letter-to-mom

Spring has sprung!

Dan Weatbrook

— 5 min read
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Spring has sprung!
Getting ready to participate in the Puget Sound Spring Regatta

Good Morning, and Happy Sunday! I hope that this missive finds you healthy and happy! Things have been rolling along pretty quietly around here lately. Weeknight racing has started on Monday nights for the Sloop Tavern Yacht Club, where we are currently in 3rd place in class 6, and Wednesday nights at the Corinthian Yacht Club, where we are in 2nd place in class 3. We are pretty pleased with these results 😀. On the other hand, we also raced in the Puget Sound Spring Regatta (PSSR) last weekend. Saturday was a bust for wind, and on Sunday we had 13-15 knots of breeze, but we were sailing with only four on the boat as Stefan was ill from his trip, and that was just not enough weight on the rail in those conditions, so we only placed 11th out of 15th boats competing. It wasn't a total waste, though, on Saturday, we took advantage of the downtime, and got some calibration runs in, and were able to get our speed through the water calibrated to be closer to reality - it's still not quite right, but at least we aren't always sailing into the current no matter what direction we are going. 😀

HelmLog

The other thing that has been taking up a ton of my focus these past three weeks is my sailboat race data-logging platform, which I am calling HelmLog. I've been making tremendous progress on this project. I have two main goals with this project. 1. Help us coach ourselves to become better sailors and more competitive. 2. Give anyone in the program who wasn't on the water the ability to understand what was going on. So I am able to show the track, the instruments, current flow, wind, link to video at specific points, discuss specific things we see on the water, compare maneuvers, etc., etc., etc. The other thing that I have been using it for is a real-world example of using the AI Agentic coding tools for a real project. I had the vision for this project last year, and I made some progress on it, but I did not have the instructional development skills to execute on my vision for this, and the tools were just not there. It is amazing how many things have changed in the past year. I have created something so much more sophisticated and complete than I had even dreamed of last year, and all of it without writing a line of code. Things really are changing, and I feel fortunate enough to be in the situation to have the freedom to explore and learn these tools and techniques without the pressure of having to execute on real job responsibilities ;)

In other news

Everything is in full spring mode around here with the Lillacs busting out. I'm getting to the Gym once a week, and hope to start getting out more. Next weekend I am participating in Bloomsday in Spokane. My sister Sue is coming to town for that, and I am looking forward to seeing her. Catherine and I made it out to see a Mariners game last Friday. Our tickets were 14 rows up from the home team dugout on the home plate side, so we had a great view. Alas, the Mariners were not able to put on much of a show against the Rangers. And we slipped out at the bottom of the 8th to try and beat the rush to the train (it didn't really work 😄 ).

I also picked up a new 3d printer these past couple of weeks. I'm selling the old one to Ben and Natalie across the street, and will be training Remy on how to print his own things, and hopefuly get him to the point where he can design his own things as well 😄

Love ya All!

Dan W

Kirk at Gasworks Brewing. Bec and I walked the five miles from our neighborhood down there. It was quite the nice vibe down there.
Kirk had arrived on his boat, so we hitched a ride with him back to his slip, which is right across the ship canal from where we keep Airborne now.
Kirk Loves getting out on his boat.
Bec is chillin on the ride back.
Catherine and I went to the Gage fundrasing Gala, where Austin was one of our Table Mates.
At the Sloop Tavern waiting to pick up our podium sticker.
Scott and I headed over to West Seattle for a Happy hour with TJ, and to catch some musuc.
This kid was absolutely fantastic, and he is only 12 years old. I felt like I was witnesing something special.
Me and TJ.
Catherine and I before the baseball game.
Milling around waiting for the wind to fill in at PSSR
After the racing on Sunday, Victoria brought her dog River down and Hung out with us at the Yacht Club
This past Friday, I went on a ride along with Alex and Carter as they went through their double-handed maneuvers. They are doing the Race to the Straits race this coming weekend, which is a double-handed Pursuit race. Meaning that there are only two of them on the boat, and the start time for each boat is set such that if they were to sail to their rating (handicap) all of the boats would finish at the same time. It is such a fun race.
This is Carter. He is in the Coast Guard and works on the Polar Star. He just got back from a five-month deployment to the Antarctic and McMurdo Station. He raced J105's collegially in the Coast Guard academy and is a great sailor and a fun guy to be around.
Me, Jeri (and Henry) Tiffany and Greg. some of my former Expeda coworkers, had lunch and went for a hike.
Doing some work on Scotts boat.

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