A challenging night with torn sails

Wednesday was an exciting evening on the water in the Wednesday evening series. Winds were 20+kts at the start and as we were racing we had gusts to 30kts and instantaneous wind shifts of 90 degrees. It kept us on our toes.

At one point Wednesday we had a crew of 6 but then for very good reasons (thinking of you) we ended up with just Joe and Phil. We waited until near the start of the race to call in and decided to go without the spinnaker - probably our best decision of the night.

We started the race with a reefed genoa and reefed main – another a good decision – and were able to handle the sustained 20+kts and the attendant gusts. However, our start was poor. We didn’t hear the 5 minute warning, and we weren’t the only ones to have that problem I learned later, so our start was delayed by about a minute.

We sailed course N1 twice around – starts near green buoy #13 heads north to a pyromark near the coastgaurd station and back to the start.

We rounded the windward mark with ease unfurled the main and genoa and hit speeds of 8.2+kts. In the middle of the downwind leg the winds steadily declined to under 20kts so we decided to keep full sails for the second upwind leg.

As we were rounding the leeward mark we saw three boats with spinnaker problems – we felt bad for them but happy that we had decided to go without ours.  One boat's spinnaker was ripped to shreds, another, on Uncle Joe, was literally a kite. Their halyard, sheets and tackline were about 2 boat lengths out. I sympathize with them since we had a similar problem on January 1^st.  As we were sailing upwind on the second leg we saw Shout on her last downwind leg also having spinnaker problems. It was certainly a challenging night as very experienced sailors were at the edge.

The lull in winds on our first downwind leg did not continue. Instead the winds grew, and grew and grew. Two thirds of the way through the leg we really needed to reef but it would have taken too much time. Instead we just stuck it out until our downwind leg. At one point the gust was so high that Joe’s foot got dunked in the ocean and the waterline came up to the winch!

As we turned downwind it was nice to be flying in control again and to cross the finish line in front of three other boats: two were from fleet B which are faster boats but they do start 6 minutes after us, and one was from our fleet. Improvement.

Despite the challenging conditions the race was tight with seconds separating different boats. We beat three boats on corrected time – one in our fleet and two in fleet B. Importantly we dramatically closed on the faster boats in our Fleet. High winds are Prairie Gold conditions. 

Congratulations to all on the water for competing and for finishing. Nice to have 17 boats out there. It's great to have more cruising boats on the water. Hopefully they will continue to compete - for us we have learned so much by doing so.

Oh and I forgot to mention – we are ranked 4th out of 10 in our fleet. Mind you, that’s in part because we are dumb enough to keep turning up!

Next week Rumble I in which three different yacht clubs get together to race.

Saturday – Constitution yacht club summer race. 3 races in Broad sound outside of the harbor. Let me know if you want to join the crew! Race is followed by food in the marina near the swimming pool (bring your own bottle)