May 19, 2004
May Series Race 3
We finished third today. I'm not sure what we did wrong, because we had a good plan, at least it seemed good at the start. I thought getting on to port tack as early as possible was the thing to do, and it seemed we were ahead of a lot of folks, but in retrospect maybe the pin end was the way to go. We did have some trouble with our rudder and the tiller extention during the race, but I didn't think it caused that much trouble. I guess it did. The boat did seem overpowered a lot. We would be sailing along close hauled, the the boat would power up, and heel over hard. We'd hike, the helm would load up, and I'd have to feather the boat up into the wind. the boat would depower and I'd fall off and it would power back up. and I'd have to do it again. Perhaps less tension on the jib halyard to increase mast bend and depower the main?
In any event, the Vanguard-15 and the Finn sailed great races. Jim Wells sailed well, too and was a close fourth. I'll need to work harder at beating them next week.
We had one port-starboard sitation with two keelboats, We were starboard, the others port, and unfortunately for them we were near their port layline. The first bore off and ducked us, the other tacked and came up on us from leeward. We tacked, they followed, and we did the same to them. Eventually we separated... Not fun for either of us, I really would have preferred to stay on our original starboard tack, and he was taken to windward of his weather mark. Too bad, but I've been dinked by those guys in other situations. Karma, dude.
