Cold, breezy? What's ths story?

Lots of wind!!! I'll let everyone tell their own story. I think Tim/Andy and Terry/Tina were the only ones to tough it out. The rest of us either broke or quit. I did both.

I pitch-poled the boat right after rounding "B" mark in the 1st race, got separated (for the first time ever in my life)with the boat eventually drifting about 1/4 mile away. After twenty minutes or so Tim and Andy fished me out and Arie and I righted the boat. No problem. BUT. . .the jib had somehow gotten wrapped around the forestay and created enough windage for the boat to reach off at about 3 knots. No matter what I did, I could not get the boat up into the wind and we had a hell of a time getting back on board. Finally, we got on the boat and were able to sail back to shore to sort things out. There was no irreparable damage but the conditions were clearly beyond my abilities. Mid 20s gusting to high 20s I think.

Twenty five to thirty five on Sunday. I stayed in bed.

Ouch!!

Hard to summon the energy and $ to make that trip when the weather can screw you so bad... but thats life with sailing.

PTP, you are right, it's a lot of time, money and effort just to drive down there. A bunch of sailors came all the way from upstate NY too.

Saturday was -in my opinion- perfect. Not too hot, not too cold, I wore shorts and a T-shirt, the air was about 79f and the water about 75? Plenty of wind for two up sailing. Without a crew, probably too much to be out as a Uni, but I know the guys who did Zandvoort will dispute that.

I'm just glad I failed miserably at my diet or Andi and I would have been too light. We did "carbo-load" on plenty of Pizza and beer Friday night (Thanks Pete!) in anticipation of a blow on Saturday. The nice part was the wind and water were both warm on Saturday because we flipped 3 times, once going upwind, twice downwind, and Andi slid off the back of the boat once bearing off at B mark when the boat took off turning downwind. It sure can go!

But on Saturday night, a cool front came through (snow in B-ham) and the temps dropped to abut 67 but the wind came way up, big gusts too, and shifted to the NW, so the bay side was going to be much rougher than it had been on Saturday, and with all the separated sailors we had on Saturday, I think the RC did the right thing to cancel on Sunday. You would have needed at least 5 more crash boats to keep up with all the capsizes. Nice day for a Wave though. (35 mph winds).

Andi made it home OK, I checked to see if he got on his 5pm flight. I didn't sleep at all Sunday night because with that big wind the storm shutters were banging on the wall outside the window by my head, so at 0300 I got up and turned on the Weather Channel, at 0400 I woke Andi and at 04:15 we hit the road for Palm Beach. He missed the 0700 flight but made the 08:25 to ATL. I got home at about 10 am and took a nap!

It was great to see all you guys/wives in one place at one time, and not just on the water. I think we should rent a house every regatta. Thanks to Terry and Diane for doing all the hard work to make that happen, and thanks Diane for all the great food and cleaning up the mess we made.

I just like being in the Keys. It was worth it to me just to go down and hang out.

Of course I'm much closer than most of you. So travel is not such a big deal.

The fact that some of us went out uni and raced back then doesn't necessarily imply that we thought the conditions were ... "favourable". <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

Wouter

Well I wasn't there so I will leave it to Matt to compare the two. We had pretty flat water Saturday at Tradewinds because the wind was blowing away from the beach. Sunday it was more out of the North to NW, more on-shore, so I know it would have been much rougher if we had gone out.

ROFLMAO! <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> I know you are serious and would have been in your glory! For me, no chance!!

For those of you who didn't see it, Tim and Andi are serious heavy air sailors!

Pete, you mean we are "good swimmers"! <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif" alt="" />

We sure had plenty of practice.

That too! <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" />

You mean like this ?











Very nice form Andi and Tim !

What did Andreas think of the boat ?


All the other F16 pics taken at Tradewinds can be seen at :

http://f16.beasts.org/gallery2/main.php?g2_view=core.ShowItem&g2_itemId=7014

Notice in the bottom photo the mast rotation is pointing to the side-stay (fully powered up). Reading back in previous post, many suggest rotating back towards the rear beam; however, looking at many of the photos (Tornado, I20, F18, F16) it seems that most have their mast rotated way out.

Granted, Andi and Tim ate ...errrrrrr... alot of pizza and drank many beers on Friday night .... but .....

What is the current conventional wisdom on mast rotation in 20+ knots of wind?

Less rotation for less power. Where this comes in the sequence of depowering is up for debate I think. My scheme is downhaul, traveler out, less rotation, go home.

I think it would be worth it to just go to one of these races just so I could get some action pics taken of my boat.

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="" />

Didn't one of the other guys say that in a blow the traveler should be in down wind? If it's out, when you dive down wind the rig tends to accelerate.

Inquiring minds wanna know!

The Apparant wind was well forward and we were both sitting all the way at the aft beam, Andi in on the tramp, me right next to him out on the edge of the hull and my outside foot against the back of the up board to keep from sliding forward. As long as we kept the bows up it would plane and climb up over the waves, but you are right, if you stuff the bows you are going over with the main out like that. We did that once. Most of the time we were shouting, "Here's a gust, Hold ON!" <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

Did you ever get a chance to pace yourself with a F18?

What happened with Matt and Gina?