Testimony

This past long week end, Thursday night to Monday evening, I had a lot of sailing trying to make something out of nothing but at one point Sunday I went from trying to make something out of nothing to trying to make nothing out of something. I had been barely motivating but then the wind hit from the north of Lake Heron, 6000 acres, 7000 foot elevation and 12 east of the continental divide, New Mexico. After a bit I found I was having to shift my thinking to heavy weather sailing and making all the depowering adjustments: down haul pretty hard but I still had another inch, outhaul maxed, sheet was tight but not really flattened - the sail had a little twist, rotator zeroed – dead center on the tramp, traveler was more than half way to the end stop. Finally I realized I had to pull the boards up half way (or two thirds of the way down the cut out in the dagger board). The Starboard board was easy because I was sitting on it, but I could no way cross the tramp without capsizing in a big way so I waited for a lull enough to point her up into the wind and jumped across the tramp, raised the board, and back into the trapeze. That stabilized the boat. I thought it was blowing 35 MPH in the gusts but may be it wasn’t?. There were 2 or 3 TheMightyHobie18 with two people on board with well over 300 pounds of beef, and 3 or 4 H16 that also had two people on board who were double trapping and flying hull. One H16 was upside down two thirds of the way across the lake and the sailors, father and son, were on their first sail. The conditions were ferocious and one of the TheMightyHobie18 and I hovered around coaching the over turned sailors on how to use the righting line and then how to grab the dolphin striker support bar to keep the boat from rolling on over to a new capsize. I made a lot of tacks sailing just below them during the lulls, which were probably 15 to 20 knots. They eventually got back on board, and eventually managed a tach sailing back on down to our beach head. I stayed out with the others for perhaps an hour and a half until the thunder head passed by and the wind fell off to near zero.

The reason I want to say all this is because when I purchased my Blade I was hoping that I could depower it enough to survive in heavy air. And survive I did, I was comfortably tacking and sailing, sailing faster than the others who’s skipper and crew far exceeded my 150 pounds, and their boats far exceeded mine at 240 pounds. I don’t know about the rest of the F16s but my Blade can take it and sail aggressively all the while. I went to bed quite tired and quite pleased with my self and my boat.