A Love 4 Sailing

First of all, I want to honor those who lost their lives six years ago.  Sometimes in life senseless things happen.

We achieved our first three races today with some good things happen, and quite a few bad things happen.  Winds were 5 to 10 knots from the WNW, air temperature around 70 degrees with periods of rain showers.  Race 1 started in the best breeze of the day around 10 knots; we took the leeward pin and headed left.  Waited for the first puff, tacked and had a great view of everyone to leeward of us.  Had 5 boat length lead at the weather mark only to increase this lead to 10 boatlengths at the leeward mark.  Extended to probably 30 to 40 boatlengths on the next weather leg.  On our last tack to the weather mark, the day seems to take a turn for the worst.  Our main halyard broke as the main started to fall down.  We rounded and hoisted the kite, sailed to the leeward mark losing half our lead.  As we rounded the leeward mark we knew it was going to be a battle just to finish the race.  Amazingly we held on to our lead for half the weather beat as the fleet closed in.  Unfortunately, the main just kept falling down.  However, we were able to hold on to 6^th place.  Quite a disappointment after having such a huge lead.

In between races, Mike Pinckney and Dan Tucker took Maureen and I out of the boat after hailing for help on the radio, the Coastguard came and helped Mike and Dan flip the boat so they could tie the halyard to the top of the mast.  Meanwhile one SKUD who was way behind was told by the race committee that they were deemed last place and to return to the starting area.  This left us with minimal time to make the mainsail repair.  Due to this I have applied for redress, because by the time we finished the repair and made to the starting line the next race had already started.  If the would have waited for the last place boat to finish the race we would have made it in time, and that is the reason for the redress protest.  Even though we started late, and most boats went left, we still ended up 11^th.  To compound the problem with the late start our spinnaker sheets ended up crossed during the main halyard repair and we could not hoist our spinnaker in race two.  I felt like I was having a nightmare.  Now race three we figured we would forget about the first two and have a great third race.  Staring towards the leeward end of the line a British boat would not head up from out leeward boat hail.  This caused us to be forced down the line slightly. Once the gun went off, we headed up only to catch our keel on the scope of the leeward end of the Race starting boat.  This caused us to slide into and get hooked on the leeward race committee boat.  It took us nearly a minute to untangle us, and then we had to do a 360.  By this time we were in deep in last place.  We caught a couple of boats by the first mark and the wind shifted 40 degrees left.  The next two legs became a “follow the leader” race because the race committee did not change the course.  We sit in 10^th place pending the redress hearing.  Tomorrow prediction is for heavy winds.  Rumor has it if it is 20 knots or more they won’t sail us. Due to our poor finishes on day two we need the races so we can get throwouts.  I look forward to racing the rest of the week  because I feel we should be winning.  Hopefully we will race tomorrow and things will work out better.  Send good thoughts.  Mary Kate says we should maybe for tomorrow rename the website  alovefor4BETTERsailing.com.