Surprise's Log Day Sailer 11750

Evacuated

We've evacuated from incoming hurricane Rita. We made it to Kerrville, TX where we are staying with my wife's parents. All through the trip, which took us 10 hours, we kept hearing stories form the radio about how congested the traffic was getting, and how much stronger Rita is getting. If it continues on, I don't expect we will have much left of our place to return to. We took the essentials - each other, the cats, some clothes, what food we could rescue from the freezer and put in a big cooler, some tools, a few things that were important to us, some trophies, the boxes for our PC's, and Surprise with all her gear.

I hope Rita will spare our house, but if it doesn't, we'll manage.

September Series #4

Well, here it is. The last Wednesday night race of the year. We had our kind of wind which was nice considering that the previous two weeks were bad. Last week none of us in the Portsmouth class or the Sunfish class finished. I ought to mention that Vince Morvillo, who is a sponsor of the races offered to buy all of us in those fleets that didn't finish a drink afterwards, which was handsome in him. Consider buying a boat through his brokerage, Sea lake yachts if you're in the market.

This week however was a different animal. We had the gold cup course which is fun since it gives us a chance to do some reaching. We had hoped to set the spinnaker on the first half of the reaching leg but it had shifted too far forward for us to carry it. Actually, we might have been able carry it, but I'm not sure we could have set it.

Here's the plots for us and Cacafuego:

Here's the analysis of our relative performance. Jim had better boat speedgoing upwind the first leg, but we used the shifts better. He's even speed compared to us down wind on the last leg.

Next week are the semifinals, We 're using Illusions, mini 12-meters. It will be a strange thing. They are going to weigh us and compensate the boats.

Next Wednesday at 4 pm you can watch it at the Seabrook Beach Club.

September series 2 and 3

School'd been occupying most of my mental energy so I've not been doing much with the data we've been collecting. But that may change after I learn more about the MATLAB software package. I may be able to generate polars for the Day Sailer given the data I've collected, but it will take some learning.

Anyway, Last night's race was wholly unsatisfactory, none in our fleet or the sunfish fleet finished our race before the time limit. The wind went light as is usual this time of year in the evenings. I moved the mast butt one notch forward as I had planned and it seemed to help in the lighter wind. As we were making our final run to the finish, the RC came out and told us the time limit was exceeded. We turned to sail to the dock and finally gave up sailing with a quarter mile left. We pulled out the paddle and got it over with.

Next week is the last race of the regular season, and once again it seemed to go by so fast. The championship is in the mini 12 meters - illusions. One person boat, sort of like a go cart. Should be interesting.