Monday, July 21, 2008

Recap of last couple weeks

Mac rush is over, so I can think about my own boat again!

For the independence cup, Niki and I decided very late to sail, and thus had no crew besides ourselves. It was still pretty fun, and Niki got some good light air chute practice. I think we actually could have done well (being light) in the 3-5kts of breeze, but got a not-so-great start which was followed up by getting tacked on by anyone and everyone. We finished 6th and went in, but had a good time. Sailing doublehanded is great fun (at least in the light air.) Surprisingly, I found it harder to go upwing (working mainsheet, trav and backstay) than going downwing (gybing main and spinnaker)

The following wednesday we had Niki's parents out for a beercan, which we started 7 minutes or so late (due to wrangling with dinghies etc). It was a good test of light air speed again, and we ended up beating the 1 other boat out there.

Last Saturday was a series race (b1 b2) and we went out again in big breeze (AGAIN). Averaging high teens, gusting mid 20s. We seemed to lack our usual speed, and definitely didn't have the boathandling down. Additionally, I missed the first start by quite a while due to being way off the course while messing around with sails and compass headings. A painful 6 and 3. A couple lessons learned:

-dont leave the start area, and definitely not by 1/4 mi!
-need to practice gybing, sets, and upwind speed before the actual race
-wrapping kite is bad, very bad (I've only wrapped 1 Shields kite before, ever, and this weekend we had it 3 times)

The problems we had on gybes:
-boom out too far to make crossing boom easy: solution: shorten mainsheet with stopper knot
-spinnaker getting wrapped on headstay: trim old guy all the way back to shrouds before gybe
-overdriving during gybe: get everything gybed before following with helm

Got a chance to get our chops back this coming weekend, the 26th.

Thats all I can recall for now. Mostly happy the Mac racers are gone, so I can sleep again.

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