Marathon sailing

The title of this post is a bit misleading, since there was no long distance sailing involved, but it was the day of the Xiamen International Marathon, and I went sailing with Ling Ling to watch the spectacle from the sea. We were not alone, since this day was chosen by the Iron Rock Sailing Club to hold a sailing event in the waters around Xiamen island. Not a proper race, but more like a fleet show of 25 to 30 yachts sailing from Wuyuan Bay to Gulangyu island and back.
My idea was to just hangout with our small catamaran in the same waters, to get up and close with these larger boats while at the same time more than 70.000 people were running on the coastal ring road.

Luckily for everybody involved, the weather had changed spectacularly from the cold days earlier this week to a sunny and balmy day, reaching 19 °C in the afternoon. Even the wind was right, it could hardly be a better day for sailing.
At the time we set off from the beach, the yachts were already on the way back from Gulangyu, and we could just intercept the head of the fleet. They had to work hard, beating against the wind and the tidal current. After most of the fleet had passed, we decided to follow them for a while, to see how fast we can be. Not to my surprise, our 5 meter inflatable catamaran is no match for these 8 to 10 meter yachts, so we had to let them go. Nonetheless, we zig-zagged our way up the coast towards the new beach, where our future sailing club will be, and landed there for a short break.

The marathon was officially over by now, and one of the runners was walking on the beach by himself, still in his running clothes. I invited him to board with us, and sail back to Zeng Cuo An, which he gingerly accepted. It was a nice surprise for him and a pleasant way to cool down after his 3 hour and 50 minute full marathon run, which was not bad at all for a first timer. I remember my one and only marathon which I ran in 1986 in Los Angeles, which at the time took me almost 5 hours. This year's winner here in Xiamen covered the 42 plus something kilometers in just 2 hours and a few minutes.