Ft. Lauderdale

Our first race is tomorrow, where we will race from Ft.
Lauderdale to Key West. The course is about 160 miles and it looks
to be mostly downwind again this year. We will start at 1 pm
tomorrow and get in that night. The forecast is for 10-15 knots at
the start and building to the mid 20’s by the end of the race. So
we should have some good fun. The focus right now is on downwind.
We have lightened up the boat taking minimum upwind sails and
making sure we are ready for some downwind sailing and sail
changes. Yesterday’s practice was a fire drill of 3 hours of sail
changing. We started by sailing upwind a bit on starboard tack. We
have been working hard on improving the rig set up and we wanted to
get a feel for it in those wind conditions (about 18 knots). We
tacked over on port, bore away, and hoisted the A7 (a fractional
kite). Then to be honest, it was a blur of trying different
staysail and jib set ups while going down wind. We then sailed with
the A2 for awhile, still working on staysail combos. Then peeled to
the A3. After all that, we finally turned around and had a long
sail back to Lauderdale. As we are doing all this prep we are
keeping our thoughts on the downwind sailing we will be doing on
the west coast. But, the focus right now is to do well in this race
tomorrow and win.