Tuesday, July 6, 2010

Sabani Before the Start

The original race course - Zamami to Naha - was nixed because of high winds and the residual fear from the Rough Water Swim death two weeks ago.  The new course wrapped around some of the small islands nearby and ended in the Zamami harbor.  Here's some pictures leading up the start.  Pictures from the actual race coming soon.

[my team: Shimawarabi (I don't know what that means)]

[with the course change, the top teams switched their outriggers and re-rigged their sails for a port wind]



[The smartest teams (see the two far right boats) didn't raise their sails until a couple minutes before the horn.  The center boat in this picture had their mast snap just ten minutes before the race start.  They had to paddle the whole race with no sail.]



[support boats awaiting the start]

3 comments:

Son of Higashi said...

島童 is technically pronounced しまわらべ, not しまわらび, but Japanese has a cool system in place where word endings can change to facilitate the creation of different types of words with the same meaning, such as "to go home" and "(the act of) going home."

島, obviously meaning "island."
童, meaning "child."

"Island Child." Not bad.

Anonymous said...

Wowww, Vaughn is a genius for Japanese. 天才!

HK said...

しまわらび is correct, it's just written in Okinawan rather than Japanese. The meaning is the same though: "Island Child" or "Island Children".