Every Ounce Counts

Setting the boats up for racing at Nationals, we used five gondolas.
Four of them were mine.
I had my guys strip the boats of most of their removable parts.

But as the day went on, I realized I hadn't done a sufficient job of it,
because I kept noticing more and more items appearing on the docks.
I recognized them because they'd come from my boats.

First it was the seat base pieces,
Some loose blankets,
an extra hammer.

Each guy who stepped on a gondola would look around
and see if there was any extra weight he could get rid of.

I wasn't around for a lot of these "lightenings", and there wasn't anything
in the rules that said you couldn't remove things if you "didn't need it".
It got comical though when I noticed a floorboard
and a small fire extinguisher on the dock.

But then I guess that when you're racing...every ounce counts.

I suspect that we'll see some guidelines in the future
about removing things from the boats.