Spring Keel

Interesting weekend of racing

Tactics and foredeck: Nathan

trim 1 and 2: Mark and Mike

pit: Andrea

We had good starts and two perfect starts (one we were ahead of the entire fleet, at speed and going in the right direction :))

First Race was a light air race - and it was abandoned even though there was wind and we were in 3rd position creeping up to 2nd place...

We had good upwind speed, and during our first race, we had a bad start (light air and we got blanketed by three boats upwind of us without enough separation) but we made up distance and we were the 3rd boat to round the windward right after Get Happy! and Wile E Coyote. The windward mark had become the leeward mark by that time but hey!

It was the first time that we were really good in light air - pointing and being fast (I am a notoriously bad light air sailors and I truly admire any sailors who can get their boats to move fast and efficiently in nothing)

2nd race we had a perfect start and we were holding our own upwind in a heavier breeze, with really nice and smooth tacks, top end of the genoa when during a tack our pit person did a flip overboard! She held onto the lifeline and we got her back on the boat after a few tries. As we were getting back on track, we avoided Motorcycle Irene by 1 inch and during our penalty turn, our trim person was hit by the boom and fell overboard! 

He got detached from the boat but we dropped the jib, backed the main and sailed back toward him. He brought him up on the boat and retired from the day racing to make sure he could rest. 

Everyone was OK in the end. DNF in one race and they actually ran another race!

On Sunday, we had a good start and a really nice upwind keeping up in both point and speed, literally flying. Fantastic tacks, great gybes and good maneuvring.

2nd race we had a great start but for some reason we couldn't point upwind. After thinking about out, it looks like the genoa was too depowered compared to the main and both sails were not balanced. On the plus side, we short-tacked along the city front at the top end of the genoa and did very nice tacks. We will have learned to better trim the genoa/main balance next time around and we will therefore sail better.

Tactical calls were great throughout the race.

In any case, we had a ton of fun, great team, perfect day on the water, good sailing, good hard work, nice focus, no major hiccups - and we did debrief on the lack of performance upwind in the last race and we now have an actionable plan going forward in these conditions. Overall a great weekend!