Monday, June 6, 2011

A series 1


Jacob and Kate took the boat out this weekend, as Niki and I were out of town. Below is Jacobs report:

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A crew of three took Peanut for a ride in the first A race of the series. After a few last minute cancellations, Katie, Ian, and I worked out the crew work so that Katie trimmed main upwind and ran the bow downwind, Ian trimmed jib and spin, and I held onto the tiller and trimmed main around the corners. This setup worked pretty well and everyone had something to do throughout the race.

We sailed out in a solid westerly at around 10 knots, but when we reached the course, the breeze was already dwindling. The Race Committee tried to start a race in marginal conditions, but changed their mind after a few minutes into the sequence. I took a half turn off the lowers and two turns off the headstay when it looked like we were going to sail in the super light conditions. We waited under AP until a northerly filled in. I changed the rig back to base settings after it filled in.

The new breeze initially filled at around 10 knots, but got lighter as our start approached. The boat end was favored and that's where I wanted to start, but I was focusing on keeping boat speed up in the pre-start for the light air and Mike pushed me down the line a bit. We had a good start about a quarter of the way down from the boat, but Sam had a good start at the boat. Lu had a down-speed start and split off the the right side after the start. The rest of the fleet continued to the left. We had a boat speed problem on the first beat in the light air. I noticed a lot of weather helm, especially for the little breeze we had. We could have trimmed the jib harder to correct this, which we did on the second beat. I think that sailing the boat flatter would have been interesting to try. Sam was able to roll over the top of us to a significant lead. The breeze clocked right slightly, so Lu rounded between Sam and us. Lu pulled away from us slightly on the downwind and the breeze started to build back up to around 10 knots. On the second beat, we trimmed our jib harder and set out for the right side of the course. We didn't seem to have a boat speed disadvantage this time, which was probably a combination of jib trim and increased wind speed. Sam played the right side and Lu went left initially. In our first cross with Lu, we might have gained slightly, but he continued out right, past the layline and we were able to tack slightly in front of him as we reached the starboard layline. He trailed us closely on the the downwind and some interesting traffic with an approaching T10 made for a close finish, but we were able to finish second. Sam won the race with a comfortable lead.

With an imminent thunderstorm, the Race Committee decided to send the Shields fleet back to the harbor after the first race.

I think that our weaknesses were a less than ideal tuning setup for 3-7 knots and the battery on the compass was dead, so the shifts were tricky to pick up. I thought that our strengths were in the second half of the race. We were more competitive in terms of boat speed and capitalized on a tactical opportunity to pass a boat. All in all, we had a pretty fun day of racing.

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