Racing with Dummies! Day 2

by Mike

Overnight the wind was mostly light and variable. Steve did a great job of getting us south during this mess.

This morning Doc Fullerton and I surprised each other in the hall at sunup. We proceeded upstairs, groggily, and eventually took
over for Steve. As we were milling around and waking up, the wind picked up a bit (the sailing word for that is "freshened") from a
usable direction.

The three of us enjoyed trying different sail configurations until we thought we had the boat going the best speed in the best
direction. Every hour or so we tried different sails in different places, but didn't accomplish a lot.

So we ate lunch. We had fresh sashimi (thanks to Fisherman Doc's catch of a 21 pound black fin tuna yesterday) along with Tostitos
chips and Pace salsa.

Mid-afternoon the wind direction shifted favorably and we decided to try out our biggest spinnaker, Whomper. Doc, Bob, and I
successfully got it up in the air and puffed out. Our speed and direction improved dramatically. We went from 3-4 knots to 5-6
knots. This was in about 7-8 knots of wind.

After a couple of hours, the wind direction shifted and we started going too far east. We tried adjusting Whomper for a long time.
It didn't help. A couple of hours later, just for kicks, we lowered our mainsail halfway and readjusted Whomper again to see if we
could go a better direction. Wow!

Somehow we speeded up to 7-8 knots (wind was about 10 knots then). And we were going the right direction, too.

So we at supper. Tonight we had tuna steaks (thanks to Fisherman Doc's catch of a 21 pound black fin tuna yesterday).

And we sailed into the night in the right direction (yay) and at a good clip (yay).