About Me

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Alaska, United States
I am owned by Pauline and Mark Blasky. My hull was built at the Duncan Marine Yard in Taiwan and launched in Dec of 1980. It is a William Garden design based on the Pixie Design and called by Duncan Marine a Freedom 45. They are the fourth owners and have owned me the longest. They have done extensive refitting to me including replacing my entire deck structure and rig. My masts are roughly 10% taller than original and now are made of aluminium as opposed to the original wood ones, which, though pretty, were always problematic. You can read more about me under "MORE ABOUT SARI TIMUR"

June 5, 2011

Palau Open Ocean Swim (Or the things you say you will do after a few beers!)

6th Annual Palau Open Ocean Swim
Well, Friday night we were off to a friend's birthday party.  While we were there a few people started talking about an event they hold in Palau every year to help fund the Swimming Club and that is an open ocean swim competition.  They hosted a 5km swim, a 1.5 km swim, a 1km swim, a 500m swim and for the kids a 250 metre swim.  Did I say the kids were allowed to join in any competition and they did them all including the 5km swim, just to humiliate us old farts.  
But back to the story.  The party was going good, i.e. I was into my third beer when I was conned (or I mean talked) into taking part in the 1.5 km swim.  Now I really have not done any real exercise since climbing Mount Kinabalu 9 months ago.  I probably would have signed up for the 5 km swim otherwise (the power of beer persuasion) .  Luckily I was sober enough to realize that probably 1.5k was going to be my limit.  The next problem was that we would need to leave the party early as the registration would be at 7am the next day.

Mark doing the registration
We showed up at 7 and kept trying to psych myself up.  Pauline sensibly decided to remain as a fan.  Then we started looking for the people who had talked us into doing this, only to find that they didn’t show up until after 8.  Anyway we waited until almost all of the finishers of the 5km event were back (all but two) before we started at 9.30am.  The five km course was out and around a local island.  Luckily ours was 3 swims around a triangle course near shore and at the end of each triangle we had to stand up and show our number to the judges so they could verify that we did all 3 rounds.  The good news about this meant that if I felt like I was going to not make it I could just stop after any one of these triangles.  Anyway the two guys responsible for conning me into this finished 1st and 4th .  Oh and me, I made sure I came in last with a time of 41 minutes 27 seconds, a full 16 minutes after the leader.  But hey I finished and I had fun. 

Afterwards there was a nice spag lunch with lots of fresh water to rehydrate and a raffle before they handed out our certs and a commemorative towel.


Mark on his last lap

Mark running to the finish line

Mark with the little kids, who beat him

All the swimmers and helpers

Posted by SY Sari Timur at 02:14

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