Tacking

A fun day on the water had us racing in 8 - 16 knots. The Rick Johnson trophy is an awesome trophy and one day it would be nice to get Kraken's name on it but this year it was not to be. The main factor, perhaps bizarrely, was our ability to tack in stronger breeze.

Tacking right? Easy! We do it all the time?

Apparently not, and as arms got weary and the wind climbed and the sail got heavier it took us longer and longer to get the sail trimmed and boat speed back up.

Now I've had a chance to sit back and think about it it seems there are a bunch of things that we could have done.

• We could have changed people around on the boat to get fresher arms in place
• I could have either luffed or turned slower once through the wind to help the trimmers. While this would slow the boat down with the strong breeze we'd have been back up to speed much quicker than we were waiting for the headsail to come in.
• We should have risked the jib for race #3. Could have left the genoa strapped down on the deck for a quick swap back. The boat was overpowered upwind during the race and tacking the smaller headsail is a breeze.

As it was we lost several boat lengths on every tack. We failed to make a mark on one layline with a horrible tack back with the pole out to clear it and we were out of contention for that trophy early on in each race.

Downwind conversely the boat felt good, we were getting up in the high 8s and holding pace with the other boats.

While thinking about it I found this article on releasing the Genoa (Sailing World).