and I headed over to Lake Ray Hubbard for the alumni sail at “ntssweb”. But they were running a regatta and weren’t doing the alumni sail. (Normally, folks that have taken classes there can sail with other former students and instructors on Sunday afternoons on the J22’s for a reasonable price. Good stuff). So Dad and I ended up crewing on a couple of the boats. Dad got on an Irwin 30 and I got on an S2 7.3.

It was a great day for sailing. 60 degrees or so with a stiff 14 to 18 knot wind. Unfortunately for me on the S2, we were a little overpowered. We reefed the 150 Genoa to about 75 and eventually even less but we still had too much heel sailing upwind. Still, I got good practice working the jib sheets under race conditions, setting the whisker pole, and handling a self-furling headsail. The boat was immaculate and the skipper, John, was friendly and helpful.

All of this and I still managed to get in good quality time with the kiddos. An awesome weekend for sure.