There was a major rain system that moved through in the afternoon, but the forecast was good for the race’s time period. When I arrived at the club there was increasing cloud. An isolated cell was over Malton and was making it ways towards Humber Bay. Various skippers and the PRO huddled around the computer monitor looking at a live radar feed. The decision was made to go into AP.
The crew went to the bar and had a beer. The rain arrived and left. So go or no go? Go. We got the boat launched and set up stuff on our way to the course. Windburn was the only other boat in our division. I was worried that we would arrive at the start only to have no wind and things definitely cancelled. There was sufficient wind to start but not much more. The course was D 4.
The storm left a lot of chop and with the light wind we had a difficult time to make way. At the start, I wanted to avoid stalling by heading up before we had some speed. Things went well. We had sufficient speed to get ahead of Windburn and give her bad air.
The wind picked up nicely and we took off. As lead boat we had to find the mark. The ipad with installed mark waypoints was very helpful. The downwind leg was too hot for a chute. There were good gusts; the boat apparently was sailing over 6 knots.
Annoyingly the compass would not stay on and a shackle broke on the boomvang.
I think we were a bit too fast for the RC. They had moved but not anchored. A finish or a leeward mark rounding? The committee boat being unanchored was increasingly favoured, but if this wasn’t a finish we would need to round the mark/pin. It became increasingly clear that it was most likely a finish so we bore away. Horn.
Our first bullet of the season!
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