scott.projectsomewhere

Plenty of waves out there yesterday.

Continuing in the theme of “it’s not normally like this” we had a 20 odd knot breeze blowing at times with a nice rolling swell and a reasonable wind chop on top. Almost blowing Rob Mundle. Fun conditions for Moth sailing.

Bora, Arnaud, Simon and I went out first to blast up and back a few times. Arnaud wasn’t on form. Simon was quick with a softer mast, and Bora was smoking upwind.

Downwind was a bit more interesting. The first bear away Bora ventilated the rudder and crashed out in the first 50m. Arnaud crashed out a bit further on and Simon seemed to cruise downwind unaffected. It seemed no matter how many boats we’d start with, it would be a race of attrition to get to the bottom, with boats launching into space left and right.

The last few hundred metres to shore was the worst, as the breeze built and waves shortened up. At times you’d be heading up to avoid going down the face of the wave, only to accelerate through the beam reach and then have to accelerate again through another bear away. All the while trying to slow down to avoid a pitchpole.

At the end of the day there would’ve been more than a few bruised sailors, and a bunch of boatwork to be done, with the guys at our place staying up late working on major repairs to two boats… and the regatta proper doesn’t start for another 5 days.

Though in true form, the regatta will be nothing like yesterday. Today the breeze is significantly lighter, and the forecast for the next few days looks lighter again.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 4th, 2010 at 2:59 pm and is filed under Moth. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.