Tuesday April 9th blog (draft)
Inbox
| x |
|
Apr 9, 2019, 10:08 PM (4 days ago)
|  | ||
| ||||
This week was a heavy weather race, with five boats going out. Winds were from the NW averaging around 12 kts, with shifty gusts over 18 kts (true). Skies were clear and beautiful.
Pair-Dice set up a start line based at the newly set club start mark, and called a course up to Government, down to Blacks (also newly set), and back to the Finish.
At the start, three boats were basically on time, and two were late. Tusitala took an early lead and kept it throughout. Perfect Thirty-Six and Avatar fought it out for the next two places (Perfect prevailed). Kicks was chased by Pair-Dice, but not caught.
A lot of the strategy turned on not getting overpowered in the big gusts. Some boats started with both main and jib reefed, some didn't reef, some shook out reefs for the downwind leg. It appeared that the overpowered boats that did not fare as well as those that were able to sail on a more even keel with less weather helm. Most boats were sailing at or near to hull speed anyway, so extra sail area didn't add much. The heavier boats with longer waterlines were favored under the wind conditions.
The race was exciting, challenging, and, if anything, could have been longer (had there been more course options for a NW wind).
There were nearly fifteen cheerful and animated sailors for dinner at the Crow's Nest, which showed that the summer sailing season is getting into full swing. We're hoping for more boats next week.
No comments:
Post a Comment