J24 Blog

A Race Report in Three parts with Assorted Trivia

What a night. What do you get when you cross this:

With this

Answer: Sailing nirvana. My apologies to Brian who couldn’t be with us. At least he still has a job.

And now for the race report. We had three races, finished all of them, and were DFL in only two. In other words, we beat another boat and we didn’t totally suck. In fact, if it weren’t for some penalty turns in the second race we most certainly would have beat a couple of more boats. More on that below the fold.

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This is not a blow by blow race report, I’ll leave that to Brian. This is an attempt to understand what I could have personally done better.

The wind on the lake this Tuesday was stiff, at least compared to what we’ve become accustomed to. There was an intimidation factor, and I was very aware that mistakes made at the helm could have bad results. We set out on the lake with the genoa hanked but soon realized the jib would be the better choice. I did my best to keep the boat flat and dry (yeah, right) while the fore deck replaced the head sail; the water was choppy and the wind was howling. With the jib ready to hoist we sailed around, working on feel. The rig was so overpowered that even under main the boat was hard to control. Jibing was wild with the boom swinging wildly across to leeward and the boat rounding up.

We decided to skip the spinnaker. I certainly didn’t want to risk a broach or an accidental jibe so this was a decision that sat well with me. Eventually we did fly the spinnaker, and guess what?, we broached. More on that later.

This crazy, uncontrolled atmosphere also took us out of any start routine. We didn’t get a look at the course or hear the start gun go off. While we were still getting our bearings, the racing had begun.

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Filed by: Brian

In case you all haven’t had your eyes glued to the CYC results page for the Tuesday night racing series, here’s a brief recap: We WON!

Of couse, by “won” I mean “didn’t come in dead last”. That’s right, gentlemen, we came in ahead of another boat in last night’s race. Finally.

Read the dramatic blow by blow after the click… Continue Reading »

Well, there was the good, the bad, and the ugly (and a little bit of the bizarre). Let me explain:

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