He'd said I could drive, which was exciting, as we had a good time last time we sailed his boat in 09. Somehow we convinced Niki to take some time off from work to sail sat, and sunday Aarons partner Dan was going to come out.
Saturday was a unique experience, with a number of firsts. Not first places, just firsts.
First, I got as close to a big collision as I've ever been. In a borrowed boat. In the first prestart.... There was a j24 sailing through the start, and we luffed over him to avoid, and then found ourselves aimed square at Russ's Etchells. The boat didn't turn up as fast as I thought it would, so I did kind of a crash bearaway, and we came about 4" from Russ' backstay. Glad Aaron was there!
We got a pretty late start after that, but legged out right, and looked ok for a while. Apparently we had the wrong jib up, with our heavy jib up instead of the medium which would have been appropriate, but the boat was actually ok to drive. We rounded around 5th, but then slid a bit downwind. The Etchells is a LOT more sensitive to angle downwind i nwaves, as a tiny bit of steering means surfing a wave or falling through it. The Shields is more about keeping the rig over the boat than hunting waves, so it was a useful experience. Aaron said the jib makes a big difference here, but I'd say not being used to the boat was bigger. It took me until the second beat to figure out how to cross the boat properly! The interesting thing is it needs a LOT more helm to turn than our boat (remember the prestart?) so you actually step in front of the tiller, as theres lots of room when it's hard over. We finished 7th or 8th in that race, and switched jibs for the next race.
Another lousy start on my part, then about 4 minutes after the start we heard a loud bang, and our outhaul broke. We continued to sail the upwind, and despite having no outhaul, plus Aaron on the stern trying to rig something, we rounded midpack. The next upwind wasn't as good, and realizing we were last, we retired from the race to fix the outhaul.
Aarons approach was pretty bold for this, but it did work. We dropped all sails, removed the main from the boom, opened up the boom, upended it and shook like crazy, in order to get the internal outhaul pennant towards the end of the boom. Once we could see it I used a batten and leatherman to snag the bit of outhaul remaining, which we were able to thread through the sheave and get working. At this point we'd drifted about a mile, but luckily were right on top of the RC, and felt like nauseous heroes for getting it fixed. We were into the prestart, so went for our jib, only to hear another, softer pop as the jib halyard shackle let go with the jib halfway up. Niki think the flogging while drifting, as well as the halyard wrapping around the headstay, must have caused it to pop free. On our boat we're used to spool shackles, but I think on boats with the RWO/Racelite/whatevers you need to be religious about taping everything.
THinking the halyard hadn't completely skyed, I made it up to the spreader before getting yelled at to come down. We thought about rigging a little safety line with the spin halyard to make it up, but at 2:55 in the prestart this seemed unlikely to get us racing in time. We sailed in, fixed the boat, and had a bunch of free drinks. Have to say the Verve Inshore people did a great job with the regatta to date, and I've never seen so many racers around after sailing.
Today I'm doing bow, having made a bit of a disgrace as a helm. Still had a good time, and looking forward to Team Fireplace doing better today with Aaron, Dan S and myself.
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