Cascade Locks, Oregon on June 22-25.

It took about 13 hours with stops to get from Benicia, CA to Cascade Locks, OR.

The Columbia River was everything they said it was. A good current, lots of wind. It felt like our home waters (the Carquinez Strait)

It was fun
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We had so much fun. Everything from Dinner at the El Rio Mexican Cafe in Stevenson, WA to the excitement of motoring out of the launch area with its crazy eddy and ripping currents.

The races themselves were awsome. The course was short enough, and the wind fast enough that we got in 5 races the first day and 4 races when the wind turned around 180 degrees on the second day.

the challenge
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The big challenge for us was to get the boat to move fast in conditions that tended to overpower the boat. Our tacks felt sloppy, It was very hard to figure out why the other boats were pulling away from us.

the education
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Every race was like a new day in sailing school for us. Sometimes the whole fleet would leave us before we had any idea what was wrong, the first day was especially frustrating due to a boat full of water. Many times the reason was fairly obvious, like when you go 10 boat lengths past the leeward mark before you have the spinakar down. Other times the reason escaped us completely. On the last day we maintained a fairly consistent stategy of staying way in on the oregon side, since there should have been less current over there and there seemed to be plenty of wind, but that idea was only marginally sucessful, I guess it was not enough to compensate for the other goofs we made.

Too Tuff lives up to its name
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After the incendent with the rocks in Benicia and the Ditch Run groundings, Too Tuff again lived up to its name. After the first race we noticed we had a water problem down below. With a little over 5 minutes between races, it took us until about about the 3rd race before we had our pump rigged and pumping. I estimate we pumped about 250 gallons of water out of the boat durring the rest of day 1. Water in Too Tuff is nothing new, but the boat was fixed by Ron Moore last fall... We were hoping to get more than 6 months out of his repair job. Since we *never* give up, We rounded up some silicon and supertape, and sealed up the keel as best we could on saturday morning. We improved the bilge pump setup just in case our repair job did not hold. The repair worked pretty well, Too Tuff was fairly dry on Saturday.

The course
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I have attached two charts, one for friday and one for saturday showing our bread crumb trail for all the races. You can see some of the errors we made on the charts, like overstanding the mark on sunday, or driving past the downwind mark due to a late takedown. I even think you can see some of the tacks being to wide an angle.

The end of the first year
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This event marks the end of the first year that I have been at the helm of Too Tuff. I bought Too Tuff from the estate of my good friend Steve Bales who died June 5th, 2005. I am proud of our first year sailing Too Tuff without Steve. Steve was one of the fiercest competitors I have ever known. Steve Bales is the inspiration for our *never* give up style of racing.

The Plan
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Too Tuff will be at the High Sierra Regatta, Sailing hard and having fun. We will also be at the Jazz Cup on Labor Day Weekend ... Bring your boat and come and have some fun!

Day 1

Day 2