To Live and Love...

Life is like an ocean, it changes direction many times over its course. The ocean is a living and breathing body and the water is it's blood and the land masses it's arteries and veins. Love is like the current of the ocean it is not life but it is what pushes and drives us to get to our destination. The currents of the ocean take the water that brings life to every area of the planet. So to love brings to us all the nourishment that we need to be sustained. Without the currents the coral and reefs would die, and so the chain of life would wither with it. Without love as the driving passion of our being we too would die just as a baby without human touch.

The wind works with and sometimes against the currents to help with the spreading of the water over the planet. So to are our actions as they spread the truth of our heart to those that watch us. Our actions just like the wind sometimes go against what we profess. In the end we are known for our actions not our words, and just like the winds that cross the oceans they too are named for the direction that they go. Just as the wind stirs up the sea, so to our actions stir up the imaginings of the hearts around us. The winds do not carry the burden of responsibility on their own, nor do our actions as the responsibility lies in our hearts and minds.

The continents of the world create the road map for the oceans to follow like a mountain guide in a state park. The land masses create the environment that the water flows to and from. Just as our mind sets the stage that will allow our love to either leave or be locked up within our body and our soul. Bays, Channels and Seas all different formations of land that give each area of the world a distinct pathway for the current to push the water to each creature bringing life and life more abundantly. Just as the circumstances and events that mold our lives and give us the uniqueness of character to impact others and bring to them what they need.

Great sailing ships that brave the open oceans alone without fear, are much like the vessel of our heart that carries our love to the ends of the Earth. Just as the sailing ships can go against the wind, currents and tide, so to can our heart take us to places that we never dreamed. Even as the ships brave the weather and elements so to our hearts the fear of rejection and betrayal. Even as pirates are a feared encounter on the water so to is the event of true love feared by all those that have traveled those waters before.

For as we travel and give of ourselves, just as pirates someone we have loved has taken from us. But in the midst of the battle, swords drawn as the sound of steel pierces the distance, we must rejoice as our soul cries for freedom. Just as our heart has 2 sides that beat as one, so too is another soul that searches even as we speak. They too are a wandering spirit seeking a destiny that may not be apparent. And if ever you dare allow your ship to carry you across the currents of life, you will encounter that one that makes you whole. The one wanderer that brings nourishment to your spirit and sustenance to your soul is just around the bend.

Therefore strike out and fear not, as your heart speaks. Allow the current of your mind to take you away. Allow the body of your ship to take to the winds and allow yourself time to search far and near. Never allow the distance to bother you. Let the power of your love take you away from the tragedies that you have endured, and allow the newness of the day to take you to new places in your soul. Hide in those new places and you sail across the ocean. For one day you will come across another that completes you.

"The seas never stop, they come and go bringing to their inhabitants the substance of life, so is the tide of our life, people come and go and with them they bring the substance of life… don't ever give up on people, as you will have given up on your yourself…" – Pirate Mike (personal quote)

2009 Texoma Lakefest Regatta

(2009 Second Star Racing team consisted of: JD Hill, Susan Hill, Ben Gray, John Kleineberg, Michael (Pirate Mike) Brooks, Angela Haar, Harald TenWolde, Scott Spurlin)

Well I haven't been home for 24 hours and I am writing the chronicles of another great adventure. Texoma Lakefest (website) a long standing tradition in North Texas has been recognized as the largest inland charity sailing regatta in the nation. 2009 was no different and a tremendous amount of effort was put in by the races sponsoring yachtclub the Texoma Sailing Club (website)! 47 boats and close to 300+ competitors came to battle it out on one of Texas' biggest lakes. Lake Texoma is one of the largest reservoirs in the United States, the 12th largest Corps of Engineers (USACE) Lake, and the largest in USACE Tulsa District. ¹

4 days of fund raising for a great charity; the Make A Wish Foundation (website). Thursday is the Chaos Cup where the corporate sponsors get to try their hand at sailboat racing! Teams are sent out to have a great time and get a chance to meet the sailors that will for the next 3 days battle it out with the famous North Texas weather and the top rated competitors that come from around the nation to try their hand at getting their name engraved on the ever sought after silver cup. Thursday had overcast but fair weather as we saw great sailing from the cast of competitors. Almost event free Thursday did bring about one casualty when 2008 3^rd place competitor Nelda Ray snapped their mast to end their campaign for the silver cup.

From first time newbie's to Amercia's Cup sailors Texoma Lakefest brings them all together in the spirit of competition and love of the sport. Friday is the first day of competition and typically is full of emotion and excitement as the boats get launched and the competitors look over the scratch sheets to see whom they will be battling it out with. This year Friday brought lightning storms and while we all went out to the battle ground not one race was started. After the high winds and lightning got within masts reach the races were postponed and we were sent in to wait out the weather. By the time the weather was past us night had fallen. Over the Eastern sky one could see thermal lightning giving everyone a great fireworks display. Dinner was a great Texan tradition barbeque catered in from a great Fort Worth practitioner. (Riscky's Barbeque)
The night wouldn't have been complete without some great dancing to a live band and Captain J.D.'s Lavaritas! Saturday started off well as the dangerous weather had passed us and we were hoping to get out on the proving grounds and play hard! Rain started to fall as the winds had given way to glassy seas. With light to nonexistent winds we got off one race that became extremely tactical as we raced for what seemed like an eternity. The multi-hulls and the spinnaker boats got off the course in reasonable time but the working sail classes extended the race for about 3 hours till there was no more wind or light to race. Coming back to the marina everyone was joyous and in one piece all wanting more wind and a chance to compete. Saturday night Riscky's came up with a great meal of fajitas while the headliner band broke out with some winner tunes. Lavaritas (margaritas that come from a ten foot volcano) were flowing again as the mountain starting erupting as soon as the competitors landed. In sailor style competitors bid silently for all kinds of trinkets of all kinds and values from a nice massage to a Donzi boat. Dancing went on till everyone was satisfied. Everyone went to sleep early as they knew that the race starting times had been pushed up an hour early so we could get in enough races to satisfy the regatta.

Sunday was the day, sunny cold and windy. Wind started off easy 8-10 knots as everyone got suited up for the insanity. When we got out to the proving ground out in the exposed main body of the lake the winds quickly bumped up to 20 knots. Everyone suited up in full armor as we awaited the starting sequence. 3 races convened that opened everyone eyes to the dangers of sailboat racing. From the many near misses and close calls to gear breaks and collisions Sunday was full of "Lakefest" spirit. Lakefest is always a serious competitors concern as the weather is always a big factor; proved again Lake Texoma brought forth serious conditions for the competitors to overcome.

From Terra Nova getting hung up on the judge's boat to God Speed having a serious collision and boom breakage to fishing sailors out of the lake to the sad personal injury on Predator. It was a busy day indeed, and the weather came back to revel her serious side to us. To the family & crew of the injured sailor we send our best wishes. We await the verdict on the injured sailor but from some reports someone fell and possibly broke ribs and collapsed a lung. We pray that he heals fast and comes back to win more races. As the sailor lay on the deck in serious condition some of the last reported words from his mouth were, "Finish the race!" Predator did manage even with a DNC to finish in 2nd place for class #2. Congratulations to all the sailors that made that win possible! (Consequently Predator was in OUR fleet!)

All in all it was a typical Lakefest averaging about 15 knots from days at zero to days with gusts over 30. The official results will be posted on the Lakefest website
and on the Texoma Sailing Club's website.

I learned a lot and am grateful that we only had a few mishaps and no serious injuries. I am blessed to have met Scott and Harald two passing experienced sailors that graced us with their skill for this special journey. I look forward to our new J122 and learning how to use it as the weapon that it is. To everyone out there, fast sailing…

Pirate Mike.

"Sailing doesn't make a man but it reveals him to himself. His strengths, his weaknesses, his fears and his accomplishments. Sailing is a culmination of everything he knows, thinks, and feels. It brings all the senses together and like the rest of nature shows us how small we really are. Sailing puts things into perspective but yet allows us to be supernatural if even just for a moment." – Pirate Mike…

1 Reference pulled from Wikipedia at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Texoma

Sitting on the back of my boat...

Sitting on the back of my sailboat, watching the seagulls fight over scraps that have been thrown over by wayward sailors I sit and think about what am I going to do today. I look off the starboard bow and see 2 red eared slider turtles floating hoping lunch is served soon. A grey Haran stands by the edge of the bank waiting a baby perch to get a bit closer so that his belly can be full. I realize that I too am hungry.

Going down below I remove the companionway boards that have been fashioned out of acrylic. These boards are fashioned very similar to the way sailors have been making their boats for hundreds of years. The main difference is that these boards are not out of Teak, but an acrylic. My main complain with them is that they are cumbersome and see through. When down below visitor that pass by the transom of the boat can peer in and see what is going on inside of the cabin.

When I get the boards out of the way and I make my way down the 3 steps skipping the last 2. This little sailor skip I developed to not have to spend so much time getting down below. I'm sure I save at least a second or two and definitely risk my neck if I land wrong, but it seems so nautical or "boat like." When I land I reach into the cupboards and get out lunch. Bread, lots of it and a jar of peanut butter, and a spoon is all I need. Arriving topsides, I sit back down behind the helm and get my spoon. The great thing about a spoon is it can be used to spread the peanut butter and used to just scoop some out for quick consumption. After making my sandwich, I salute several passersby with a jovial ahoy, and go back to my sandwich.

Dock life is very formal in the most informal way. There is just a certain "code" that dock mates follow one of which is to always greet everyone, even if you do not like them. This code makes everyone appear extremely friendly. The root of this is that you want to be kind to everyone, as in an emergency all are your saviors. The code definitely follows you onto the water, and whenever someone is in need of assistance all grudges are off.

Behind me I hear the all too familiar swoosh of carp coming to the surface. Sometimes 3 maybe even 4 feet long these scavengers will eat anything. From dog food, to algae growing on the bottom of your sailboat, they will crunch or scrape it off with their bony tooth. They must have done a lot of crack as they only have a tooth. They will drag this tooth across the bottom of your boat and wake you up at all hours, day and night. Don't let a few of them get wind that your boat has not had its bottom job done in six months or you will find that they will all come to dine.

I finish my sandwich and realize that I haven't moved very far since breakfast. Being that it is a Saturday I really should follow my normal routine and clean, scrub and do boat maintenance so that I can head out. Today is different, no party cove, no scrub the boat till I'm worn out. Today is a different day. Today I am going to pretend is Sunday, and I think I will just sit here and watch the world turn. The sun has already made his pilgrimage out of the depths of the lake, and it is at "high noon." The clouds have taken the day off and are nowhere in sight. Summer is quickly approaching and so are the 100 degree days. Today is different it is a mean 75 degrees. No wind so don't bother thinking about going sailing, besides that is more of a Saturday activity and today is Sunday remember?

My boat rocks gently from side to side, as a fisherman pays no attention to my home as he heads off to find his hidden treasure beneath the dark and wrinkled folds of the lake. I excuse him as he is just a guest into my world and does not know how he is intruding. Most have no idea that the peace of the lake and my life on it, is intruded when a rouge wake comes to meet my hull. The hull pushes back, but eventually gives in to the power of the wake of water, and gives to the side gently. With nothing to fight back but a peanut butter spoon, I give up. I would raise the white flag but that would require me to dig into my locker and find the flag, and would require me to give up at lease one mouthful of peanut butter. This is a sacrifice that I cannot make. So without further ado I go back to my spoon.

I see more sailors coming toward me. "Permission to come aboard," I hear. "Permission granted," I exclaim. This is part of that formal informality that I was referring to. The couple boarding my boat have been aboard hundreds of times, and we are close friends, but the formality of requesting permission never ends.

They take perch in the cockpit in the same fashion as I. Laying back like they have nothing to do, but watch the turtles that are still hovering over their lunch. I inquire as to what they have on their list for the day. "Nothing," they exclaim proudly. "We are taking the day off, to just relax." "Ah this is the life," I think to myself, this is the epitome of dock life. "Well, would you like a sandwich?" I ask. "No, we just ate before we came over." "Well whatever should we do?" I asked inquisitively. "Let's drop the tender, and go over to the island and see if anything has washed up from the weekend." They replied.

Now there are a few islands on the lake, they have shores that face main channels of water that the "weekend power boaters" travel. One thing that sail boaters know is that when half naked and drunk power boaters cruise by is that they drop things into the water. Many of those things are quite valuable to real boaters. Life vests, (who would think those are important until the game warden comes by), fenders, coolers, and many other useful objects wash up and land upon the littered shores of the sandbanks and island shores. Now we could leave those items to waste or we could as good stewards of resources go and harvest them, as it were.

We idle over to a much larger boat that has a tender on davits. After lowering the 10" dinghy into the water and starting the little gas motor, we all board and head toward the islands as the fisherman did earlier looking for hidden or sometimes no so hidden treasure. Upon arrival we notice that people have been camping on the islands and left some useful items for us to harvest. After collecting 2 good ski vests, a cooler and 2 fenders we sit back and look at our bounty. Pleased with ourselves we break into the cooler and notice some still cold cans of our favorite beverage. Well 2pm it must be time for a beer I think to myself.

After wandering around I gather my things and we all get together and head back to the docks with our treasure. Upon arriving we look for those in need of the new items. I know that I already have too many life vests and fenders, but there is always someone that can use these items. This time I do not head back to my boat but grab a chair alongside the dock and start another luxurious conversation about nothing with some of my other dock mates that have appeared form the belly of their boat. They too are enjoying a sandwich and are just letting their eyes wander at the nature around them as I had earlier.

This is home... Someday I will do the same thing on the ocean. This is community this is my life, welcome to it....

Pirate Mike..

The seas never stop, they come and go bringing to their inhabitants the substance of life, so is the tide of our life's, people come and go and with them they bring the substance of life… don't ever give up on people, as you will have given up on your yourself… - Another original from Pirate Mike…

Something wicked this way comes!

Everyone is waiting for their ship to come in and this week it looks like my ship is arriving! I live aboard a Beneteau 331 which is a 34 foot coastal cruiser like the type of boat you would charter in the Virgin Islands or along the coast of Europe. There are many classes of sailboats that fit certain applications. For example there are truly lake boats that are very light weight and fun to sail but should never be on open water. There are coastal cruisers that are about as light but are equipped to stand up to tides/currents and are safe for open water navigation. There are blue water boats that are heavy and full of tankage for long ocean voyages and then there are race boats.

Now race boats also break down into classes from one design where everyone has the exact boat to PHRF (pronounced perf) racers. PHRF is a handicapping system used in yacht racing, so that boats that are not alike can race with each other and still have a chance to win. Yacht racing in many cases really isn't about the boat is it about the crew. The idea is to see who has the best crew so the boats are handicapped to give everyone a fair shot. Now there are several different systems and they all work in a common way of trying to take into account how a boat should perform but none of them work all the time and under all conditions.

The PHRF system is the system that most lakes and costal organzations use. Boats are given a number of seconds that they are given as an advantage based off of the baseline boat "a boat with a 0 rating" so a boat with a 150 rating gets a hundred and fifty second "head start" on the boat that rates a zero. So for example if the first boat crosses the line in 10 minutes (600 seconds) and the next boat finishes in 20 minutes (1200 seconds) but the first boat rates a zero and the second boat rates 120 and it was a 5 mile race then the second boat gets to subtract 120X5=600 seconds from their finish time so that both boats actually finish in a tie! Talk about shocking to find out you finished first eat lunch and still lost to the next boat or a boat that finished twentieth!

Well our teams race boat Second Star was a Beneteau First Series 33.7 and rated 123/126 depending on the event which is ok for cruising boats but very slow for serious race boats. Other elements come into play as well. As the boats get longer the theoretical hull speed also increases along with the sail area that they can carry. The math is pretty simple when you have a full displacement hull the boat can only go a limited speed as the boat will never get on top of the bow wake and plane. The formula is pretty simple even thought there are things it doesn't take into account it is relatively accurate; the square root of the waterline length multiplied by 1.35 is the basic equation. These aspects are all taken into account into your PHRF.

So what racers do is they lighten their boats and make them out of very strong but light weight materials like epoxy and carbon fiber! They also take great pains in engineering everything for a well oiled crew (that becomes movable ballast) to ensure that they boat can keep herself upright under the increased pressures. Everything in the boat is designed to go fast; hulls are not always built for the greatest stability race boats have semi displacement or even planing hulls. So one thing that happens is as boat get bigger (longer water lines) their PHRF typically goes down and as they rip everything including the seats and the microwave out the rating goes down even more. In the end we would not be complete without overloading these "shell" of a boat with incredibly large sails to bring the boats to life.

Now that I face my 4^th race season I will get to graduate to a new level of racing! Originally starting in the cruiser fleet or the "working class sails" group then to graduate to the "spinnaker" class group but be one of the slower "boats" in that class to now racing a brand new one design sport boat in the spinnaker class. We have been diligent and it has paid off for our team. We have seen a good amount of sailors come and go but the core team is still intact. When I started there was the skipper and his wife and whomever else he could con with food and drink to show up! Typically that meant 2 other people. Between the drinks, food and strong winds we would surely finish the race in the same day that we started, but that was not good enough. That first year we pushed very hard (at a pirates request) to raise the standards for crewmanship. Before having a way to get to the lake and a pulse was all that was required. By the end of the year we actually asked people if they had sailed before! By the end of 2006 we were ready to compete. Averaging a crew of 4-6 we started making our mark in the working sails division. By Spring of 2008 we were full time Spinnaker Class racers and as of Lakefest we will begin a new chapter in our racing careers! Now Second Star has new meaning as we will not have anyone in front of us to show us the way we will have to look for the "second star" As you may remember from your childhood:

"The second star to the right
Shines in the night for you
To tell you that the dreams you plan
Really can come true"

Except from "Second star to the right" song from Peter Pan

2005
Who is Second Star?
2006
Icebreaker Series Regatta 8th Place
Lakefest Regatta (I am not 100% sure on this one)
Leukemia Cup Regatta 1st Place (crewing for Sealake Yacht Sales)
Solstice Series Regatta 5th Place
Texoma Classic Regatta 5th Place Wunderlick Regatta 7th Place
Sundowner Regatta Did not compete
2007
Icebreaker Series Regatta 2nd Place
Lakefest Regatta 2nd Place
Leukemia Cup Regatta 1st Place (crewing for Sealake Yacht Sales)
Solstice Series Regatta 1st Place
Asbury Smith Memorial Cup 1st Place
Texoma Classic Regatta 9th Place
Wunderlick Regatta 1st Place
Sundowner Regatta 1st Place
2008
Icebreaker Series Regatta 1st Place
Cedar Mills Yacht Club 1st Place (Spinnaker) Beer Can Race Series
Lakefest Regatta 1st Place (Spinnaker)
Leukemia Cup Regatta 1st Place (crewing for Sealake Yacht Sales)
Solstice Series Regatta 4th Place (Spinnaker)
Asbury Smith Memorial Cup 4th Place (Spinnaker)
Texoma Classic Regatta 2nd Place (Spinnaker)
Wunderlick Regatta 2nd Place (Bob Sittle & J124) Spinnaker
Cedar Mills Regatta 2nd Place (Spinnaker)
Sundowner Regatta 6th Place (Spinnaker)
2009
Icebreaker Series Did not compete
Lakefest Regatta 5th Place (Spinnaker 1st Fleet)

Something wicked this way comes… Second Star Racing the saga continues…

From a PHRF of 123/126 to a renewed opportunity and a rebirth at 33 Second Star Racing is taking it to the next level. Almost a half a million dollars later and what do you get?

Perfection… See you on the water…

Pirate Mike