race boat. Should be fun.
It will be the third day of racing, and the first two were marked by high
winds and consequent high failure rates. The inner part of Simpson Lagoon
has started to collect a few dismasted boats, and I heard that one trimaran
capsized, though it is just a rumor, and the boat may not have been racing.
Dave and Kristen from Sayonara have been racing on a J122, which has so far
exploded the roller furler swivel, blew up a perfectly good spinnaker, and
snapped one of the jib sheets.
Winds have been in the 20s all day, and gusting into the 30s. Some of the
gusts lasted for many minutes. For the final leg, they chose not to fly the
(replacement) spinnaker at all, as their main competitor had snapped their
main halyard.
I can't imagine why no one volunteered to climb the mast with a grappling
hook, a bunch of fishing poles and a boat hook to run a new one. If Bruce,
Paul, Alan and I were there, things would have been different.
I talked with the crew of another boat that hit the windward mark and had to
do a 360 as a penalty. I guess they were not able to shake it off, because
at the very next downwind mark, one of their crew found himself on the wrong
side of the jibing boom and was propelled over the lifelines some distance
out into the water. Luckily, he was close to the boom as it started over,
and it did not have time to gather momentum before it swept him over. He was
unharmed (I saw him at the yacht club) and was picked up on the second
attempt.
I did laundry.
Ttyl
PS - If you are going to race in over 30 knots, do it on someone else's
boat. (Like Leslie and Ira's)
