My Second WOW/WAH

I participated in my second WOW/WAH this weekend!

• Note, these photos are courtesy of the Women’s Sailing Association of Santa Monica Bay’s Facebook page.
• The first and third are taken by photographer Mike of the Race committee, and the second by Barb,
  of the WSASMB committee (also our skipper for the race!).

Wait. What?

• WOW means Women on the Water, meaning an all-female team.
• WAH means Women at the Helm, which means a female skipper.
• You get prizes for having both if they also place well, but if you’ve won before you can’t win again (although you can compete again).
• So WOW/WAH: It’s a fun sailing competition with a Spinnaker and non-spinnaker class. We were in the cruisers class. Apparently, were in last place on Saturday (I wasn’t there for that! LOL) and by the end of Sunday, we nabbed 4th place out of 6th boats. We were so happy! :D
• The celebration was at Del Rey Yacht club this year. A fun time was had by all!

Why are you blogging about this?

• Sailing is part of who I am. As much as I’m often the only female in a lot of FP “stuff”, it’s also rare to see female racers. It’s a very male-dominated sport, and racing is even worse because it tends to be dominated by very A-Type people. I’m fortunate also have been able to get onto a boat with a really great rating, which I also race on from time to time. The skipper of this boat I was on this weekend is realizing that some of us want to race regularly, and is seriously thinking of racing on Fridays next year during the Sundowner, which is a sunset race during race season next year!
• It’s tough to be a female racer, and I’m really grateful for the opportunity, and to have such lovely ladies mentoring me!

What I’ve otherwise been up to

• Learning Haskell…what else :). I totally “missed the boat” (get it? Haha) on Brian’s past two streams on parsing JSON, so I have to take a look of those. I’ve also been reviewing ADTs over the weekend. I got up early before my race yesterday and did some Haskell during the extra hour.
• I am, however, black and blue, because I had some injuries during the race, but I’ll be okay lol.
• Oh, my passport expires by the end of next year, so I may randomly have to fly to NY sometime next year to get it renewed. Apparently the only embassies are on the East Coast for that; specifically, Miami, NY and DC. I have (a lot) of family in NY, and one has offered for me to stay by her during that time, so I guess I’ll be in NY for about a week or so or something?
• Maybe I’ll get that doubles there after all, freeze it and bring it with me back to the West Coast, too!

## And that’s about it!