Another great year and another bunch of cool photos despite spending more time doing video. I was surprised looking back on how many good ones I got. Here they are:
US Sailing Leadership Forum in San Diego
Open House Regatta Memorial Day Weekend at Fishing Bay Yacht Club.
Wolf Trap Light House on the delivery to Southern Bay Race Week.
Jackson Creek Sunset post J/70 practice
July 4th Fireworks at the River
East Carolina Sunset at the UNC game.
Attended the wedding of Blake and Julia in Deltaville on what would have been a cloudy weekend had Blake and Julia not created their own sunshine. I did a little photography of the groomsmen getting ready and riding the boat over to the venue.
Congrats Blake & Julia!
Some photos of shooting off Fireworks by the Piankatank on Saturday night. All photos taken with a Nikon D7000 Fish eye 10.5mm lens F5 8-10 second exposures ISO 800.
This was the scene as the sun was setting behind the 288 bridge on the James River this evening. Such a nice night on a weeknight for a cruise!
Fishing Bay Yacht Club‘s first ever Open House Regatta was Saturday. This year we tried something new and replaced a distance race for the bigger boats-only with declining participation with a shorter distance race for all boats held at the club and on surrounding waters. It was cooling being part of the group that came up with the ideas last November and seeing it carried out and how well it went and how great of a time everyone had.
The goal of the event was to have racing at the club – since it’s centrally located where we all like to go anyway, and it’s a holiday weekend so everyone is down at the river. We also wanted to involve all of our boats and to invite friends to come racing with us in some casual racing. We finished it up with a raft up and dinner/band in the evening. Caroline Garrett, Elizabeth Staas, Len Guenther, Mark Hayes and Matt Braun and all of the other volunteers did a great job making the ideas a reality.
I sailed a Front Runner and introduced fellow member Christin Lipscomb and her boyfriend Mike Walsh to the boat as my crew. It was my first time on the boat in nearly a year.
The race was a progressive start race – meaning the slowest boats start first and the fastest boats start last and whoever crosses the finish line first wins. The different start times handicap the boats based on their speed. There was a second progressive start for the >22′ boats which sailed an even longer course.
Our race went alright. We didn’t have the best first leg and weren’t able to catch the breeze that allowed the boats ahead to really stretch out and not get caught in a wind hole further back. We had fun and still managed a 6th place and 3rd Front Runner to finish. There were a few other fun moments like where we were unsure which side of the mark we were to round and had boats going both ways.
After racing we put up the boat and joined the raft up of the bigger boats as they finished. The goal was to make a sunflower where we complete the circle of boats, but we fell short a few boats and ended up with a crescent. Still it was a fun time having everyone rafted up together hopping between boats and catchup up with everyone and seeing how their races went.
Once we had most of the boats rafted up – I went up the nearly 70′ mast on Destiny to get a picture.
Post-raft up I bumped into a Flying Scot sailor at the dock and sprained my ankle which left me laid up icing it for the rest of the evening.
Saturday I celebrated the wedding of my sailing buddies Mark Stephens and Melissa Orndorff. The wedding was held at Hermitage Hill Farm and Stables near Waynesboro, VA. Here are some of my favorite photos:
My date to this wedding was a real nag:
Of course I had the GoPro up in a tower simultaneously taking video and stills:
Some of the sailing crowd
This is also the first real photography opportunity I’ve had since I’ve switched to using back button focus on the D7000. I generally liked it. My biggest fear was that I’d try to hand the camera to a non-photographer or someone would pick it up to take a picture and either get out of focus pictures or just get frustrated with it. I’m looking forward to using this more and I really think it helped my hit % of properly focused pictures.
View the rest of the photos here.
What a year 2013 was! I always seemed to be able to take some amazing pictures when I wasn’t expecting to – including some great ones on just an iPhone. Here are my favorites from 2013:
Mad Hatter during the Moonlight Race at Fishing Bay Yacht Club 6/23/2013
Dogwood Dell Fireworks with the Carrilon. 7/4/2013
Sunset Laser Sail 7/26/2013
Richmond Skyline at Night 12/15/2013
Smith Point Light House during the Smith Point Race at FBYC 8/25/2013
Sunset panoramic of ECU’s football stadium during the FAU game 9/6/2013
Snow covered roof tops at Snowshoe 2/9/2013
Laser practice 4/7/2013
Orange Coffee Pot Regatta in Surf City New Jersey 6/2/2013
Jaimie and Chris Wedding 10/16/2013
A few shots of the Richmond skyline all lit up this evening.
I had seen pictures of Richmond from this vantage point for years and never knew how to get there. So today, despite the 33-degree weather and winds, I made my way to the Manchester Flood Wall and checked out the awesome vantage point of the city. Had it not been so cold, I probably would have explored a little more. I will definitely be back in warmer weather.
This weekend I was the event chair for Chesapeake Bay Laser Masters Championship at Fishing Bay Yacht Club. This is the 9th year I’ve been the event chair and by now I’ve gotten a pretty good gameplan and a great team of volunteers to help execute it. And of course it could not have gone more smoothly from the food to the race committee to the social activities – everything went off without a hitch for 42 competitors.
A complete wrap-up of the event can be found here including more pictures and results. I’ll have some videos of the sailing and the paddle board competition later this week.
Some of my favorite pictures:
watching the America’s Cup on the screen I rigged up.
