A Regular Race

It rained on the first regular Wednesday night race. Not the best conditions for sailing but there was wind. There were 'irregularities'. The 'dolly', which was used to help move the trailer to the crane, couldn't be found. The third wheel on the tongue works as 'brake' as much as 'wheel'. Fortunately I am near the crane and there were lots of people around. The RC was late getting started; no mark boat. Our first race would be an old triangular type.

The course was Gibraltar, 1, and 0. The wind direction was 095; the course to the 1st mark was 097. Crew for the first race: Chris was on foredeck, Charles did pit and Paula did mastman. I didn't like my start so we redid it. Actually I was confused with the revised sailing instructions which I thought eliminated the third start. Clearly our fleet hadn't started and the RC was flying "3"; so I was wrong again (!). We had more than enough time to get back and restart on time. It was a better start after the practise.

Did I say it was raining and the wind on the first leg was on the nose? I think the wind was about 15 knots, so there was a good swell. The boat had a much better feel than the Round the Island Race and that made me a happy skipper. I was also using my newer sails. However, with the rain and the wind we were cold.

The spinnaker went up without a problem. The run from Gibraltar to 1 went well except for the fact that the sheet came off. We did an excellent recovery. Victory Dance isn't in our fleet this year but is in our start. We were able to stay ahead of him even with the mishap. (He chose not to fly chute since in his fleet no one was.) Our leeward mark rounding didn't go well and we spent too much time dousing and VD was able to finally get ahead and stay ahead to the finish. (2 nd: we were beaten on PHRF by a shark.)

We sailed back to the dock. Paula and Chris took advantage of the boat's spacious cabin to get out of the wind. Cold and wet but great! I especially enjoyed the little match race we had with VD. Great wind; who cares about the cold?