A Good Day For Tomato People

I work at a unique company in La Grange, IL called Storandt, Pan Margolis. It's a great ad agency with a unique culture and obviously now I'm in full suck-up mode. Anyway, our logo is a tomato and we are sometimes called Tomato people. Well, here are a couple of pictures of the logo flying from our mast in front of Rio. Thanks to our coaches for being willing to buzz around taking pictures of us on a practice day.

Practice we did today. At the swimming venue last night we got caught in a frontal passage. Thunder, lightning and a lot of wind. Then it rained like crazy. Classic southern hemisphere cold front. Down here they come from the SW where at home they tend to come from the NW. At home, the wind usually comes out of the NE for a while and then goes east (right on the compass) and dies in the days after the front passes. Down here, it's the exact opposite. The front came through and where the wind had been from the N, NW yesterday, today it was from SW. It showed signs of going left (into the South) but most of the time it was blowing about 16-18 out of the SW...which is a direction we're told it hardly if ever blows from in Winter. How many time have you heard, "It never blows from that direction" at a regatta? We went out and did windward-lewards for about 2 hours. We lined up against the Brazilians and they seemed ever so slightly faster than we did. They also seemed to be sailing a little twistier, traveler higher and sheet maybe a little more eased. It was choppy out there and also puffy and also shifty. I don't think we should do anything differently. By the time the racing starts, the conditions will be different and it's better if we sail like we're comfortable sailing. Things will work out just fine speedwise.

Other than that, the day was a typical regatta day. Sometimes it's kind of unfortunate that in sailing you can go to lots of neat places and see nothing but the waterfront. For instance it seems unlikely we'll see the famous beaches while we're here. There's just no time for much sightseeing and we're here to do a job. We did luck out with the traffic today though. Our trip home which took 90 minutes yesterday, took only 60 minutes today. That meant we could get back to the swimming earlier than last night. We also toured the venue for basketball and watched a little of the Cuban women practice. They are very fast and appear athletic. Their coach runs a tight ship...he's barking all the time. The US girls we flew here with believe this team might be the toughest in their draw. We hope we can check them out.

The Most Fun Moment of The Day...sponsored by Camryn and Sabrina!!
I'm going to go with the continuation of yesterday's drama of David and Robert Scheidt. Today David and Jody and actually met him. Now, for non-sailors this is roughtly similar in magnitude for we sailors to meeting Micheal Jordan. Turns out Robert Scheidt is very warm, very willing to talk and seems to be a pretty nice guy. That in no way takes away from the fact that he remains a God. I watched him rig his laser and take it out. He didn't even need the rigging diagram!

Tomorrow:
We finish measurement. We only need to weigh the boat and check the angle of the centerboard dangle. We're going sailing again too. Good luck to all the Lightning guys heading to Athens for the World Championship. We're going to watch your results. Hope you have as much fun as we're having down here.