High speed sailing

There is a very specialized facet of sailing that is obsessed with breaking the speed record for sailboats, which is currently just under 50 knots / hour over a 500 m course (57 mph, or 92 km/h).  So far, the fastest attempts have been using the simplest crafts - a windsurfer holds the official record, and the fastest speed is recorded by (get this) a kitesailor, which people aren't sure if it is a sailboat or not.

At the same time, there have been a progression of exotic craft built for the single purpose of setting records.  Indeed, until sailboards came along, these strange creatures have dominated the record circuit.  I have been recently obsessed with the newest of these, called Vestas Sailrocket.  This is a crazy craft with some really cool engineering and design behind it (reading about the design is very cool)- finally a design that as the wind blows more does not increase in healing moment at all, because the geometry is set up such that the sail lift exactly cancels the other forces.

The team, after several years of learning, designing and tweaking the boat, is now in South Africa trying to break the record.  Recently, after several weeks of waiting for perfect conditions, they finally got a good try, and broke some of the records, but not all of them.  They also knew they had some more speed in reserve... and went back to try for a second time.

Well, it didn't go as planned.  The complete accounting is in the "news" tab on the link above, but here, a picture tells all:

Occasional moments of rest and quiet...

I'm beginning to think that with my "new life", I should consider renaming this blog "Another day, another lesson", since this seems to be the theme of my life more than obsession at the moment.

Although we will declare Thursday a notable exception (!!!) , the last 7 days have been considerably calmer than those of the week before, a.k.a. "hell week".  Thanksgiving is past, the daily routine is mostly back in place, and things are not too crazy.  Heck, on a couple of evenings the kids essentially put themselves to bed, leaving G and I looking at each other across our respective computers, as if to say "what do we do now?"

The main event of the week started Tuesday afternoon, when Vika came home looking under the weather - then immediately fell asleep upstairs.   Definitely something wrong, no doubt about that, is the is far from normal behavior.  Sure enough, her temperature was going up and up, peaking at 103.1F (39.5C) in the late evening.  We gave her a hefty dose of acetaminophen, and took her to the doctor the next day, where she was diagnosed with strep throat (albeit with no hurting throat at all).

For her, antibiotics and sleep, and she was mostly fine by the next day - but not allowed to go back to school until 24 hours past antibiotics.  No, the real story here is about Diana.  Diana, never in great control of her emotions at the best of times, was furiously jealous that Vika did not have to go to school when she did (forget the fact she likes school), and (especially) that Vika got to follow Mom around all day long on errands on Thursday.  This was unpardonable, and resulted in some of the most pissy behavior you can imagine, with multiple (G lost count) mini-meltdowns.

But... come Friday, when Vika was to go back to school again, Diana was up and cheery - even early for the bus.  This morning Vika had the difficult morning (albeit with our sympathy) but made it nevertheless.