My first race in other words. As expected I know I didn't win as a solo beat me on the water, and before you all go nuts let me explain why! (This isn't just going to be a list of excuses... Promise). The conditions for the day were ranging from 0 to 8 knots roughly westerly, and at spinnaker Sc this is the WORST direction. In essence the wind died routinely, and when it didn't it was very shifty, not great for my second time out.
On to the race itself, To be honest it wasn't well laid out with many tight reaches and a couple of longer downwind legs. The start lead straight onto one of these broad reaches which made the start line tactics interesting. I didn't want to get too engaged in start line tactics as my boat handling isn't really 100% yet, but still I came off the line around 4th.
Throughout the race I pulled away only to be reigned in by one very well sailed solo, Damm those solos, they are the best boats for the lake I feel but oh well. I'm going to blame this on two things: Firstly, My inexperience in the boat, this meant that it wasn't set up well so must not have been developing enough power in the lulls or too much in the gusts. Also how different it is to tack and gybe, in otherwords, the simple boat handling stuff. I've never had a boat before where you have to run aft to tack and then run forwards again, whilst tacking with the tiller out the back. I almost stalled the boat in every tack, as I believe I was moving forwards to quickly which resulted in a large loss of speed coming out.
Secondly I wish to blame the lake and it's STUPID conditions. I've already had a grumble, but if anyone out there can tell me the best way to go from flat hiked to trying to dive UNDER the boom when it dies, in the space of 10 seconds then PLEASE tell me. Basically in the weaker (less than 4 or 5 knots) wind, especially upwind, I found it very hard to keep the boat from rolling onto me and so whilst focusing on this I couldn't focus on tactics or even Proper course which lead to me loosing a large amount of ground on a couple of occasions but oh well.
The deathrolls very a much more interesting part of the day. It was quite amusing after the event as everyone in their solo's and lasers had stayed completely flat the hole time I was rocking and rolling around trying to save the boat. Basically on one of the dead runs I think I'd let off too much kicker which meant that the top of the leech opened up when a small, only 8 knots roughly, gust hit me. This spent the boat over to windward so I dived up onto the wing, as you do in a laser or N12, to try and save it forgetting that the wings on a 300 are approximately 3000 miles wide. Obviously this then bought the boat straight back over on top of me. Luckily there were no boats around me at the time as the spin left me heading at 90 degrees to my original course, with the main flogging and me cursing. Still, at least I didn't swim!
In essence I think I can take a couple of things really from this first race, both of these are interlinked but important separately. The first is that I need to improve my basic boat handling which will come with practice I hope. And secondly that I need to try to improve my wind awareness, some guys on Y&Y forum have recommended dry lube for the tell tails, which may help somewhat, but I need to get my eyes out of the boat more, and focus on the bigger picture.
Overall though I love the boat, never before have I come off the water so happy, but so sweaty, from just sailing in a force 0-3 on little Spinnaker. Definitely the right boat for me!
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