Thanks for finding and posting the pictures Wouter. Those were all taken near the A mark upwind in the flatter water, as you can see. The other end of the course had some nice waves! Andi said he liked the boat quite a bit and he will be posting something here later on, he is at work right now, straight off the flight, so I know he is tired!

On the mast rotation, from here it does look excessive, but sometimes during a tack, the line would get pulled from the clete, so then I would have to adjust it later, but we were tweaking it now and then, only in the really big blows would we bring it in to streamline it for less power. Mostly we were looking at the backside tell tales to be sure it was not in too much. Plenty of down-haul on most of the time upwind, completely off downwind. And as you see the boards were up about 6" and the traveler down about the same.

We tried to be on one hull as much as possible which really helps going upwind, but it did cause us to pitchpole once going upwind when we stuffed a really big wave. We nearly lost the boat as it was going very fast away from us but I was still hooked into my trap handle so I grabbed Andi's arm as I went by. As the boat was pulling us through the water at a good clip, he was able to pull himself up the trap wire to the mast tip, then I did, and we were able to quickly right it once we got a hold of it. If my trap wire had broke, the boat would be half way to Galveston by now! Luckily the only damage was a busted trap bungie cord.

After that, Andi would sometimes have his back
foot in the strap (see photos) to keep from sliding forward when stuffing the low bow. We moved front and back constantly to keep it ballanced so the bow wouldn't be too low or high.

Mostly I was sawing the mainsheet constantly in the gusts while he drove it up or down according to the waves/wind, etc. It took us a little while to get in synch but we eventually did.

Downwind was another story all together, we started out with me on the trap, but after numerous stuffs we decided that unless we were being pushed by a competitor, we would take the conservative route, boards way up, traveler way out, driving deep on two hulls most of the time. Matt and Gina were pushing us in the first race...until they crashed, that's when we decided to take it easy going downwind, because swimming is slow. <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif" alt="" />