LEIGHTON O'CONNOR "FLICKS" of the 1st of many wins for Yacht RUN at Acura KEY WEST 2009 REGATTA with CATHERINE ZENNSTROM as Crew.

HOWDY FROM BOB DUFF,

The photo/"FLICKS"(sort-of) below show action pictures by LEIGHTON O'CONNOR from January 19th on the first day of  the KEY WEST 2009 REGATTA - Division 1, IRC-1. Shots feature the British yacht RAN, a TP52 owned by NIKLAS ZENNSTROM of Hamble, GBR.  She won in that first race and continued with high performances to win  her division after 10 races.

These plus many other stills may be viewed  on:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=14355&l=ed13b&l=ed13b&id=1034710764

or     http://leightonoc.smugmug.com/sports/605075

RAN's owner had TIM POWELL on the helm, JEREMY ROBINSON doing tactics  and what looks like a total crew of twelve including  CATHERINE ZENNSTROM, the only woman.  She scrambles to the high rail among many male elbows during three O'CONNOR  pictures of a single tack.

When seeing Catherine performing this way, I recalled the 1966 CHICAGO to MACKINAC race years ago when my young bride, DEBORAH COLLINS DUFF,  joined us on JACK KEARN's yacht KAREN  as the ONLY WOMEN CREW in a very big fleet. We thought nothing of it until the CHICAGO TRIBUNE  grabbed the story  for a combined society page/sports page spread. DEBBIE was a sailor but had formerly been a Chicago Debutante which seemed to interest the news people.  

This did not end with that one story!  A week or so later after sailing home from a great race, a call came from the adoption agency saying that a new infant son had been born for us.  The TRIB printed a routine birth announcement for DEBBIE and me leaving some readers to ponder how we managed the birth on a yacht racing far out on Lake Michigan.  Thus,  I always notice women racing yachts as does my grown son ROB III.  Perhaps all men do!

This is my very first  attempt at an IMOVIE (that's APPLE talk) in this DUFFSTUFF blog.  Many surprises came my way.   If  I do not find a bigger picture than what shows now in "edit mode" before "publishing", I will never try it again.  However, some folks say "never say never".  I started this over 10 days ago and the first movie "compile" took over 3 days before ending abnormally.  It got much faster when I was taught a few of the tricks by APPLE "Geniuses" in One to One training sessions.

I have bought an adapter from APPLE to hook this MacBook Pro to my ancient TV which should give me a somewhat larger view.  It cost about 20 bucks at APPLE plus $10 or so for cables at Radio Shack.  Even if I never publish another tiny slide-show/movie, I will have some fun playing with the "hugh" TV slave display for my computer.  I may talk about that in future blogs.  However, it is now late Sunday evening and the TV refuses to "mirror" my MAC as promised.  I am scheduled for another one to one session at APPLE tomorrow.  I have confidence---hope!