Sunday Blog - Oct. 28, 2018

​Last Sunday was the first of the two weeks between Summer and Winter racing series. We spent about a half hour getting some insights into how to better our sailing skills prior to sailing Soling’s.

Doc emphasized the never give up attitude and clean sailing as being very much a part of his strategy and reason for his success. He led the summer series in both the Soling 1M and the EC-12. He complimented the group on our observance of the rules. Doc also emphasized the need to bail out when you have placed yourself in a bad position at the start, often by trying to be at the favored starboard end of the line in a barging position: go over early, come back around, starting a little late, but not interfering with others.

Jon talked about  how to read the wind as puffs develop and how to take advantage of positioning your boat to get on the side to get lifted on the beat to the weather mark. Pretty involved and some skippers were observed with their eyes glazed over. I tried to apply this knowledge more and become more aware of how the boat heading shifted as the boat entered the puff.

Earnan  talked about being conscious of the overall big picture of what the others are doing and what is going on the race course. The importance of good overall sailing practices.

We then sailed races that we did not score giving us a chance to try the new ideas. The wind was North and shifty and allowed a good windward-leeward course.

Only a few EC-12 races were sailed as several visitors were handed a transmitter to get a feel as to what RC Sailboats are like. I saw them smiling a lot, and hope to see them come back.

The scheduled Dragon Flite 95 sailing in place of the Micro Magic had four boats. The lake had a lot of floating weeds and the deep keels with a bulb on the bottom seemed to try to harvest most of them. I would say that this was the worst weed condition we have seen in several years. The wind had driven the floating weeds to pile up on the Eastern shore for 6 feet or more to the open water.  Prior to the days sailing  a path through the weeds had to be raked out just to launch the boats for the day. Many observable clumps drifting on the race course had become worse by the time the Dragons sailed. The rather amazing thing was that we were always able to sail the DF-95 back to the dock after some time and often were able to shed the weeds on the course. Not it was not at all fun. In these conditions the Micro Magic would be unable to be sailed back to shore and we would have to wait for it to drift ashore somewhere. Mostly we would just decide not to sail the Micros on days like last Sunday. My DF-95 would not tack and spent a lot of time in irons. But I found the jib sheet fouled on the mast due to me miss-rigging the sheet routing. We will try the DF95’s again next Sunday.

Earnan rowed the rescue boat around a lot picking up more vandalized inflatable ball marks and replacing them with the stick-pool-float- foam marks that Chris made. And somehow he foam filled BIG RED, the mark at the far NW corner of our layout. I like this one as I can always tell if I made it as the boat disappears behind it! Thanks Earnan.
 
Remember that this coming Saturday we will do some fun casual demo sailing at OKeeheelee. Refer to Brent’s’ emails on this and hope to see you there.
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As you have seen dues are due. Paid members get a new club burgee sticker, I’ll have them at the lake Sunday.
 
George
George Balaschak, Commodore PBGMYS
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