The Day she missed

Ali was in Madison this weekend visiting her brother. She Missed a great weekend for sailing. The water was very calm and the wind was 10 to 15 for most of the time. My favorite sailing weather. Saturday's sunset was impressive - the wind died down a bit after sunset. The Gnome got a bit seasick, but he still handled the jib like a pro.




The Quantum sail loft in Racine recut my old dacron mainsail. I'm pretty sure this sail is almost as old as the boat. I have a pic of the boat in 1987 and this was the main in the pic. She still is a bit deep, but I think I can tweek the rigging to flatten it some more. The pic below is of the sail without a cunningham. It actually didn't look bad once I set the cunningham up. Well, it was still a bit deep. Once my lowers are loosened to just noodles I'm hoping the backstay will have a greater impact. Most of the Sailors in town raced to Manitowoc today, I'm sure they had a great time. I think they had a perfect day for it. With a few more tweeks to the boat I think she will be ready to race short handed. The slugs on the main make life much easier. I hope to get lazy jacks on the rigging later today. The furling jib is still in the works, it should be ready later this summer. The real issue is downwind. I'll have to experiment a bit with the spinnaker.

The crew is dying to race again. I'll be in Ohio this week running some tests on some new products in the Development stage for work, so I can't. But later in the year if I can find the time it would be fun.

I would love to get a new Main for racing. But I have discovered how sweet the whole slug and lazyjack setup is, I don't ever want to go back to a bolt rope. Too bad there isn't a laminate that could be left on the boom...