Final Race in Spring Series - moving up the Learning Curve...

Light sea breeze all day, was replaced by a strong SE gradient late in the afternoon, and the gusty 15kn breeze made for an intense race!

On the way out I wanted a sail that it turns out was not even on the boat! Poor Brigite, I had her T up 3 sails, all before we even got to the start area! Eventually we went with the Original #2/3, and we came to the conclusion that we need ways to identify the sails when they are down below!

Course was S, K, L, J, S all to port. The line was VERY skewed, maybe 30 or 40 degrees to the boat end, so it was going to be a barge fest! I set us up about 20 seconds early, so we had a lot of time to kill, and it made it impossible to grind in the genoa once we did start. Before the start the genoa caught itself in the reefing cleat on the boom, and tore a little hole in the clew patch, by the leech.

CYMRU barged in a 7 or so knots beam reaching in at a right angle to those of us that were lined up right. Kerry drove the boat into a hole in front of us and parallell to the line, I had the tiller in my teeth to try and avoid him. It was a real bandit move, and I let him know it!! After the start he did his circle(s).

We were not pointing as high as the rest of the faster boats, and we were quickly getting pinned out beyond the layline. I went past the lay, and then we tacked as most of the fleet went before the layline, so we had a lane. SEAL was ahead and too leeward, they overstood, so we cracked off and went straight to the mark, rounding FIRST!

Then we went a tad high, as we got the spinnaker ready, hoisted, and managed to keep the thundering mob at bay. We doused early, so we could set up and have time in case anything went wrong. CYMRU and another big boat were eyeing us up inside, but I talked to them and kept them outside, so we rounded in second.

A good close hauled leg to J, with most boats too low of the mark, and ending up not laying it! We had a STBD tacker approaching as we closed the mark on port, but he was way overstood and far back, so we went for it and got it cleanly, picking off 2 boats in the process!

Then a power reach to the finish, where we had to work to keep a lane and clean air. We powered to the finish with boats much bigger than us, and hopefully with a very good result - I doubt any boat bigger than us beat us. Results Unknown at this time.

Brigite hurt her back trying to winch the genoa in, and really worked hard all day, with lots of action and trimming. At the end we were pretty spent, from the most intense race yet. The #2/3 was the correct sail, and it appears the boat likes to sail with big headsails, old school style!