Well, the first day of the High Sierra regatta is done. Our performance is less than spectacular. First race we were probably 30th out of 32 boats. Maybe 29th. In short, We stank. Second race we were a little better, but I think we were probably only 28th or 27th. We were at the back of the last pack and well ahead of the stragglers. I don’t know why we were so bad, but I’m going to take the barrel screws off the spreaders tomorrow and see if that will help. It was a suggestion, to allow the mast to flex, or pump with the gusts. As it stands the spreaders are fixed in fore-and-aft swinging direction as well as in length I have nothing to lose, and this is really what I came here for anyway: to learn how to make this boat go better.
One particularly bothersome problem was that we're not pointing with those guys.When I say those guys I mean P. Root, D. Keran, D. Iwahashi, J. Fisher. For a while during the first beat, we were actually gained on L. Fiock, but he passed us at the end of the beat when I made the stupid mistake of coming across on starboard in front of a whole bunch of boats sailing downwind. to make the starboard rounding. The wind was so light and bad there at the upper end of the lake that we were becalmed.
On the other hand we managed to close with M. Schroeder on the down wind and almost got him, but it wasn’t enough. We had trouble with the chute on the second set in the down wind. K. did a good job of straightening it out, but we might have caught him if we had been able to set it right away. Oh well, &#$@ happens. As always, it's fun to see some ways that people have built their boats up. I think that replacing the jam cleats for the guy with cam cleats in there would help us some, and setting up tweakers would be a good thing.
I'm very loathe to criticize Race Committee, but I do with they could have used the standard starting sequence that has been in the racing rules of sailing for over five years now. No one else uses the old Yellow-blue-red system anymore that I've seen. But, it's their regatta, not mine, so it's not a complaint, merely an observation. They still did a good job, and I alway appreciate RC doing what they do, so long as they are conscientious about it. Thanks, Fresno Yacht Club!