Well, our flight to the east coast went well, arriving on time to a beautiful fall day in New England. When we got to the boat, the scene was a bit different. "Simply Sailing" is a loaner boatwhich and was far from race condition. First, we unloaded at least 500 pounds of junk. We had a diver sand the bottom which brought it to acceptable but not race condition. The boat had a roller cruising roller furling which we replaced with the headstay from Friction Loss. The boat still had the wire rope halyards so we replaced them with new spectra halyards. Remarkably, by 6 PM we transformed the ugly duckling to a boat that looked like it is ready to race in a National compitition. We also had to measure in all our sails and dimension of the boat. Remarkably, everyting passed. Dinner at a local seafood house was outstanding with scallops and shrimp a plenty. Photo of the sunset is attached
We were up early to get out on the race course to practice. The wind was brisk with air temps around 65. The brisk winds were good for us but very shifty so we had to really be on our toes. We placed 8th out of 23 in the first race which was quite a supprise. The second race didn't go as well. Our start wasn't the best and when we got to the weather mark, there was a train of boats going by in front of us. We rounded fourth from last but picked up a couple of places to finish with a 17th. In the third race of the day, we were actually 3rd at one point and finished 9th, getting clobbered by a couple of wind shifts
The after race events included plent of beer and rum followed by a bar-b-que dinner. We were fortunate to have Rod Jonstone, the designer of all J Boats sit with us at dinner. The best thing was his tuning tips for light air which we expect tomorrow.
I'll try to post again tomorrow with some more pictures. For now, I'm bushed
regards
Dan
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