The boat has been back in the shed for a weeks now getting finished and fixed from the last sea trial session. The list is long and it had been lots of work by Pirate and his team to get the boat going again. The current plan is to be sailing the boat again by this Sunday. We have quite a bit of stuff to do get the boat race ready. We have to build our confidence in the boat, get familiar with the angles and our sails, get comfortable with all the systems, and get the boat fully ready to race offshore. So stay tuned for a few updates in the coming weeks as we work up the boat and get it race ready.

Yesterday was again blown out but today we had a good day on the water. We got off the dock around 8:30 in a brisk, cold breeze. After hoisting the main, we hoisted the jib top and genoa staysail and had our first look at those. We sorted out some sheeting points for the Jib Top and sorted out the GS system. The GS goes on a lock in the mast and then gets tensioned with a ram at the tack, so we had a few adjustments to make it work. There are a few more things to sort out to get that sail up quickly. Then we hoisted the A3 and got a good look at that. We are using a top down furling system for the A3 and so far it seems to work well. This system should make the sail more user friendly and not have the horrendous packing job the A3 was on the old boat. We then sailed upwind for a while and then turned back toward Newport with the A3. Again, the A3 seemed to perform well. We tried a few different techniques to connect and hoist it. Tomorrow we will continue working on the main reef system and we will also start looking at different options for certain sail changes.
Doogie