Lesson learned – the spinnaker sail is much more effective when it is up at the top of the mast pulling the wind instead of dragging in the water underneath the boat.
Sailed with PL and TG on GJ. Classic thermal NNW wind on a warm day. Tried to go west on the start but spent too much time looking at others and then got slowed by Surt. It was all on me. Still in contention at the windward mark though. The highlights of this race were
- messing with an Etchell and a J/109 at the windward mark. The 109, with its sprit already out even though it was on port tack, had to duck the Etchell and do a 180 in front of us – which means they stopped. I could not duck or go over so I had to S to avoid ramming them. Then they did a 90+ at the mark and I had to do it again because we had our spin up faster. Ironically it was looking great at that moment because they were covering Bullet and we could surf them but then we realized we had a spin halyard prob 🙁
- 10 minutes of discussion later, we dropped the spin and cleared the halyard. It took the crew 5 minutes to do this and as it was going on the spin gradually got sucked under the bow. Lost many minutes on the maneuver and tore the sail.
But it was, as always, a good night. We were not last.
No vids or pics from tonight though. Duh.
oops
D’oh!!! Dale’s off at the sailboat races. There’s actually wind tonight!!!