Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Weenies on the Water

Mondays are Laser racing nights at the sailing club. The last couple of weeks, they have been having the Weenies on the Water boat show up and sell hot dogs to the post-race crowd. Kris and I got in a sail last night and shared some weenies with the Laser peeps.

It was hella hot, but very nice wind for most of the evening's sailing. I was down early and sailed downwind/upriver a bit, before saying heck with that, and turning it around to enjoy some apparent wind in my overly hot face.

Those of you not connected on Facebook with Kris or I, will possibly not be aware that it's been hitting triple digits here in the Northwest, where we are more attuned to weather that is Northwet.

I fell off and sailed back to the club, taking a couple of minutes to sit on my transomless stern and drag my feet in the water.

After docking, I fell off the end of the dock into the river and got some of nature's AC working to make it a little more bearable.

I hung around and killed an hour until Kris showed up and we launched for our own sail.

We made the downwind run past the Sellwood bridge and then tacked our way back to the club, taking about an hour and fifteen to accomplish all of this, and dodging about one hundred and fifteen speedboats.

I decided that it may be a good thing if we were allowed to shoot at the jetskis and wakeboats. Not just for us, but I think it would make their outing more exciting, too. Careful observation leads me to believe that they are attempting to live out secret James Bond water chase adventures. So, why not help bring it to life (or the alternative) for them?

I volunteer.

As we made our way back in to the club, we fell off and tacked an extra tack or two, to ensure we would trail the Lasers as they made their leeward mark rounding doo-hickey thing, and we glided in to the launching area.

I drove it a little fast at the dock and later I got pointers from the club secretary on taking some speed off before easing up to the dock. Apparently, they don't think sacrificing your wife on the bow is kosher.

Huh.

12 comments:

David said...

Yeah, I got yelled at, too, for making my wife jump off at the dock to stop two and a half tons of plastic. What? She's a sailor, too, isn't she?

The O'Sheas said...

I'm starting to think that weenies on the water has many layers of meaning in the sailing club context. And I'm sailing less than 400 lbs of plastic. :)

Smilicus said...

Hi Greg

I think they should start a beer on the water too to wash down the weenies....lol

judith said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
judith said...

Love the 007 idea!

O Docker said...

I want to know more about the Weenies on the Water dude - whose name is actually 'Dood', I think.

Floating on the hook in an idyllic BVI anchorage, trying to think of some way to earn beer money so we could quit our jobs and stay there forever, we came up with the waterborne pizza-delivery-to-your-boat scheme. We never attracted enough venture capital to make it to Phase 2 (or Phase 1, for that matter), but it remains one of my fantasy business plans.

I think it never happened because I couldn't think up a catchy name like 'Weenies on the Water'. 'Anchovies in the Anchorage' just doesn't have the same ring to it.

bonnie said...

I can't remember which of the BVI anchorages it was, but it was one of them where a nice lady & her son came up to our boat in a dinghy. Turned out they were selling homemade pies & muffins & stuff.

We bought a pie. How could we not buy a pie?

The great thing was the pie was actually DELICIOUS. It would've been enough that we were eating pie that we bought from a nice lady in a dinghy while we sat on a sailboat anchored off an island in the BVI's. But no. Scrumptious. Heavenly pie in a heavenly place.

What a vacation that was.

O Docker said...

I think the pie lady is on Anegada. But how would you like to work in a small kitchen filled with baking ovens in the BVI?

A woman in Trellis Bay makes pretty nice jewelry and peddles it from a dinghy to the boats moored at Marina Cay.

Over on Jost, in Little Harbor, a fellow who seems to be converting his profits into liquid assets tries to sell stuff whose nature we couldn't quite figure out.

I'll bet none of those dudes has the faintest notion what EOP stands for.

The O'Sheas said...

executive office of the president? educational opportunity program? equal opportunity publications? eating old pies?

judith said...

Mmmm Coconut Cream Pie! Chocolate Pie! Lemon Chess!

O Docker said...

Hmm, so much for Mr. Google.

Maybe 'EOP' isn't as universal as I thought.

Where I labor, it's dreaded End of Period - a monthly time of frenzied number crunching, tedious report writing, and great overall anxiety, when the slightest system glitch is call for the unleashing of thunderbolts from atop Olympus and widespread unhappiness throughout the land.

I think I'll suggest we add an Eating of Pies ritual.

bonnie said...

OH JEEZE. O-docker, I don't know it as "EOP", I know it as "End Of Month" or "Close Week". But we do that too. It's hideous.

There's no actual documentation of this but we on the trade finance team literally plan our vacations around these close weeks. I was lucky the 50th anniversary celebration I went to in Michigan didn't fall in the 1st week of June, I actually would not have been able to attend. It's that serious.