Not Quite Following in my Footsteps

but close enough.

The photo is of my son Alan (on the wire) and his sailing partner and good friend Trey, on Trey's Nacra I 20. They were racing at the 'Statue of Liberty Catamaran Race' over the 4th of July weekend. Both are juniors at North Carolina State University and have raced on the NCSU sailing racing team.

For most of Alan's life I've tried to turn him into a paddler. He learned to roll a kayak his first time trying, and he likes kayak surfing at Bogue Inlet. He knows how to paddle, but, not unlike his sister, neither has much interest in it. It's either a bit too much work, or I'm a hard act to follow. But he sure loves sailing. Alan's life is either about sailing, remote control airplanes, and finishing his degree in aeronautical engineering (in that order).

So imagine my surprise when he announced he was going to participate in the 2007 WaterTribe Everglades Challenge (EC), sailing his Hobie 18 in class 4. I didn't really think he knew much about his Mom's races/adventures, and in fact, he didn't seem to know much about them prior to my participation in this years Ultimate Challenge. This year he followed my exploits as reported by my husband on this blog, and the accomplishments of the other Tribers on the WaterTribe forum during the race. It's actually quite exciting following the race online, the WaterTribe website gets racer reports daily, photos, videos and comments from those following the race (over 500,000 hits) during the week of the Everglades Challenge.

More importantly, Alan noticed there was a catamaran racing. So now he's hooked. He's currently registered as SOS for SonOfSandy, though I expect that name will change soon. And luckily the EC dates coincide with his spring break next year.

The sailor in him is excited about the race, the engineer in him is excited about modifying the boat. He's talking about building a pedal driven propeller system (still not wanting to paddle any) for those times with the wind is not cooperating and he needs to keep it moving. Internet searches have found quite a few interesting models of small sailboat/trimarans that use a pedal system, and could be bought or built.

We've told Alan we'd be glad to buy him this, other than that he's on his own.