Chalk Talk – June 11, 2019

[MattAdministrator]

Winds: 25 kts from 340
Course: W2
15 boats
races abandoned after 1st race due to high winds

Leaving the mooring, Vixen‘s wire jib halyard broke behind the swaged ball; so, we knew we would not be dropping the jib during the race. Vixen had another poor start, this time buried behind, and to leeward of, WhiteHawk. So, we tacked over to port to clear and just continued sailing to the right-hand layline. We sailed in the company of 598, trying to pace her. Spent most of the leg trying to obtain and maintain as neutral a helm as possible, by twisting the mainsail and adjusting the backstay. There may have been more wind on the right side, as once we tacked onto starboard, we were able to cross the majority of the fleet that stayed to the left.

We set the kite just before reaching the offset mark, and soon after wanted to jibe over to port. Strong wind gusts, the helmsman’s erratic steering, and the crew’s caution led us to drop the kite, then jibe. The brand new forward mainsheet Carbo T2 double block exploded during the jibe.

By now, 1139 and 598, sailing without spinnakers, had slipped ahead of us on the run by sailing a more direct route to the leeward mark. Vixen‘s helmsman misjudged the leeward mark approach and was forced outside 598 on the rounding. But we got in the groove quickly and repeated the first leg by sailing over to the right layline. 1139 tacked up the middle of the leg, and they seemed to gain a little ground doing that. The 3 leaders stayed in the same relative positions around the weather mark.

Vixen rounded 3rd and set the kite, but again sailed off into the corner, while 1139 and 598 jibed early and ran down the rhumb line on port using just the 2 white sails. This time, Vixen was able to jibe the kite and (broad) reach for the finish. Once we released the leeward twing, we began sailing just enough faster with the kite up to just nip 598 and 1139 at the finish.

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