Racing: Turkey Day

Second racing day for Kraken with the Oceanside Turkey Day race.

Again 8 boats entered and this time we moved a little higher up the list coming in 5th. Overall things went pretty well and we had a bunch of things that could be improved, including not hitting Barton's head with the spinnaker pole. We were 4 minutes behind 4th place and about 13 minutes behind the leaders after an hour and a half. The last three legs were pretty straightforward and I felt we were closing steadily on the leaders, just lost a lot of time early on.

So - easy ways to save a few minutes and continue our improvements:

• I started the countdown on the warning, not the 5 minutes mark, causing confusion and costing us a decent start
• Probably lost a minute right at the start, maybe more
• We tacked a little low on the mark, probably should have tacked closer to the mark or played it a bit safer. This left us with an extra tack and contributed to our first spinnker hoist confusion
• On our extra tack we went higher than we needed too (we had a line problem caused by the partial setup of the spinnaker). Looks like we sailed an extra minute on this tack.
• Our first spinnaker hoist took some extra time, about two minutes. Not sure how much time this actually cost us (less than not fixing issues and botching the hoist would have!) but some savings can still be had here
• On our first downwind leg we sailed a bit high. After the gybe we were going slower but our downwind velocity was 20% better. Trouble is it just feels better sailing high! When high we were up at 140degrees, when low we were 160 and beyond.
• On the reach to the OC mark we should have sheeted the headsail from the rail. This was a long leg and we could have gained a bit of speed.

Overall I really feel we can't point properly, tacking through 90 degrees is currently good (and the exception) and we should be approaching tacking through 85. More commonly we're tacking through 95ish. Some of this is down to improving sail trim but I'm also hoping that a fresh #1 Genoa is going to really help.

I don't have recordings from the last race but suspect we knocked over five minutes off what we would have managed.

NMEA Turkey Day Viewer

Will post any photos people got, and trim down the video and post later.