We sailed with our number 2 rig yesterday along with a few other boats, including the other girls team. Once again, on the recalled start we were looking good, but for the actual race, we got rolled and had to tack and duck the whole fleet. We will keep in mind starting at the boat and tacking right away on the days where we have a smaller rig.
We thought our speed was okay upwind even with our little rig, and we did a good job of looking ahead for the breeze. It was much easier being a weekday, the harbor traffic was much lighter. The Northeasterly breeze was more predictable too. You could see what was coming since the wind was coming down the harbor instead of off the hills. We almost caught up with the other girls after our bad start, but we had one mishap heading in towards Shark Island that set us back again. Anticipating the lulls is so important in these boats, and the lulls are super hard to see when you get close to land. We hit one that I didn't see coming and we stopped so hard that all three of us went flying forward, swinging into the bow wires and racks with our arms and legs.
In the end we beat a few boats, but the long race really became a parade after a while without much passing.
Today the forecast is for Southeast 10-15 kts, so that should be interesting. We will focus on anticipating and avoiding the lulls.
-C
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