What now you ask

To pick up where the story left off, Adam and I successfully sailed Frisland up the Alligator river leaving Bellhaven at O-gawd-hundred and picked up Alan Witt and Andrew just north of the Alligator River Bridge (which is on channel 13 not 9 by the way) late Saturday afternoon. Then after crossing the Albermarle Saturday night we continued our way up and arrived in Coinjock Sunday before noon. Continuing into the Pungo river area we motor sailed up the windy river and navigated the numerous bridges and even went through the Great Bridge Lock that dropped us down a somewhat disappointing 12inches.



On the home stretch to Hampton we got an up close and personal look at the VA waterfront industry before sailing past Portsmouth and Norfolk and the Theodore Roosevelt Norfolk Naval Station. After crossing Hampton Roads we pulled into a slip right next to the Hampton Marina Hotel, settled her in and hit the local bar for some drinks. We also met up with Adam's girflfriend Julie here who would accompany us on the final stretch to Crown Point.

Alan and Andrew departed here and we really enjoyed having them on board to help us with the journey. Adam, Julie and I shoved off around 6am and with Julie still sleeping, we hoisted sail over the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel. We bore off North with a south wind and Julie awoke to be handed the wheel while Adam and I set the spinnaker which we happily flew with the favored wind. I conked out around this point in the quarter berth and woke to Adam's voice on the walkie talkie next to me telling me to fire up old faithful so we could pinch it up past a channel marker that we over stood. I asked where we were and like magic Crown Point was dead ahead and we pulled in within minutes. What a nap. Upon arriving, we began the task of unloading EVERYTHING from the boat in preparation for the hauling. After all was removed she had lost a full 6 or 7 inches on her draft. It took two heaping truckloads to transport it all to Ian's garage.

Tuesday was spent at Ian's Dad's place on the York river doing some wake boarding and wed. morning I sorted all the stuff in the garage cataloging stuff we are keeping and other stuff for sale. Adam and I made it back to Raleigh late Wed night.

In case I have not mentioned yet, Frisland is the boat that Adam and Ian recently purchased and that will be home for Adam, Ian, Anna and I on our 3 year circumnavigation that begins in November of 2009. The project is called EYE (Expedition in Youth Education) and was developed by Adam and his friends while at William and Mary. Time changes things and the original crew of 8 or 9 has been paired down to just 4 but the goals are the same. To circumnavigate and connect with schools in the US in a pen pal type relationship hopefully utilizing technology to allow us to produce monthly documentaries of our travels as well as update blogs and send emails.

A month of sailing

Well, its been a while since I have done much more than sail up the east coast. This month I have sailed from Key Largo, FL to Tybee island, GA then I hopped aboard Frisland in Beaufort, SC with Adam and Ian who left from Fort Lauderdale the weekend prior.

Tomorrow I am headed back out to Belhaven where we left the boat on Tuesday and will be completing the move to Crown Point Marina in Virgina. Where we will haul the boat for the summer. Pictures can be found on the NORSA blog. I'll be sure to fill in all the details upon my return.

Tybee Carnage

Alan called in today to check on the status of Frisland, but he also had some Tybee 500 updates.

So after Day 1 of the 2008 Tybee 500 Team Velocity was sitting in 3rd place. After Day 2 they had fallen back in the standings, but still within an hour of the leader. The major catastrophe for the day occurred when Captain Trey fell off the boat and broke the rudder linkage, so Alan had to grab the rudders, one in each hand, and go recover Trey from the chop. And to top it all off this was caught on video from a helicopter!

I'll keep an eye out for the video and put it up here...it sounds like a blockbuster.

Rolex Video

Training for Ironman continues. Tybee approaches. Exams are almost over. The summer is on its way. Parents are in Cedar Key this weekend for the Boat meet with the CS20 and my mom will finally get to try out HER boat.

In other news, my awesome crew Hudson made this sweet video with footage from the Rolex Regatta. Take a look.

Training

Training is in full swing for the to-be Ironmaner's for the upcoming Louisville Ironman in August. Last weekend we did a 116 miler to Virgilina. This weekend, Mike and I drove over to Chapel Hill to ride with Sandybottom and her friend Kim Ring and we did a nice 43mile ride around Jordan lake averaging a cool 15mph. Yesterday I got in a mile at the pool before a thunderstorm rolled over Raleigh. With 20 weeks left to go, it is training "prime time".

In other news, good luck to NORSA member Julie Brockman who is running in the Boston Marathon RIGHT NOW and her support crew, namely Adam Domanski.

Welcome to Virgilina

Team NORSA rides again. Adam has the report on the Team NORSA Blog. Also check out Tim's Pics.

"On Sunday, April 13th, NORSA cyclists Alan Stewart, Mike Rhodes, Tim Josey, and Adam Domanski successfully completed the epic Raleigh to Virgilina, VA road ride - a 116 mile trip from central North Carolina, north to the Virginia border town of Virgilina, and back.

NORSA had attempted the trip back in December but was hampered by 40 degree temperatures and cold rain. The cyclists made it only halfway to Virgilina and turned back at the town of Stem, NC. Virgilina remained in their sights however; and April 13th proved to be the day when the weather and everyone's schedules cooperated.", and Adam said it best,

"The only disappointment from the trip was for Alan and Adam, who experienced a painful revelation of exactly how far the Louisville Ironman will be."

Here are some GREAT pictures.

The Tybee Approaches

The Tybee 500 is nearly upon Trey and I once again. We have liquidated used parts from Trey's Garage in hopes of scraping together some extra cash and have been calling in all of our sponsors for help with the hotels, gas and boat expenses this year. We have some great sponsors this year including Dry Inc. that will be donating dry-shits, T-shirts and team collared shirts. Very nice. McLube has given us some hot new product to try out on the hull. WilderGFX is back with us again this year as is Atlantic Boat and Supply and FRE Robline. Also with us is Murrays who also helped my Dad and I with some hardware on Dawn Patrol for the EC. Even with all that it is still a great challenge to keep funding in the green and we are busting our butts. Anyone near the eastern shore of florida or SC should not hesitate to come out to the finish or Start of one of the legs. Here are some shots from the Tybee last year. Can't wait.

International Rolex Regatta 2008

Back from the International Rolex Regatta in St. Thomas and back to the grind. Trey and I flew down to the virgin islands to participate in this cool race for the second time. This time, Trey raced with another sailor friend of ours John Casey an experienced cat sailor and multiple year winner of the Tybee 500 in past years. They raced on a 22 foot Supercat catamaran with a modified "tall rig". I raced with our sponsors son Hudson on a Hobie 16. Here we are on the second day of racing.

Friday was very rough and very windy. Seas 5-7 feet and winds gusting to the high 20s. Hudson and I made to the start of the first race, a 13 mile distance race, but about 15 min. in a gust pitch-poled us and we went straight into turtle (completely upside down) where we promptly lost a rudder pin to the deep. With one rudder, we righted the boat and headed in by necessity. It was a good call and many other beachcats had also headed in that day.

Trey and JC on the suffered worse luck. They were cut off by a cruising trimaran just after the start and with F18s above and below them at the downwind start, pitch-poled badly. They tore their jib and lost their mast rotator. Nonetheless they completed the first race but retired from the second unable to sail to windward effectively without the jib that had to be taken down. With an 18 boat fleet of beachcats. We were both taken out of contention on the first day. Oh well.

Here Trey and JC after getting their Jib repaired and finally getting somewhere on the last day of racing.

On Saturday, I got in 2 races with rock star crew, Hudson before we flipped in a downwind mark rounding and had trouble righting the boat with water in our mast. We retired after a long struggle to get back upright. Trey and JC blew out a second jib this day on the first race and went in for repairs but did not come back out.

Sunday, Hudson was recovering from some burned legs from trapeezing all day and I crewed for another friend of ours, Mark Chong on his I-20. We did alright but mostly just had fun. Trey and JC had more problems when their wire Jib halyard blew up on them on the last upwind leg. Sigh.

We took Sunday evening off and went down to a small public beach bay for some food and swimming. I had a snorkel and goggles with me so I went exploring. I saw Trey an JC entering the water and right as I was yelling to warn them about the HUGE sea urchins I had seen there....you guessed it. JC ended up with 19 urchins spines in his heel. OUCH. We couldn't hardly believe the bad luck we had had. But by now we could only just laugh at it. Except for JC who was in pain and not laughing that much.

It was hard to feel beaten too long though. We had beautiful weather and the water is crystal clear. Overall we all had a great time even though the race did not exactly go as planned.

Thanks to Eric Tillet and Alan Friedman from the BUZZ radio station for the great time again and making it all possible. Thanks to everyone who helped us while we were down there.

I'm still working on my write up for the EC but it IS coming along. Right now my focus is school, with sponsorship for the upcoming Tybee on the side.

Spring Fever 2008

Back from Spring Fever 2008, Team NC State had a respectable showing this year bringing 4 boats to the line. Trey and I made out with 3rd place this year. There was a 3 point spread for 1st 2nd and 3rd in the I-20 class this year so it was very close racing. Once again Spring Fever proved to be one of the best regattas of the season and I think also the largest catamaran regatta in the south east. Here are some pics but there are more on the way from the on-the-water photographer.


Team Velocity is headed to St. Thomas this weekend for our second International Rolex Regatta. Trey is sailing with past Tybee 500 and Altercup champion John Casey on an bigger go fast catamaran while I will be living the good life sailing a hobie 16 with our sponsors son. Should be a fun time.

Shamrock Marathon/Half Spectacular

I am working on a trip report for the EC (unlike last year) with pictures like my mom is doing so look for that in the near future. But in the meantime...

Team NORSA just returned from the annual Shamrock Marathon in Virginia Beach, VA. NORSA members Adam Domanski, Alan Stewart and Bethan Haaga participated in the event and Julie Brockman, Adam's girlfriend who wasn't able to register in time was official team cheerleader, nurse, driver and all around helpful person. Adam and Bethan both completed the Full Marathon in 3:58:04 and 4:08:46 respectively and I finished the half marathon in 2:14:59. For not training near as much as I should have I finished mostly injury free, able to walk (the next day too) and feeling great despite being in the back of the pack for my age, who's counting.

On Friday after classes Adam and I drove up to Richmond to meet up with Julie at her place and spend the night. Julie cooked up some Portobello mushroom, grilled chicken dinner amazingness and we went out to a bar with Andrew, another of Adams college friends before getting a good nights sleep. On the way up, Adam and I spent a lot of time talking about "our circumnavigation" and Saturday morning we were doing some casual research on budgets for circumnavigations and general big boat cruising. Warning, digression ahead.

Adam and 7 or 8 friends of his planned a 3 year circumnavigation a year or so ago scheduled for departure on November 2nd of 2009. The whole endeavor is based around a project backed by the Mariner's museum in Newport News, VA and is called "EYE of the world... an expedition in youth education". The basic idea is that this group would sail around hitting about 84 cities around the world in just over 3 years while in communication with schools in the US who could track their progress, send them e-mails, and during their journey, learn about other countries economy, history, religion, and even help map out the sailors route that they take. They came up with the idea and since then some of the original members have had life changes (job, family) that make the trip... less feasible. In short, Adam and his good friend Ian Harris are the only ones currently 100% a go on the project informally searching for a 3rd or 4th member with experience and commitment. Adam had told me about the project in the past but only recently was it more of a reality that I might be able to participate. Needless to say, I am... shall we say DOWN. I will graduate in May of 2009 and then... do it! At least that is my current plan. I am getting up to speed on the project and will be helping to secure funding through sponsorship and Adam may have found us a blue water 37 footer that has the potential to be donated to the cause. We shall see. Anyway, back to the weekend.

Saturday around noon, the three of us drove to Newport News to meet up with Ian who we would be staying with that night. Ian is in the military and soon to be out of the service and works as a chaplain's assistant on base. We drove into VA beach and dropped Ian off for a couple of hours on base and went to pick up our event packets as the VA beach convention center. There we found Bethan, another of Adam's school friends from the William and Mary days and we got our packets and explored the various novel products that race sponsors had in the following expo at the center. Back at Ian's we ordered pizzas and rocked out with some Rock Band.

The Half marathon start was at 7am followed by the full at 8. We woke up at 4:30 and were walking to the line around 6:30. We took shelter in a 7-11 next to the start with about 100 other runners. It was blowing about 10mph steady and in the low 50s but it didn't rain on us thankfully. During the run, I ran into a bunch of friends who had also come up from state for the race and I ran with them for about half the distance. After finishing, I met back up with them and we hung out in the finishers tent with hot soup, bananas, water, a live band and lots of beer. We all watched Adam and Bethan finish and not soon after, Ian and Alan (a different Alan) and his wife? (also college buddies of Adams) came down to hang out with us in the tent. Ian and them were waiting for Adam around mile 21 to..."cheer him on" which actually meant having a food fight with him with a lot of relish. yes relish. When he crossed the finish line we thought he had vomed on himself and thought, what a weenie until he reached down, grabbed some off his shirt and ate it. EEEWWW. No it's ok guys, its just relish. Apparently they wanted him to "relish" in his accomplishments of the day.

Although exhausted, we were surprisingly upbeat. Adam flew a kite that he had brought and the band was great so much dancing was done as well. I think I will be known as "wet suit dancing guy" next year at the race. After a while we decided that it was time to go boogie boarding in the ocean and I donned the rest of the wet suit that I had brought, Adam put on Julie's shorty and my balaclava and Ian had a wet suit as well. Ian took one for the team and bought us a boogie board thanks Ian. We sprinted into the water and were there for about 30 seconds. I got an almost instant cold headache like I had just downed an entire frozen slushy. We thought it must have been in the low 40s. I looked it up and found all reports say it was 53 but I'm not convinced. We did manage to get in a couple of good waves though. The surf was pretty big. Our 5 minute swim was plenty and returned to the warmth of the tent and packed up to hit the road but not before Adam and Ian had a good healthy beer fight mostly soaking each other. I think we were the either the clowns or the highlight of the after race party. Anyway, I think we had the most fun.

We retired to a seafood restaurant for a huge crab leg buffet before cleaning up back at Ian's, saying our goodbyes and getting a move on. We dropped Julie off (she drove back to Richmond) and made it to Raleigh around midnight fully sore and walking like old cripples. Another great trip for the books.