Mishaps and Mayhem

Hey everyone!

Today was our second day of racing; we had fantastic wind and sunny weather. The RC ran three races and although Canada sailed great races we are not able to show it in our results due to breakdowns in the boat!

In our first race we had a good start and maintained our position in fifth until the last hoist at the windward mark when the shackle on our spin halyard broke and we not only lost our spinnaker for the downwind, we also skied our halyard. Unfortunately we lost five boats this way and ended in tenth, but Zoe climbed the mast for the first time!

The second race had the fleet very close together; Canada pulled a smart tactical move at the last leeward mark leading to a reach finish by keeping the spinnaker up a bit longer and ducked beneath a group of boats to finish in eighth.

Mainsheet Landon, Jib sheet Eric and Skipper McTerrifying are pretty good at what they do...

The third race was long distance so Victoria, Ethan and Landon put their heads together to try to determine the course. Canada had a solid upwind and reach,

rounding the cardinal buoy leading to the downwind in fifth. We had a stellar downwind, really working the waves and managed to move to third. However, at the leeward mark the casing on our jib halyard shredded and our jib came down. Eric did a fantastic job in conjuring a jerry rig but once again we lost boats. Luckily we went left on the long upwind and finished in fifth.

The mentioned equipment failures were not our only though... We also had a winch bind, our motor smoked profusely at all times and our spinnaker ripped. The team has decided to apply for redress (a way to protest the organizing committee) to try to get our placing back at the time of the breakdowns because we are unable to make any equipment changes on the supplied Grand Surprise’s, therefore could not prevent the malfunctions.

Boat repair is great.

However, we did have an excellent day and everyone had a lot of fun, especially on the long distance race. All of the team members on the rail learnt what it is like to hike for a day and Dirk even busted out his ninja balaclava for a bit. Seth discovered how slippery the deck is and had a half bath when trying to skirt the jib, and the other teams, in particular the Italians and Americans enjoyed our melodious voices on the upwinds.

Signing off until tomorrow!