Beer Can Racing, Civilized Sport

The great thing about evening Beer Can races is that nobody takes them seriously. This was proven to us last Friday night during a leeward mark rounding of the Corinthian Series. We just happened to be standing on shore not far away, taking photos with our newest drone.

The four-shot sequence starts with the dark-hulled Schock 40 Secret Squirrel ahead but to leeward of the white-hulled Farr 40 Bright Hour. In the second shot, Bright Hour has made up a lot of ground and it’s become unclear which boat is going to round the leeward mark first. In the third shot Bright Hour appears to have managed to tack just in time to round the mark ahead of Secret Squirrel. In the last shot, Bright Hour is to leeward and ahead, pulling away to cross the finish line in front of the dark-hulled boat.

There was a lot of shouting and gesturing between the two boats at the leeward mark, but we were too far away to make out what they were saying. Probably, “Well, done!” Or “That was a close one, wasn’t it?! Or “Isn’t Friday night racing fun!”

The one shout we did make out was, “I’ll see you on Tuesday night!” No doubt the two skippers were going to get together for drinks and dinner and laugh while reliving the excitement of the rounding.

As we say, that’s the great thing about Beer Can racing: Nobody takes it too seriously.

However, one thing that does need to be taken seriously is removing the protective plastic layer covering the lens of a new drone. Because when you don’t, you get blurry photos like the ones in this ‘Lectronic.