This is a report on our first OSYC Easter Egg Hunt. A late report for sure, but better than never. The whole thing was Commodore Ken’s idea – hunt for easter eggs from a sailboat. How in the world to do that!? If you’ve been to any “egg” hunt lately, you already know that no one uses real eggs any more – those days are long gone. Instead the kids hunt plastic eggs with candy inside. Well, those little plastic eggs are clearly too small for hunting from a sailboat, so it was only a short stretch to use balloons instead, and to drop them from the club barge while everyone else sails around and picks them up. They’re brightly colored and easy to spot on the lake, and with just a little water inside, they will even move downwind slow enough to be caught. So the challenge becomes not so much finding the eggs/balloons as it is getting them out of the water and into the boat. Small boats with low sides have a bit of an advantage over the big cruisers, but if you give the cruisers a fishing net it evens it up a bit. Now, for some reason people got the idea that this was a kids game, so despite the beautiful warm and windy (but not too windy) spring day, we only had boats with kids going after the balloons, and by extension only the kids got the prizes. Next year we want to see everyone out there, as it’s about the most fun you can have on a little sailboat. And surely everyone needs some man-overboard practice, right? As it was, we had my whole family on the Impulse, and Fred Falchok and his two kids on their Hunter, with Bill Lewis and Jennifer Griffin setting the “course” from the RC barge. Sailing out from the dock we were left with the question, “How exactly do we get these wet slippery balloons into the boat?” And Ken said we had to bring them back un-popped too. Joseph thought it would be a great idea to hang onto a rope dragging behind the boat and swim for them. That worked too – we got two balloons in the boat with that method, although it was slow. And it was a warm day for March, but the lake water didn’t know that and shortly he the little blue lips that kids have when they start the swimming season too soon. Time for plan B – just reach over the edge and pick them up. While sailing past at 4 knots. Did you know that an Impulse kicks out a good sized bow-wave at that speed? Enough to knock a balloon out of reach of even adult crew. Better slow down a bit. That was the trick – careful steering and sail trim and three crew on the rail grabbing as we sailed past. The pictures tell the story. We took turns steering and pulled in 17 balloons (plus one popped) before heading back to the dock. Fred’s crew pulled in about a dozen using the fishing net approach. Prizes were given for most balloons collected, balloons with magic numbers and for anything else – all the kids got to pick a prize from the stash, and there were even special prizes for those over 21. (See, I told you that you should have come down. And yes, that azalea is growing nicely by my front walk. Huh? What kind of prize did you think I was talking about?) So that was it for the “First Annual Lake Sinclair Sailboat Egg Hunt” – clearly it works, so we’ll do it again next year. Start making your plans now. ([More photos here…->http://picasaweb.google.com/jharrell26/2010OSYCEasterEggHunt])