PHRF Fall Series #2

I haven't been posting much about my sailing... I'm still doing foredeck on Cheetah and we usually sail every Wednesday in addition to the races.

The PHRF Fall series has started in Jacksonville and we took a second place in race #1. Race #2 was yesterday and what a hoot! It was a Nor'easter blowing 20-25 knots all afternoon and made for some fun times. I love these conditions.

There were only 5 boats in the spinnaker class. I'm sure the weather kept many boats at the dock. Wimps!

We had a horrible start, thanks to the lack of signal from the committee boat, and crossed the line dead last chasing our rival, Whisper, and 3 J-24's. We chased down the pack of J-24's, dodging their efforts to block us out. Then the chase was on to catch Whisper. Keep in mind that Whisper is a C&C 38. We rounded the first weather mark with Whisper still in lead. Our plan was to raise the #1 and drop the #3, as it was a reaching leg. We had no plans to fly the chute due to the high wind. While I was fighting the darned Luff on the head sail, which had mysteriously pulled out of the headfoil groove, Whisper had hoisted a spinnaker and promptly shredded it! We finally got our #1 up and headed for the leeward mark. Whisper was still in the lead at this point. We hoisted the #3 and dropped the #1 to head to weather. Of course the crazy luff came out of the headfoil again on the way down! I had to fight that for a while, but it didn't hurt us much, as we had the #3 up already. We definitly need better sail lashing, as we kept the #1 on deck and had to fight it trying ot get it tied down.

We really gained on Whisper on this leg. They were leeward boat as we neared the committee boat and they tried to take us up into the Committee boat, but they couldn't do it and slowed way down letting us by... See ya! We continued to open the gap and rounded the last weather mark. Up with the #1 again and we were headed for the downwind finish. This was pretty mush a beam reach, but Whisper hoisted another chute to try to run us down. They had some tremendous speed for a short while, until we got out of the lee shore and wham! They fell off fighting the chute as we headed for the line. The last I saw of them, their chute was flapping in the breeze and we cossed the finish line.

I'm not sure what the final results really are. They first gave us 2nd, but that was wrong, as we beat Whisper fair and square, they gave us 1st, but last I heard the J-24's may have beat us all...

Did I mention that our diesel died and we had to sail into the dock at the Yacht club? Or that it died on the way home and we had to sail into the lift at the rudder club? Nice clean parking job I might add though. After the race we also saw that there was a wierd bulge in the headfoil groove that was allowing the luff to come out. This was on the right-hand groove that we never use.

All-in-all... a very fun sailing day.

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