Hope - First Day at Sea

The big day for the start arrived. We crossed the start line at 12:03 pm. Off the flotilla went. We all headed somewhat south per WCC request to salute some VIP’s from the St Lucia tourist authority. The boats were pretty close to each other but wow was it exciting. In any case we all made it far enough south to make the turn round the marker buoy.

Boats then started to scatter. For us, we got out the pole and tried to rig it. That was one of the tasks I wish we had the time to do while at the dock in Rodney Bay Marina. Oh well, we did get it rigged and then discovered we should have set it for the port side rather then the starboard side. We did get it rigged correctly and rolled out the Genoa. That all went pretty well, but many of these boats were more serious about the “fun race” we just started. Ok, let’s play catch up to the fleet.

Off we go, as I often do, I made a quick check of the boat, rigging, lines etc. unfortunately, that’s when I spotted a small tear in our mainsail foot, close to the tack. I decided to roll the main sail in a bit to take the load off of the 2 -3 inch tear. So our main sail is a bit reefed.

We have also had difficulty sailing dead downwind, which is the position the boat is on the rumb line vs the wind. The apparent wind sometime is not strong enough to fill the sail when bobbing to and fro between the waves. We are getting a lot of sail and boom slapping. That being the case, we are gybing back and forth across the rumb line. Oh well....it’s not a race, so they say. I’m sure we are in the back of the fleet.

We will address a number of things in the daylight to see if we can catch up to the others.

That’s all for now
sv Hope