After two years without my own camera (my Nikon Coolpix 800 stopped working the day the 2001 Bermuda 1-2 boat race ended) I just got a Canon PowerShot S45. So I’ve been making up for lost time with lots of pictures taken around Providence, including a few at WaterFire.

Side note: The photo pages are generated with my own export program, which uses the Python Imaging Library to rescale images. iPhoto’s HTML export didn’t look very good (technically, it wasn’t anti-aliased).

I posted a blow-by-blow account my trip the Bermuda 1-2 sailboat race back from Bermuda, with pictures and a couple of movies.

I’m leaving for the next couple of weeks on the Bermuda 1-2 race. The second leg (Bermuda to Newport) starts this Friday.

Here’s hoping for a smoother start than the first leg’s.

Email access will be poor. (And yes, there is a dearth of Wi-Fi hotspots in the Atlantic.)

The race organizers put up a Java race tracker applet. If you’re curious how I’m doing after June 20th, check class 4, Nimros.

We sent my father off yesterday on the first leg of the 2003 Bermuda 1-2 Yacht Race, on his boat, Nimros. There were a few last-minute things to finish, as always. So he ended up leaving the dock a few minutes before the official start, as we hurried over to a vantage point on Newport’s Goat Island to watch it.

Nimros, in front of a boat with sails

Even from far away, Nimros was easy to identify, because it was the only sailboat in the race with no sails. Making sure they could be raised was one of those last-minute things we hadn’t quite finished.

The starting gun went off, and the other boats that had been jockeying for position finally tacked forward across the starting line, while Nimros alone drifted lazily backward, away from Bermuda, and toward the Newport Bridge.

A minute later, the mainsail started to rise. Almost immediately it stopped, with only a small triangle visible, and stayed that way for several minutes. Nimros appeared to be racing with a sail the size of a picnic blanket.

Then even that small concession to the practice of sailing was taken down, and Nimros drifted further away from the starting line over the next few minutes, toward the rocks at the foot of the Rose Island lighthouse.

Fortunately, Nimros avoided a wreck by raising the jib, which proved powerful enough to get the boat over the starting line about ten minutes later, for a total of about half an hour’s delay. Nimros was still easy to identify, because all the other boats had their larger mainsails raised, in addition to having already left.

We left as Nimros disappeared into the mist at the mouth of Narragansett Bay, headed out into the Atlantic, mainsail still down.

My father contacted us later that day to explain that a winch had failed, forcing him to re-thread the main halyard before he could raise the mainsail. So everything is apparently fine again.

It’s my turn on the boat next week, as the crew for the return trip. Wish me luck.

More coverage from the Bermuda 1-2 web site: [2003 Bermuda 1-2 Start From Newport].

The weekend before last, I went biking on the trails at Lincoln Woods with a coworker and his girlfriend. The last time I went with them, a couple of weeks before, I managed somehow to snap my bike’s rear axle in two within an hour. No problems this time. (New rear wheel, though.)

The picture was taken on his tiny Sony DSC-U10 digital camera. It’s only one megapixel, and the quality of those pixels is only fair, but the small size makes up for that, allowing lots of pictures that wouldn't be practical with a bigger camera. He even tried shooting a movie while riding (on the road at the time, admittedly).