Sunday, July 20, 2008

Heyitwasgreat Writing Project Wrap-up

One more entry for this month's group writing project Heyitwasgreat from Dr J, a fellow Laser Master sailor, who says he was inspired to start his blog Favored End by reading Proper Course. Oh geeze, I always feel a little guilty when my muddled ramblings here inspire someone to do something they may not otherwise have done. Oh well.

Dr J's article is It was a dark and windy night and is about a spectacular light show sailing in the Gulf Stream.

Other entries in the project were...

Christy wrote a story about a magical beer can race Hooray for Team LaVita.

Sunday was great for Manfred Schreiber who sailed his Bull 7000 in the annual club regatta and came first on corrected time in the 36 boat fleet.

Captain JP told us a story about sailing the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers and of a moment on the first night when It was magic.

Steve Manson shared some of his philosophy about why we race and the meaning of competition in Sailing Flow.

David Anderson told us all about his Megabyte adventures at the High Sierra Regatta and admitted that Heyitwasgreat Noreallyitwas even though he was beaten by a Laser.

Derek Jackson wrote about a day when he was racing his Sunfish "in the zone" and concluded that the reason was that It's Got To Be The McLube. By the way congratulations to Derek who last week finished in second place at the Sunfish North American Championship sailed on Lake Erie, and was also elected President of the US Sunfish Class Association. Quite a week!

Thanks to everyone who contributed to the project. Now what subject shall we choose for August? Hmmm.

Update: Thanks to Carol Anne for pointing out that I ought also to include the stories that inspired the subject of this project.

The sailor who came up with the title was odocker who left this comment on a post of mine...

I had nearly the same day recently, except that it had nothing to do with racing or regattas.

No nemesis, no victories, no shrewd reading of the shifts. The only fleet we left behind was the local flight of whitecaps.

We'd been motoring through gobs of leftover chop on a windless Monterey Bay. Two hours from Santa Cruz, the famous afternoon winds came up. And up, and up, and up.

The sails came out, and we began to move. And move, and move, and move.

Spray blasted us, but it was the kind you don't care about. Perfect breeze, perfect sky, perfect destination, perfect seafood dinner awaiting us ashore.

Back at the office the next week, I told people, "heyitwasgreat", when they asked how the trip went.

For the non-sailors, there was no way to describe the magic of that simple reach into a new harbor or the satisfaction of slaying the sea monsters and delivering Mrs. Skeptic safely there.

It had been one of Those Days.
The comment was triggered by my post about one of my rare regatta wins, Just One of Those Days.

And Carol Anne suggested Heyitwasgreat would be a good subject for this month's project and also gave us a great example herself with her three posts about a peak experience with Team Zorro, parts One, Two and Three.

3 comments:

Carol Anne said...

I do think you should have included the blog posts that inspired this writing project as part of it. Yeah, I know, they were already written before the project officially launched. But there's no way I could have created a new, additional heyitwasgreat post on top of what I'd just written a couple of weeks before.

Zen said...

Crimaney, I really have to stay in more and keep up with these blogs, I missed out again.

Zen said...

Ok now I have the RSS hookup, sweet!

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