260604 PEYC Spring 3 of 5

Creation: 260604 0506 Last Modified: 260604 0506

Crew

Position	Person
Helm	Lynn Ellwood
Main	Steve Ellwood
Middle 1	Anik Karimjee
Middle 2	Melissa Ella Warren
Mast	Joel Massicotte
Bow	Howard Whittaker

Course

Course J - Floating Marks 3 times around. RC - Martin Lentsch on the club’s power boat set floating marks in the middle of the bay, rather than at the sides where the fixed marks are). The distance between the marks was 1nm, with a start finish line in the middle.

Weather

As low as 9 knots, and as high as 18. SW. Shifts were maybe 10-15 degrees. Perfect weather for Picton Bay sailing. Warm - shorts weather, clear skies.

Boat Setup

Rig tension

• Uppers ~ 1050lbs
• Mids ~ Tight but wire so we don’t know
• Lowers ~ 700-800 lbs
• Wedges in mast to hold it tight side to side, and force the aft end of the mast forward (generates a ‘little’ but of prebend)
• Upwind max backstay, Off wind backstay off Sails
• Full main (rigged to reef)
• #3 Jib, cars set to most forward point on the deck

Race Result

Race Review

14 boats in NFS started together. It looked like Bear won the start by making a run down the line from the RC at 35s to go. They headed up at the gun and they were gone. Lickety and every other boat tried for the boat end. Lots of congestion. Lickety got kinda stuck in the fleet. We watched as Bear hit the eastern shore on stbd and tacked across the fleet in pressure. Good strategy. We decided that Bear went too far to the shore, perhaps to ensure it had stretched its legs enough to cross the fleet. We decided, in our little fleet of 4 spinnaker boats, where the next largest was a Shark…launch from the middle of the line at the gun with room to tack when we wanted to. Happily the other 3 boats made that easy. The GC was under us closer to the pin. Yes it gave them a bit of an advantage, it was pin favoured, but we had slightly better speed, and they got stuck, they couldn’t tack and cross us. We took them out to the layline - cruel I know - but they are the competition. So all the way to the windward mark they were in our disturbed air. They worked hard to stay above us, but that too slowed them down. The jib was tight in and Lynn sailed to its telltales. I played the main on the traveller. I found setting the sheet to block to block (I need to shorten the tether to get even more tension) I could slide the traveller up and down in response to any change in heel angle to maintain it. Dropping it allowed for a reduction in weather helm. Then bringing it in as soon as possible, without impacting helm, was the way to go. Lynn and I talked constantly about how her helm felt, the boat speed, and comparison to targets.

More later…