BillBlevins.com :: Mostly about 2.4mR sailing

2008 Flying Dutchman Cannonball Regatta, (Photo by Bill Blevins)

Wednesday Night “GO Fleet” (Genoa Only) Start, (Photo by Tracy Blevins)

Tracy sailing her 2.4 Meter, (Photo by Bill Blevins)

Tuesday night after work, Tracy and I headed down for an evening on the water.

I plopped in the fishing boat while Tracy got her 2.4 Meter rigged.

We met at the lift and got her pointed towards the middle of Canandaigua Lake at about 6 p.m.

The winds were light and other than me, there weren’t many other powerboats out creating chop. We chased each other around for about two hours.

The wind dropped off as she approached the docks and she got to try out the “Praddle” for the last 200 yards. We met again at the dock and put the boats away.

It was a great evening for sailing and putting around in the powerboat.

There were 10 or so cruisers out reaching up and down the lake. You could see each crew straining as we (or they) passed by to get a look at the little sailboat being chased by a bright red powerboat.

The sun was setting as we packed up and headed out.

As we were leaving, vehicles pulling trailers full of Force 5 sailboats were pulling in to the camping area to prepare for the Force 5 US National Championships being held at Canandaigua Yacht Club later this week.

The restaurant and bar are apparently closed on Tuesday nights so we picked up carry-out pizza on the way home and pulled into the driveway at 9:30.

Perfect.

Tonight is the “GO Fleet” race series. “GO” stands for “Geneoa Only” (whisker poles aren’t even allowed) and I’ll be out there with the cruisers tooling around a triangle course a couple of times.

Tomorrow night we are meeting friends after work and taking out several of the club’s Sunfish sailboats and participating in the Thursday night Sunfish races. That should be a trip! I haven’t been on a Sunfish since I was in eighth grade sailing on Brandermill Lake in Chesterfield, VA.

Stay tuned, that should be a real story!

Race on Sunday June 2, 2008 Track

I got out on the water very early today. Winds were great, blowing at 8-12 knots. I sailed for about and hour before the harbor gun, signaling the beginning of the racing sequence and my start in 45 minutes.

I noticed a problem steering to the right so I headed towards shore and lighter winds, luffed up and looked inside of the rear hatch. A guide for the backstay had popped two screws through the fiberglass on the deck and the backstay control line, over the rudder post, was dragging on the right side of the rudder control cable. Poor design, or poor choice of mounting points for that guide if you ask me. The fiberglass where that guide was mounted was as thin as any on the whole boat. With that much tension on the backstay control line, I think I’ll fiberglass in a small wooden block and re-attach the guide with screws into the wood. Hopefully, I’ll not need to drill and bolt up through the deck.

The race started at about 2 p.m. (they don’t use GPS time here) and then the nice winds over the past 90 minutes, or so, dropped almost immediately to 4-6 knots for my race - though race committee recorded results as a 7-11 knots or “3″ on the Beaufort scale although I never saw one whitecap. I guess it was probably 7 kts. for the first couple of minutes of the race when they wrote down the information for the afternoon.

I had a nice beat up to the first windward mark, then things slowed down - a lot - with two very light reach legs, a slow windward leg and a really slow downwind leg followed by a short and slow leg upwind to the finish.

The course was a triangle and then windward and leeward legs with an upwind mid-line finish. The flags posted by the RC didn’t signal the mid-line finish but they said on Sunday’s they don’t use the square with the red “M” so I sailed what everyone else did and being in the back of the finishers made that choice easy.

Canandaigua Lake so far has been light and puffy. I hope there is wind here in mid-summer!

Here are the stats from today’s track as recorded by my Velocitek SC-1:

View from the cockpit of my 2.4mR today, (Photo by Bill Blevins)