In the pre-dawn hours on Sunday morning at Proper Course World Headquarters, the temperature fell to almost 40 degrees below freezing. When the sun came up we were treated to this unusual view of "sea smoke" over the bay.
The fleet captain of the Newport Laser fleet cancelled our racing on Sunday because he felt it would be a bit too chilly for racing.
On Monday morning, it was only just below zero degrees Fahrenheit at sunrise and we could see that Mount Hope Bay was covered in ice.
On Wednesday the sailing team from Roger Williams University posted the photo below on their Facebook page, with this comment...
First day of sailing at home last year: March 17.
First day of sailing at home this year: February 17.
And it was awesome!
(Not confirmed, but possibly the earliest start date in the last decade.
Good for them. RWU is on the other side of the bay from us. Proper Course World Headquarters is somewhere on that ridge, a tad to the right of the dinghies.
I went sailing "at home" (i.e. in Rhode Island) on Wednesday too.
I sailed my Laser in Newport along with a friend in his RS Aero.
I was hoping to stage a repeat of this epic photo of the first launch of an RS Aero in New England waters in 2015.
So we blasted around Brenton Cove enjoying the balmy 45 degree weather in a chunky 12-17 mph south-westerly.
At least I was blasting around in my Laser. My companion in the RS Aero spent a lot of time doing something more useful like practicing his starts by holding station on buoys and sailing slowly and sailing backwards and other such nonsense that he thinks will help him beat me on the start line at the RS Aero US Nationals in the Gorge this year. Ha!
Life is too short to sail slowly on purpose.
There was another guy out sailing a Laser too. Apparently he likes to come down to Sail Newport one or two afternoons a week for some Laser practice at this time of year, so I may well go sail with him some days over the coming weeks.
It was an exhilarating afternoon. Especially exhilarating when getting splashed in the face by the icy cold water on wild planing reaches. Even more exhilarating when I realized the neck of my drysuit has stretched a bit and the icy cold water was going down my neck. O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!
And so to the Coddington Brewery for some French onion soup and a pulled pork sandwich with curly fries washed down with a couple of glasses of IPA.
Gratuitous photo of
pulled pork sandwich with curly fries
at Coddington Brewery
stolen without permission from Yelp
purely to keep Baydog happy.
I felt a bit achy when I woke up this morning.
I went for a 6 mile run on the East Bay Bike Path this morning.
I think I'll take a nap now.
14 comments:
Thanks, Tillerman
Forty degrees below, wow!
Oh wait, that's forty degrees below freezing, not below zero, fahrenheit. I think you were using some creative accounting there to solicit undue amounts of sympathy and unfairly sway readers who may not have read your blog's prospectus.
Be careful, the Securities and Exchange Commission is very sensitive about that sort of thing.
One of my readers accused me yesterday of occasionally being "Anglo-centric" which I took as an extreme compliment. In Real English we used to call minus 8 degrees Fahrenheit "40 degrees of frost." I didn't use that expression because not all my American readers are familiar with Real English.
Forty degrees of frost?
I don't know about that. I think the SEC examiners would still find you guilty of cooking the books.
If you're using the ruse of being 'Real English' to sneak those forty degrees past us, then you must abandon this fahrenheit nonsense and adopt real English degrees, in which case you're suffering from only 22 degrees of frost. And probably only six degrees of Kevin Bacon.
It is true that since this Real Englishman left Real England the country has gone to the dogs and adopted the metric system, halal KFC, body wash, trickle down economics and Polish as a second language.
But 40 degrees of frost will always be as English as the Archers, real gravy, Bird's custard and Lower Slaughter.
Whilst here in Sydney the air temperature is 294 K and the water temperature is 535 R. There's a chance of rain during our race this afternoon and it may dribble down the back of my tee shirt. If it does rain, the harbour water may get down to 8 degrees Admiralty.
The forecast is for no icebergs and winds from somewhere off Botany Bay.
MW
Whilst! So many years since I heard that lovely word.
Some Americans say "whilst" should never be used in American English. Whilst many English think "whilst" is synonymous with whereas. While many others disagree.
http://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-5498,00.html
It's complicated.
I think I'm a lot more comfortable with 'whilst' than with Bird's Custard.
There I was, hoping for a bite about "degrees Admiralty" and "whilst" takes your fancy.
It didn't rain during the race, so the water stayed at 41 degrees Twaddell and I've taken an unassailable lead in the Cowry Cup.
MW
Whist I was going to mention degrees Admiralty, I decided to take another tack. Are they a real thing or is this some Aussie joke that nobody else understands like "What kind of music do kangaroos listen to?"
Admiralty degrees seem to be quite real and acknowledged even here in the states.
Thank you O Docker. Good to see you are back to your old form.
Degrees Admiralty is a measure of seawater density. In a previous life I had to convert degrees Twaddell read from a pusser's issue hydrometer to degrees Admiralty and sg. After heavy rain at my end of the harbour the hydrometer could sink because the fresh water floated on the saltwater.
I always adjust my toe strap according to the water density on the day.
MW
Fascinating Barubi. I did not know that. I learn so much from my clever readers.
The comments are so much wiser than the posts on this blog.
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