Racing or Sailing

Holy Crap, last night was fun.

Two epiphanies:

• I figured out what they're talking about on tuning your stays over at Bethancourt's World and the Sailing Anarchy forums
  
• I realized that racing is just sailing with a destination and a lot of much faster boats around you

My boat is not going to be competitive. I can certainly make her go faster and that is the goal but Polka Dot just isn't cut out to be a fast boat without a lot of extra gear, money which will be better spent on the next boat. I'm going to keep using racing to get the boat faster with the goal of being a more fun daysailer. Oh yeah, and to not come in last at least once...that's another goal.

We did fine last night, but I realized that though I had gone through the North Sails Tuning Guide about a year ago but hadn't really tuned the stays properly. Last night a saggy forestay killed us...a bit more mast rake and we would have been in much better shape. I'm not going to embarass myself with how I figured out the stay tension was off, but I think I have a much better idea how to tune the boat now.

That brings me to the best part though. When we were floundering around trying to fix up the boat while on the race course I realized we just completely fell out of the race. Why not just sail and have some fun, then? We did and had an incredible evening sail. BG and KG were great and broke every stereotype about married couples sailing together. We did some wing and wing sailing downwind and I was amazed how much extra power you get. The weather was great, crew morale was incredible, and I just plain enjoyed myself. Now, that's a good race..or sail whatevery you call it.