SJE/LKE/JV/DV/JN and Dan Johnson
Wind was forecast to be 6-4 diminishing. It was 9-12 with lots and lots of shifts and puffs.
Course was B #1 and #3 marks.
Dan was breaker in cockpit, this put too many people in the cockpit and we were falling all over ourselves all the time.
It was certainly valuable to have the weigh of the 6th person on the rail last night much of the time.
JV spent a lot of time clearing the lines, on the low side. After a tack. It had to be done but I need to figure out how to keep them tidy.
First I have to shorten them. Spin sheets too long. Halyards might also be too long.
We used the Kiwi drop with the Spinnaker effectively. We were almost at the mark - within a boat length - before we dropped the pole-less kite. Keeping it up that long gave us great speed. We caught up a lot.
We did a hoist of the kite with the gennie very loose - the spinnaker came up inside the gennie. It was cleared fast enough but the rule needs to be leave the gennie pretty only slightly cracked off before the hoist.
When rounding the leeward mark, the sail controls need to be pre-set for upwind. Rounding without the sail controls already set means we can’t point and we are slow. I went out to ‘be the pole’ on deck at the rounding, and that meant the controls didn’t get done. So we will have Julie or the mast person be the pole so I can do what I need to do.
We have to get Lynn involved in managing the main. At a windward mark rounding she needs to turn the boat downwind - right at the mark (that was a mistake from last night) and break the gross sheet on the main to let it out. Same with rounding the bottom mark, she needs to haul in the main using the gross trim.
In all we lost a few seconds here and there around the course and one of those lost few seconds cost us the race. I believe if operations were smooth we would have won by 30 or more corrected seconds.
I am delighted that the crew is so willing to learn and stretch, thank you all for your efforts.
Onward and upward ;-)
S