Monday 13 August 2007

11 August 2007


We sailed about 16 nautical miles on a day mainly practising tacking. We found that rigging on shore and just hoisting the main works much better after last weeks problems. James parents are practising with their spinnaker [Spinnaker is next season for us, I don't have all the blocks for the guys etc and I am not yet confident enough to fly a spinnaker]. The wiggles are where I got distracted watching the others with the spinnaker and forgot about helming!

According to the calculation the maximum hull speed is 5.36 knots [1.34 x square root of the lenght in feet], but on tacks we are seeing speeds of 6.5 up to 6.9 knots and running with the wind 5.5 knots. We are almost as fast as James parents now, but they are pointing much better than us. We discuss this over lunch with them and in the afternoon [cyan track] we try pulling the traveller to the centre of the boat in so that the sail twists more and it seems we can point better like that.

We have a whisker pole but just did training runs this week, maybe next week we shall try this. On the runs I did sit on the stern deck and James came right back to the stern to lift the front and try to get her to plane better. She planed very well on some of the waves which was good fun.

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