Sunday Sailing

We had 4 boats out at the club yesterday enjoying a patchy 4-10 knot breeze.

Darren was out in his Prowler for the second time and while the lighter patches were hard going he's getting the boat going and will be flying fine in no time while Leo was out in the Pimp Ninja making the most of some new setup mods and is flying much earlier and more consistently.

Alan was going great in his Yellow boat and has made some massive improvements in his tacking and is very regularly foiling out the other side. Gibing is still entertaining however! Alan did the second and third races and was pulling out a good lead in the last one when the breeze was at it's most consistent.

I managed the first and second races. The first was heavy on lowriding with a couple of bursts of foiling meaning I just managed to beat the ent's on the water while the second saw a bit more foiling action but managed to keep in the puffs and shifts to keep up with the lead boat (300) while lowriding. I finished a good lap up in the end but don't think it will have been enough!

The crazy sail has some new battens in now, which seems to have fixed a couple of issues, but made another one worse! The sail doesn't gibe itself and you now have to hit it really hard to get the battens across in light airs meaning a mid-gibe-whack technique is called for. It is now flying closer to its design shape and we've got a pretty good idea where to go with the MK2 though however. It's been quite an interesting experience trying to get Kevin's theory to merge with the practical reality of sailmaking. It's great that we have Mike Lennon and the Hyde team on board to try and coax the ideas into reality...

While the breeze hasn't really been playing ball lately I've been getting out and doing some Mountain Biking with Emma. We've got a great playground around here in the mendips and I feel it's doing some good to my fitness - at least this year I might be able to persuade myself into a reasonable shape before the end of the season. Maybe one year I might be able to do that and get some practice in too!