Sunday, February 7, 2016

CYC Midwinters January - Sailing the boat

Brian summarized beautifully what racing single-handed on the bay feels like: you are among everyone yet very alone. I still love it. The beautiful rugged relationship between you and your boat is fabulously simple and pure and highly effective.

All photos taken by the stoaway photographer -


Doing what looks like a real messy jibe


Sailing upwind in the rain. I remained surprisingly dry underneath my foulies.


Super light air loose beat


Trying to set the Doomsday device - I got so confused about the 'Stand-By' and 'On' position and I needed to center the ram to connect it to the tiller that I think that I inadvertently increased the gain to the maxium when I was just trying to move the ram 2 degrees at a time to port...


Giving myself plenty of sea room to get the kite up! I basically have everything set up at the cockpit (except for pole action) as I like to be able to dump the kite real quickly from where I am if I have to (which I had to do at the leeward mark)


Active trimming on a reach in light air to maximize boat speed. This is what I enjoy about a tight reach under spinnaker in light air. I know I did write that there is something that I enjoy about light air sailing. Only idiots never change their mind.




The physics of spinnaker trimming: looking up at the sail and then down at the fun meter - and if you are single handed also back to make sure you don't have a huge red kite about to take away your wind.

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