Raft broke again at 8:30am, headed out to the race course.
Winds were 25 knots sustained with gusts in the 30s on the nose to get to the course. Full main and heavy #3, kept us beating the the start. We were occasionally splashed by waves of warm water.
About a half mile in front of us we saw an 8 meter boat lose its main; it just ripped to pieces. It was interesting to see this boat competing later with just their jib and spinnaker.
First race started just as we were approaching the committee boat. The wind stated dying on the first leg, so we hoised the heavy #1 after the first downwind leg.
In the second race, we has hoisted the light #1 for the start.
We had gotten pretty good at hoists/douses/gybes.
I learned how to prepare the spinnaker for the next hoist, and did the rest of them.
In the end we placed close to last in every race, but we were please with our improments as the day went on. We were racing against a lot of newer race rockets with higher tech equipement and brand new sails.
Results: http://www.yachtscoring.com/emenu.cfm?eID=450
My GPS batteries were dying, so I really didn't get any tracks.
Here is a Google Earth sample of where the course is:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12535935/Still%20Time/20110723.kmz
After the third race, we had did some swimming, dropped Mike, Mark, and Wendy/Mike on a competitor's boat to take them back to Youngstown.
The sail back was wonderful: constant 10 knots on a close reach to CBYC doing 7.5 knots most of the time.
We got back into ABYC at about 7:30pm.
My first big boat weekend regatta was done. I was tired, sore, bruised, and happy all at the same time.
The crew of Coug are truely great people.
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