Soooo we went for a swim on the Infusion yesterday. Mostly broken crew, broken egos, and a few chips out of the dagger board trailing edge. We flipped going downwind with the spinnaker up, it's my fault I loosened the foot straps too much and my crew went flying forward as the bow stuffed a bit.

There really is no place to climb back on. We got lucky, really lucky. While I was holding the boat down with the dolphin striker, my crew was trying to get back on the boat. She is strong but not tall enough, there is a lot of volume! She ended up getting separated from the boat (never good), I had to duck under the hull, hold the dolphin striker with one hand, get my body outside the boat, briefly let go of the dolphin striker than find the side stay and start climbing aboard. Then go rescue my crew single handed in breeze and short chop. It wasn't a pretty rescue, hence the broken crew.

In hindsight we should have stayed on the boat and gone deep. Not as fast per se but upside down isn't fast either. Talking with some of the other teams, sitting on the back of the bus may be faster than getting on the wire if you don't have a lot of butt out there. Flat is fast but flat also powers up the main more, driving the bows down more? Thoughts? My personal opinion is the wave state and crew experience level matter most. You don't gain much fore and aft moment getting the crew on the wire but it is faster if the wave state is safe and the crew is comfortable on the wire.

I'll also add that single wire jib reaching deep down in big breeze is generally much safer and faster than spinnaker reaching in said conditions, even if the big boys are carrying the spinnaker they might not be for too long. It's hard to douse once it's up!