Sailing BucketEars on TV at Tempe Town Lake

Sailing on TV
There is a new event called the Dam to Dam race which is being run this coming weekend. As a promotion, they put out a call for boats to be on the water early in the morning for live TV. I heard about it from the Tempe Marketing Specialist and asked if I could be on the water with my PDRacer, and she said sure.

When I got there, the race coordinator had a couple of banners, so we put one on my boom so I could sail around behind the kayaks sort of like a floating advertisement.

We were on stand by for about an hour, they would cut in and out to us between their other live segments. It was a gusty day, and to stay in the shot, I had to sail back and forth right next to a $10k outrigger paddle boat.

The first couple of times I made a pass, they looked a bit on the nervous side because I could easy damage their boat if I rammed it. But after a few times, they relaxed and I was the only one on pins and needles. Whew, that was some of the toughest sailing I have done! Back and forth, constantly trying to loose as much boat speed as I can, staying within 20 feet of their boat, and then trying to tack away at the last second.

The TV crew panned up to look at my sailboat a couple of times and mentioned the PDRacer.com website for more info, and each time they did, I had been sailing away from the other boats so there was a lot of distance between us. Didn't look that tough on TV, but when I was next to them, that was some close sailing. I kept thinking "10k... 10k... don't hit the $10k boat!"

Isn't the shark cute? The closing segment ended with Cory McCloskey in a paddle boat being chased by an inflatable shark. Heeheheheh....