The Hammock Papers: WINDQUEST.

16 July 2012

WINDQUEST.

The 86-foot yacht Windquest is the first boat to finish the annual sailboat race from Port Huron to Mackinac Island.

The sponsoring Bayview Yacht Club says the boat with its crew of 20 crossed the finish line at 5:31 p.m. Sunday. Doug and Dick DeVos own Windquest.

The race kicked off Saturday at Port Huron under blue skies and a light wind on Lake Huron.

More than 200 boats are participating in the "Bell's Beer Bayview Mackinac Race." The various classes began the race Saturday morning in staggered start times. Winners are determined based on a handicapping system weighting each boat's ability.

Windquest was the only finisher by 6:15 p.m. Sunday.

Thanks, Freep.

The Port Huron Times-Herald has a nice video of the light-air conditions at the start of the race, here.

Take a tour of The Blue Monster ...

Stepping her 125' mast (this is pretty neat ... I wonder if Aubrey had some Velvet Revolver aboard Surprise? Probably would have.) ...

Up close on the water ...

WINDQUESTs CV is here.

I remember the summer of 2004, seeing Windquest at the marina in Harbor Springs, Michigan. The boat looked fast. That hull was the deepest blue possible before turning black. The gold lettering, rightfully regal. The lines and hardware were as neat and clean as surgeon's instruments. The boat was empty, not a soul abord, yet Nirvana's Nevermind was rockin' the boat's sound system.

Goosebumps.

Congratulations, Windquest! Next week ... Chicago.

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WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

"When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone and of good cheer – say travelling in a carriage or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep – it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence, and how, they come I know not ; nor can I force them. Those ideas that please me I retain in memory and am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this dainty morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it. That is to say, agreeable to the rules of counterpoint, to the peculiarities of various instruments etc. All this fires my soul, and, provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodised, and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it like a fine picture or a beautiful statue at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. What a delight this is, I cannot tell."

MARCUS AURELIUS

"Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?' neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility."

VINCENT van GOGH

"What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest. Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge. As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation."

DAN CAMPBELL