And on the 4th day, they took home silver in a Picton, NZ Regatta

Lana and I were unexpectedly invited to sail in a Picton, NZ regatta on Sunday! Our host took us up the road to meet our closest neighbor and, after we exchanged hellos, Jeremy noticed our look of weathered old salty sailors and promptly invited us to hop on his sailboat as his secret Atlantic Ocean weapons.

Needless to say, there is a reason the Kiwis and Aussies are known as really good sailors - the weather in the Marlborough Sounds is challenging (Taylor would call the wind "honking" and it swirled around a lot). [See pics] As you can see, the Sound is closed in by some pretty high hills, so the air is kinda funneled through there creating strong winds. The islands that dot the Sound also block and channel the wind so that you have to be ready for strong gusts and dead spots - all in all, a really exciting place to sail.

It was not a perfect day weather-wise, but we had tons of fun and ended up taking 2nd place out of about 15 boats. We actually beat the hell out of everybody all 3 races (so all our pics are taken when we are waiting for everyone to finish), but were working against a handicap and were edged out by a couple of seconds after taking that into account.

We'll see if we can't take the gold next time. Love to all...