Race: The Rick Johnson Memorial

The Rick Johnson memorial regatta marked a year racing Kraken. Looking good the day before three crew withdrew last minute ........ so we sailed with five on board.

Winds were 9-13 knots all day and we got some lovely sailing in. Sarah took on the foredeck, and mast and will probably have a few bruises to show tomorrow  but did great in a jump in at the deep end situation. The rest of us jumped around the back of the boat trying not to step on each other's toes too much. I'm aching and I was behind the wheel most of the time!

With three races we placed 2/4, 2/4, 2/4 in class and out of the 7 boats racing 2nd on overall corrected time. This was a smaller fleet than last year where I seem to remember placing 7/8.

Starts - not terrible, a bit slow at the first one, a little late on the second (though we may have won it?). Second by a few seconds on the last but fairly quickly powered over Briar Rose.

Upwind - good boat speed and pointing. Overpowered above 10 knots but mostly controllable with traveller. Did not do a good job tracking the shifts but did do a good job covering Shamen and pulled off the best lee bow on them to date. Gringo beat us one upwind getting inside at the top mark but otherwise I think we won all three initial beats and we passed Gringo at that top mark anyway. The new tuning seemed to work really well, but probably could have tightened the rig more than I did after the first race. Overall we were pointing as high as everyone else and going as fast, or a little faster so I'm not going to complain too much, just keep pushing this aspect.

Downwind boat speed seemed okay. We had the pole too low and sometimes had the sheet tweaked needlessly. Maneuvers were tricky and overall stressful on everyone as shorthanded and lacking experience sailing this way but we survived and didn't break anything (though I'll be going up the mast this week to bring a halyard back to earth!).

Hopefully we learnt enough to improve next time though.

The Oceanside "C" leeward mark bites us more than any other leeward mark. I don't know why. Going to have to go and sprinkle some Kraken rum around it. It bit us both times today, once a nibble, the second time a big chomp.



Still - second and close to Shamen in first place in two out of three races despite being shorthanded. Actually quite awesome to have made so many mistakes and be so close to them. Next year!

Here are some bonus dolphins that joined us while milling around between races:

Wind: 8 -> 13 knots
Rig: Vs -31, Ds hand tight