CREW
Kathleen, Pam, Audrey, - Foredeck
Susan - Main Sheet & and Start timer
Steve M, Adam - Jib Sheets
Ron - Steering

Welcome back Adam from his 6 week European adventure. Good to have you on board again. Adam intends to split his time between Circe and RS 400's. Nansi was swatting raccoon sized mosquitos in Winnipeg. Jake had left for home that morning for Vancouver.

WIND
It was forecast at about 6 knots and that's what it was with the occasional gust to 10.

SAIL SELECTION
We had the newly acquired #3 on the furler left over from our Monday evening spinnaker sail and since this race was a non counter and more focused on some spinnaker practice, the skipper, out of laziness, decided to leave it on. Bad idea.

COURSE
It was a SW wind so the course was windward/leeward 3x around with start mark in the east part of bay and windward mark over by RCYC. The longest leg Graham has set all year.

RACE
Even though this was a non counter, or maybe because it was a non counter, we had more boats out than normal. In addition to the usual suspects of Blue Streak, Abracadabra, Veloce, Alpha Omega, Kokoro, and Amelia, we also had the new Hanse and Lawrence Reiber's Hunter 38.

As this was a non counter race, Blue Streak, Veloce and Circe had decided to use the race as spinnaker practice.

As I said, the #3 was a bad idea. We had a pretty good start but in that light air with the #3 we could not match boat speed with any of our usual rivals and we slowly dropped behind. It was not only slower it didn't seem to point as high. But it was really easy to tack!!

The first spinnaker leg we used the spinnaker pole and the symmetrical kite. It took a bit of time to get it up but it flew well and we moved along nicely. We got it down successfully and sailed the second buck now realizing that the race committee had shortened the course to 2X around.

We again struggled up the buck with the #3. We considered changing to the #1 and even got it on deck but decided it wasn't worth the effort changing at this point. We got the asymmetrical spinnaker set up before the rounding and with no pole to worry about it went up well. We had a nice sail to the finish but discovered that the asymmetrical is smaller than the symmetrical spinnaker and does not carry as well straight down wind.

But it was great fun flying them both

RESULTS
The 3 spinnaker boats were not counted in the results but since the results didn't count anyway we were not fussed about that. Blue Streak got the beer but we must have been very close too. They were closer to the committee boat.

Skipper Ron