Thunder lightning & rain greeted us for the Sunday racing. The weather radar showed a storm with winds in the 60 kt range headed for town, so the R/C gave us an indefinite shore hold. Finally about noon, we were sent out to the course for one final race.
The racing area is about 4 miles down wind from Belmont Harbor where we are based, so it's a spinnaker run to the start line. The R/C had a hard time getting things going today due to another huge righty that swept through just prior to the first start. We had a challenged front row starting position for the first start that probably been a disaster had the R/C not postponed at the start.
On the restart, we had a good position and ended up with a great lane after a short clearing tack. We ended up on the inside of the continuing right shift. The wind piped up to the high teens/low 20's on the beat and the waves were really boxy (like the worst of Post Point times 2). We rounded the top mark in 5th and headed down on a really hairy run. Arty Means from San Diego did a full on brodie about 2 boat lengths in front of us that put us in avoidance mode.
Just when we thought that we were running faster than man should go, Andy Beadsworth and his crew charged down on us, heeled to weather pumping the sails and going really fast. We held them off until the gate, but that was it. We rounded the gate in 7th and lost 5 places on the upwind to end up 12th for the race. It was a great learning experience.
Random thoughts...........
Glad we sailed this race with the old main --
The right shifts are warm, the lefts colder....
Stuff that works well at 8 kts falls apart at 25...
Switch to the heavy spin sheets....
Later..........................
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