An anchoured vacant boat off kits beach starts to lose its sails.
Yesterday English Bay was pouneded with cold winds from the North West. This is not totally uncommon for the winter but this is July!?!
The winds in English Bay throughout the day reached 30 knots and the seas rolled in with one-two meter chop. By race time at 6:00pm the wind was in the twenties and the seas were really rough easily one - two meters. We were a bit dubious as we headed out especailly when we passed other shell shocked boats heading in. This was also going to be the first time out sailing for Curtis's friend Mike who had never been sailing before.
We decieded to go with a conservative sail plan and hoisted a reefed jib (90%) and a double reefed main. With some sheeting in issues with the jib we were not able to point as well as I would have liked but by the end of the race it was sorted out.
Our start was decent and we got away about middle of the pack. The first up wind leg was good but our pointing put us in 5th rounding the freighter out of six. All of the other boats went on broad reeches jibing in to the leeward mark. We took a risk and went dead down wind. We weren't prepared to hoist the kite in that weather so we flew down wing on wing and we made up alot of ground. We were the 3rd boat rounding the leeward mark on the heels of PEGASUS who was in second.
Th next time round we had sorted out the sheeting in issue on the jib about half way up and lost ground rounding the mark 5th again. We followed our same tactic for the downwind leg. I was surprised to see that noone copied us and again we made up ground probably 3rd or 4th crossing the line. By this point the wind finally subsided and we had a lazy sail back to the marina.
In the end it was a great and challenging race. Our sail plan was probably a bit too conservative but I feel that we could have done alot better had we been able to sheet in the reefed jib better.
A big hand too the crew: D-Hog, CurtASS, and the Rookie.
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