Sabani, 2010

There are more big, expensive camera lenses on Zamami this weekend than any other throughout the year.  Sabani is a huge photo opportunity.  Here's a few of mine from today's preparation day for tomorrow's race:

[the winds are relatively huge right now (25mph+), so we tied and retied these ropes which keep our outrigger in place]

[this team prepares to eliminate one section of the sail in an effort to prevent catching 'too much' wind]

As I mentioned, the winds are big.  Big enough that the race develops from "yay, we won't have to paddle so much because we can sail a lot" to "we are going to have to be really careful not to flip".  Today everybody had to move their boats from the harbor around the corner to the starting line at Furuzamami Beach.  In the 200m exposed section of that distance, we saw one mast snap in half and two (of six) boats flip.  That was 200m.  Tomorrow is 45 kilometers. 

Our captain is a very experienced sailor, so I'm fairly confident, but I'm worried about the lesser teams. Also, I am insistent on not being in the boat for the start because I want to photograph the first 2km of the race (the boats are all together, the background is nice), but I might be risking not being able to be in the race boat at all if the conditions are too dangerous to make a support-boat-to-Sabani-boat transfer.