The wind Sunday was considerably more stable than what we saw Saturday. The breeze was around 8 mph out of the east at the 10 am start with it topping off to around 12 mph by the last race. In these winds, the Blade and Taipan 4.9 are closely matched although the Blade may have a slight advantage upwind as it seems to point a bit higher than the Taipan. Some of this difference may be attributed to the differences in the sails being used. The sail I was using is a cat rig Taipan 4.9 mainsail that is cut for my weight while Matt was using a F16HP sloop main that is slightly larger than the Taipan main. It was hard to make a performance comparison of the boats downwind as Matt has not got his boat dialed in yet at that point of sail.

Chuck didn’t race today as he had to head home after sailing yesterday due to family obligations.

Seth may it out to the race course today but had to retire again due to the leak in the hull. Yesterday he soaped the boat down trying to find the leak and was only able to see that the crossbeam bolts were leaking. He sealed those yesterday and hoped that the leak was fixed. He made it back to the beach after the first race today and pulled the boat out of the water where upon inspection, he found water leak from a small crack in the bottom of the hull forward of the daggerboard trunk. Now that he knows where the leak is, he should be able to get it fixed.

Rick was probably hoping for more wind today as the screacher did not appear to perform as well as it had yesterday in the stronger breeze. Rick was saying that the screacher he has is a little undersize and that if it were made to the maximum class limit, there might be comparable performance with it and the spinnakers. The screacher certainly appears to be easier to deploy and retrieve compared to the spinnaker snuffer system.

All the A-Cat and F16HP sailors had a great time this weekend. I would like to thank Gulfport Yacht Club and its members for hosting the regatta. Hopefully they will do it again for us next year. By then, we may have a sizeable F16HP fleet here in Florida if the popularity of the Blade continues to grow.

Jennifer Lindsay
Taipan 4.9 #262