nat and i had a few tries to get out on nopantsdance together, but somehow it never worked out well. last week the wind was a bit too strong and the waves too high for people still very much on their ‘L’ plates, which is why i sailed with rob. yesterday, however, the weather forecast promised light winds and therefore also small waves, just what we were looking for to get used of the boat, learn the ropes (quite literally, there are so many controls on this boat) and get to work together and develop our processes across all the manoeuvres – yes, that’s a thing, just what you need a lean six sigma accreditation for.
the wind turned out to be kind to us, starting out somewhere between 8 and 10 knots to begin with, and made our learning experience an easier one, at least in the sense that it allowed us to concentrate on our jobs rather than trying to survive. to be honest, when the wind picked up a bit to about 12 knots for the second race i actually struggled less to find our groove. ‘finding the groove’ describes that amazing feeling you get when everything just clicks into place: the boat accelerates, the hull flies but not too much, the sails respond to just the right amount of input, the tell tales are all happy and streaming as they should – just perfect. here is a short edit of our sailing.
we didn’t do well in the races, but we came away feeling that we had made really good progress. our tacks weren’t too bad, and our downwind speed was good, especially after we pulled the daggerboards up a bit. and the trap lines are finally at the right height and working well for both of us. i think we need to review the rig settings, i feel they didn’t work well enough in the lighter winds, and we were doing a lot better when the winds picked up. it is also possible i just couldn’t read the shifting conditions we had earlier well enough … something to consider. and we need to work on being able to point higher uowind and lower downwind.
overall nat and i are happy with nopantsdance and our progress. we’ll try again next week.