Today was another day of practice. We warmed up with a set, run and leeward mark rounding.
Then we teamed up with Shockwave and did some practice starts followed by practice races. The afterguard (Tom Burnham and Eric Doyle) worked on getting us in some tight situations at the bottom mark to push the crew harder. Overall, maneuvers went smoothly. One more day of practice tomorrow.
Doogie
practice day
Today’s theme was buoy race practice. We ended up doing lots of whether mark rounding and leeward drops. We pushed ourselves into some tight situations and the crew performed well. The day was very smooth with everyone fitting well into their positions. This has been basically the same group of people sailing together for quite a while now.
We had about 15-20 knots throughout the day, so that allowed us to work on our breezy jibes and going downwind with the jib up.
Tomorrow we will do more of the same but involve some other boats. Hopefully we can do some practice starts and races with the other boats.
Doogie
John Von resisting a birthday cake face.
Key West Feeder Race – Overview
We finished last night around 1 am the Key West Feeder Race.
It was not as windy and cold as promised but it was still a good work session. We started in Ft. Lauderdale with the A2 in about 12 knots of breeze. In the first hour, the breeze built to 18 knots and with a few gusts to over 20 so we changed to the A4. We held that sail for quite some time into the night. As we started to round the keys and harden up, we went to the A3, which is a heavier kite made to sail the higher angles. We deploy it in a zipper sock, which adds a little bit of safety as to when the sail will fill. The set up went well besides us getting wet on the bow and head lamps shorting out. We struggled a little to get the sock to open up properly but a good strong pull with 3 of us (Snowflake, Mickey, and myself) was enough to release whatever was keeping it from opening. After some time, we went from the A3 to the Fro, a sail which served us very well in Sardinia, and it didn’t fail us again. It allowed us to get up to 130- 125 true wind angle and hauling ass. For the boys on the handles, it was a grind fest. By the time the race was over, most of them had been grinding for 9 or more hours.
With the FRO on, and a genoa staysail, we put reefs in and out a few times depending on the wind strength. Most of them went well except when the backstay bunjees broke and caused some problems getting the main back on the lock. It meant a trip of the rig for me, which I don’t particularly enjoy. Once sorted, we were able to reef back and forth again.
We had to put up the A3 again after getting lifted a little and then back to the FRO before changing down to the J4 for the last little beat up to Key West.
One of the challenges for us on the front last night was that there was so much water and spray; the visibility to see what we were doing was a challenge.
We were first to finish and won corrected so all the hard work was rewarded. We learned a lot last year doing this race and were able to improve quite a bit.
Today was for some rest and re-moding the boat to inshore mode. Tomorrow we start our inshore practice and there will be a few more crew onboard for this racing.
Later,
Doogie
Fort Lauderdale to Key West Race: Bella Mente first to finish – South Florida Sun-Sentinel.com
Feeder race
Race went mostly smoothly. Sails that went up: A2, A4, A3, fro, A3, fro, J-4
We had a few hiccups with the main lock but solved it. More updates tomorrow after some sleep.
Feeder
Race finished. Wet and cold but just had a bite to eat.
Key west feeder race
Cold and windy. Giddy up.
race tracker
You should be able to follow the race here.
http://kws.kattack.com/kattacklive/offshore.aspx?FeedID=307
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.