Problems

There was rain in the morning and the forecast called for another late afternoon shower. The storm arrived at 16:00 but cleared in time for the launching of the boat. The wind slowly began to rebuild and by race time there was a good northerly breeze. Grand National dropped a 'pin' near where Mark 1 should be, and Dufferin was the windward mark.

Once again it was a very congested second start. I was once again on the pin side and I was not able to figure out how to navigate to the line. It took us three attempts to make it; the first two failed as we were knocked by the exhaust from bigger boats. (We were perhaps the smallest boat on this start.) Once started, we did well and were able to cross Polaris. However, clearly the start was problem 1.

Problem 2 was trying to make the windward mark. We overstood but were badly knocked as we got closer to the mark.

Problem 3 was discovered when we hoisted the chute. The sheet was under the lifeline and had to be reattached. Once that problem was solved we discovered that the spin sheet was jammed into the genoa block. It took us awhile to get it unjammed. All of this sorting out meant that the chute wasn't flying!

Problem 4 was getting around boats at the leeward mark. We were windward boat and the two leeward boats had problems gybing. Their spinnakers got wrapped around their forestay. We might have been able to gybe over and go on their other side if we had thought about doing that earlier; but that was not possible now.

Problem 2 recurred on the second rounding of the windward mark; even though I thought I had made an extra extra allowance!

Problems? We didn't do well but ... there was no rain; we did a good job at recovering from various mishaps; the nav lights worked; it was a great day to be on the water. What problems?