Regatta & Family Visit

Last weekend was the KYC "Bill Volk Regatta" which is a series of sailboat races held on consecutive days. I volunteered to be the official photographer and the yacht club rounded up a powerboat and captain for me.  That was a new experience as I had no knowledge of sailboat racing and Capt. Tom only had seen a couple of races. So with some intensive coaching on where we could be and when, we set out Saturday afternoon.

I was extremely glad I purchased some waterproof camera bags and rain covers - it turned out I needed all of these.  Capt. Tom had a nice 22' fishing boat, but the sea state was rough enough that everything on board got hit with the sea spray.  Despite this, the photos turned out well and I ended up filling a 32 GB card before returning mid-afternoon.

I returned to find my brother had brought his family out for the day.  Given the schedule of events surrounding the regatta, we couldn't go sailing, but we did find a few moments to take them out to see the boat before joining us for drinks in The Bilge (KYC's lower bar) and a find dinner prepared by the members.

Fighting the sea, trying to remain upright and brace myself , and the several hours of intensive photography landed me 724 photos from the racing, but that meant that after my brother returned home, I had 724 to work up... I ended up with 225 "keepers" and finished the processing around 1:00 AM, but I was exhausted.  I opted out of photography on Sunday and instead, Vicky and I set out for our first sail by ourselves.  We sailed across the bay past the racers, and returned, but with only two of us on-board, photography took a back seat.

Once back at KYC, I photographed some of the post racing exuberance, and then stuck around until all the protests were finished before catching a few of the winners.

Finally, the water was calm enough for us to head out to the boat after the celebration and catch a sunset photo from the water.  It was an incredible and exhausting weekend.