Spring Tune Up
Well three Tuesdays came and went with no sailing… last Tuesday we had a mild Nor Easter that rained and blew 20 from the NE. Nasty. But finally I got to go sailing on Thursday. The weather was up to 80 by 1pm and slowly cooled by the early evening. I tried to get a bunch of people to sail, but since it was a Thursday a lot of people had previous engagements…. Dan Hesse and I sailed and spoke on what we needed for our boats to be better… I personally needed a goose neck adjuster, new halyard, bailer o-rings and a new ball, and a tiller extension… we both understood we needed new sails to replace our blanket soft old sails… my sail is from the worlds from 2006… now for some people that is really new… and if you compare this to a world class laser sailor, it would be 4 years too old… as those sails’ life span is measured by the regatta. Some people change a laser sail after every two regattas… Dan needs a new sail as his is older than him, refinish his rudder, where splinters of soft wood are jutting out from the leading edge, a new goose-neck adjuster, too… and some other things….
after sailing Dan said the rudder will be a winter project… i asked dan why not earlier… basically he is busy and we decided that the speed difference would be a bit better, but if you sail thinking about the rudder and not about wind and sailing then the rudder WILL make a negative difference…
Well I learned yesterday that Dan is faster than me in all points of sail, but there is definitely a difference on which tack is faster for him and me… I felt slower on port yesterday which he feels faster… So on our second trip to Buoy 32 i purposely covered him to force him to go to Starboard and tacked on him to slow him down… the one time I let him go further left ( i was on port, which was slower for me yesterday) he make a significant come back up to buoy 32… this was also due to the fact the left side proved to be more favored….
it was nice to sail for a few hours and do some one on one sparring, especially downwind… the winds were moderate 10-12mph from the WSW with nice 1-2 foot waves so surfing was possible…
Upwind it was strong enough to hike a bit, but easy enough to really think about adjusting little things on the boat, sitting in different positions, seeing different heeling and sheeting angles…
all in all we figured out we were a bit out of sailing shape, but it could have hurt to go out and shake off some of the rust…
If you ever get a chance to go out with another boat of similar speed, take a while to do a little tuning up, and make notes on what was working and what wasn’t…