Team Seacats

The wind was pretty light and shifty yesterday but we had a couple of decent mid-fleet finishes. David took the helm in the second race and did a good job to post a 20th place finish. We’re going to continue to see if we can improve today – the wind is up again and we’re expecting 10 to 15.

Our friends, Mike and David, had an altercation yesterday with another boat on the start line. A boat jammed up hard to weather right in front of them and they didn’t have time or opportunity to avoid them. They ended up kissing the side/rear of the hull with their bow as they attempted to duck the boat. A couple of protests were filled but the judges determined that they were not given adequate time to avoid and are assigning them a finish position based on their previous results. The boat (a brand new Nacra infusion) has a split in the bow but it looks like they can fashion a temporary repair and be back out on the water today.

We’re sailing in marginally cool conditions and have been wearing our dry suits. I have to say that I’ve used a feature on the Astral Bouyancy life preservers that I haven’t had a chance to use until now – they have a hand warmer feature where the outer shell is lined with fleece on the inside and you have access to tuck your hands inside to keep them toasty. It’s very very nice!

I snagged another copy of the results and you can see them HERE.

We certainly had some breeze yesterday. It was generally about 15knots but with occasional and sustained gusts to 25. We had a high point with a 7 place finish when we were almost alone in choosing the right side to go upwind. Then, with a decent race going, we pitchpoled on the last rounding of A mark. David was on the trampoline getting the boat setup for the spinnaker hoist and I was on the trapeze trying to keep it fast. A ‘Gonzo Blast’ of wind drove the bows in deep and I went flying landing 20′ in front of the boat as it suddenly decelerated. We righted the boat quicky and finished. Later while sorting out the trapeze rigging David slipped and bruised his knee on the beam of the boat. He worked through it and we continued the day with some high points and low points including an OCS in the third race. Our boat speed is good, but our pointing ability is not quite up to par with the other boats (including some of the similar Nacra Catamarans like ours). If we foot off, we go faster and get to A mark at the same or better time – but tactically, not being able to point high into the wind is pretty cripling with such a large fleet. We’re also not picking up on the shifts very well yet. The pointing problem probably has more to do with the age of the sails we have on the boat, but the picking up the shifts is something we can certainly work on – and we’ll continue to do so.

The wind today is going to be very light – NOAA says the peak will be about 5knots. Currently there is a mist on the lake that is slowly meandering around. It’s pretty … but not a good sign for sailing.

I haven’t been able to find any results online but was able to secure a copy of the preliminary results through yesterday. You can see it HERE.

I’ve just got a minute before we have to head out for the 9:30am start this morning. Yesterday was pretty frustrating for us – we weren’t sailing with our minds and we made a lot of bad decisions. Unfortunately, the bad decisions were the easy ones to make. We had a few good moments where we were in the top 10 but dropped back quickly. The breeze is supposed to be up to 15knots today so hopefully we’ll be a little more in our element. We hope so – and we changed cereal this morning and went with Captain Crunch instead of the Lucky Charms…which didn’t prove to be quite so lucky.

We’re getting our minds right this morning – The Sirius satellite radio is locked into the Octane channel and the Cerwin Vegas are chuffing. Coffee’s made and the Lucky Charms are clinking into the bowls. Team Seacats is getting pumped. We’re not sure what the week has in store for us in the standings but we’re trying to not get overly concerned with that. We’re going to do the best that we know and try to avoid any catastrophies on the race course. There sure is a ton of talent out here. We are re-evaluating our starting tactics to go back to what we were doing last year (we seem to have been really crowding the start line too closely lately). The fact that we’re racing on a lake with what should be a little shifty and puffy nods at us a little because we mostly sail on lakes – but on the other hand, we’ve really been struggling lately in light air racing. We’re going to launch early this morning to study they lay of the lake since the wind is blowing out of the NNW and is nearly opposite of the the SSW we’ve been seeing all weekend. Racing today will take an hour or so break for us to come back to the beach for lunch and I expect they’re going to give us a long day if possible.

The weather was pretty spotty today. The day started with a nice 12+ breeze but a front came through later in the afternoon with some pretty heavy rain. It didn’t get as bad as predicted but David and I didn’t get out on the water – the weather, like it is today, won’t tell us much about the lake. We’re hoping to get out early tomorrow before the racing starts to try and get a feel for things.

I’m trying to upload pictures but our internet connection is a bit give and take – we’re in a pretty remote location. I’ll have to reduce the picture size and start uploading them…hopefully tomorrow.