Vail & Sail 09Jun17

Summit County was great this week - we had the Vail Mtn Games, the Dillon BrewFest and awesome conditions for whatever. I'm headed to France tomorrow so didn't hit the brewfest but did ride the lake, visit Vail, commission Mon Ami, hit Outer Range, and watch the America's Cup.

The 35th America's Cup is spectacular. The AC is the oldest contest in world sport - organized racing every 4 years since 1850; older than the modern olympics. Plus, this year's version is awesome. If you get NBC Sports or can access the app it is very worth some watching. The boats this time are 50' flying (on foils in the water) catamarans with wings. We re-envisioned the game three games ago by innovating the 2 piece wing, which is now the standard. We've won the last 2 events and USA Oracle is skippered by the same guy who won the last two - we are Defenders and in the finals. The format began with round robin qualifiers (which we entered in hopes of getting a winner's point heading in to the true AC). We won round robin and do have the +1. The top 4 other boats... Japan, New Zealand, Sweden and Great Britain were in a playoff for Challenger (to us). The Kiwis are currently up 2-1 vs the Swedes in the best of 9 for that role. NZ lost both races to us in the round robin but S beat us twice. The event is held over the next 3 weeks and is exciting as hell with outrageous tech (think formula 1 on water) and fierce competition.

I saw Beau Thomas again at Outer Range and enjoyed tasting the new IPAs and drinking Blocks of Light. Great venue now with the door open and the music outside.

It was early rounds day at Vail as finals are on Sunday - still, the great weather and lack of crowds offered and excellent time at the climbing wall with world championship implications, the raging Gore Ck hole for freestyle kayaking, and of course Dock Dogs events... Big Air is the headliner (saw a 25+' jump agains world record of 27') but now Dueling Dog drag racing is a hoot too.

Here Eric Jackson, yep Jackson Boats is his company and he's the "old man" of the sport, shreds the Gore Ck depression.

The climbing wall was being dominated by the Japanese when I was there but the very best on plastic from around the world was here for this fine tourney.

I dined at Mountain Standard - highly recommended. And I partially commissioned Mon Ami. I had to repair the main sail with my mad hand sewing skills and got it on but the front sail wasn't raised as wind came up and I needed to get back to COS to pack for France. Next step in 3 weeks.