Last 500
The end is in sight and not a moment too soon. It's been a very quick season which has been both a blessing and a curse and I find myself wishing for about 4 extra weeks. On the other hand, given the amount of last minute work that I've been doing and late nights and early mornings I'm also wishing that Regionals started today.
Seat racing came out fairly well and the results were what I predicted though the finishes were a lot closer than I thought they'd be. I'm encouraged by the amount of speed that the boat seems to have found and I'm looking forward to putting the final touches on it this week before relaxing a bit going into next week.
I've been going over my boats with a fine toothed comb. Last year we had some equipment issues that hurt us during races and while we've managed to avoid that bugaboo this year with more focused pre-race checks I still don't want to run the risk of having something preventable happening during a heat or final.
This last weekend I took all the shoes and tracks home to work them over and replace some broken pieces. The tracks have been a severe headache but I'm hoping that I found a solution. I pulled all the old tape and string off the shoes, gave them a good look over, tightened down some of the foot boards and replaced the heel ties. Now we shouldn't get quizzical looks from officials when we drop the boat down on a side presenting a random mess of string, zip ties, etc. Everything is looking uniform.
The final adjustments will come this weekend when I do the final rigging check. I'm looking forward to this although I know that my math skills are sometimes a little hazy. Thankfully I found my old calculator which should prevent me from doing silly things. I've also go someone who will double check all of my calculations and work just in case I start to get punchy.
Monday we pick up our borrowed boat from one of the local universities which leaves me three days to get it checked out. I'm glad it's a four instead of an eight and the last time I saw it, she was in good condition. Still it doesn't hurt to give it one final check.
I've been looking at my notes trying to make sure that nothing gets overlooked. My pack is jammed full of notes, figures and other scrawl and notation. They say that the devil is in the details. If that's true I've definitely been going head to head with him.
Seat racing came out fairly well and the results were what I predicted though the finishes were a lot closer than I thought they'd be. I'm encouraged by the amount of speed that the boat seems to have found and I'm looking forward to putting the final touches on it this week before relaxing a bit going into next week.
I've been going over my boats with a fine toothed comb. Last year we had some equipment issues that hurt us during races and while we've managed to avoid that bugaboo this year with more focused pre-race checks I still don't want to run the risk of having something preventable happening during a heat or final.
This last weekend I took all the shoes and tracks home to work them over and replace some broken pieces. The tracks have been a severe headache but I'm hoping that I found a solution. I pulled all the old tape and string off the shoes, gave them a good look over, tightened down some of the foot boards and replaced the heel ties. Now we shouldn't get quizzical looks from officials when we drop the boat down on a side presenting a random mess of string, zip ties, etc. Everything is looking uniform.
The final adjustments will come this weekend when I do the final rigging check. I'm looking forward to this although I know that my math skills are sometimes a little hazy. Thankfully I found my old calculator which should prevent me from doing silly things. I've also go someone who will double check all of my calculations and work just in case I start to get punchy.
Monday we pick up our borrowed boat from one of the local universities which leaves me three days to get it checked out. I'm glad it's a four instead of an eight and the last time I saw it, she was in good condition. Still it doesn't hurt to give it one final check.
I've been looking at my notes trying to make sure that nothing gets overlooked. My pack is jammed full of notes, figures and other scrawl and notation. They say that the devil is in the details. If that's true I've definitely been going head to head with him.
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