OK, so last night wasn't one of Circe's most shining moments. But that's all behind us now and we do get a drop race in this series. Last night was race 1 of the second series. For those that missed it, it started with the wrong jib selection. After being quite light winds all day and with a forecast of continuing light winds (5 to 7 knots) into the evening we had the big #1 on deck as we went out only to have the wind dramatically increase to 15+ on the way to the start area. Off came the #1 and on came the #2. However, in the 24 minutes we need to wait for our start it started to drop. It never died altogether but the #1 would have been the more powerful sail.
That I badly mistimed the dash to the start and we needed to run the line for 20 seconds or more and when we headed up just before the gun we thought we were in good shape (except for being at the wrong end of the line) but were called over early. Kathleen and Hazen are still incredulous that we were over. In talking to Mark later he was shocked that Blue Streak got the jug because Veloche were definitely ahead of them on the line, so if BS got the jug Mark figured he had to be over early. Did the race committee call the wrong boat back? Hmm.
So we tacked back for the line, recrossed and started up the leg on starboard tack. We then tacked over onto port to clear air only to discover we had a wrap on the port winch and were immediatly hove to and unable to tack back. We then cut the brand new jib sheet (broke my heart), sheeted it on a port tack, cleared the wrap, and retied the cut sheet back on the jib. It was a short hitch and when we tacked back onto starboard discovered that we had failed to thread the cut sheet back through the fairlead so could not sheet it home. So, we then relead the lazy sheet through the port lead and used that and relead the old port sheet to the starboard side. Needless to say we were no longer in contension except for last place. We played catch up the rest of the 4 time around race and had a good sail but still finished 4th behind BS, Abra, and Veloche.
But Trevor won both the jug and the bullet in the RS400 race. Well done Trevor!!
So, for next Wednesday July 3rd, Steve is back, but Chris is not. I think Nansi is also still AWOL. Trevor is likely Fun Employed to defend his jug. So, who else is on?
The following week, July 10th, both Chris and Steve are off. Who else?
Let me know.
Skipper Ron
PS sorry about spelling errors, but my spell check seems to have finally collapsed from years of exhaustion in picking up after me.