Race 1 - Day 7 Skipper Report 07 September

The wind is starting to pick up after a very slow night, we have managed to do 85 nautical miles in the last 12 hours, all with the lightweight spinnaker up. As the wind decreased last night we changed to the lightweight sheets to try to allow all energy that the kite was making to be transferred to speed rather than keeping its shape due to the weight of the sheets.
Yesterday afternoon we got a lot of maintenance done. The tack line, which holds down the bottom corner of the spinnaker and goes through the bow sprit, wasn’t running right due to the anti-chafe that we had put on. Anti- chafe is an extra jacket on the ropes to ensure that they don’t wear in high use places. So we pulled out all of the tack line, took off the 1 metre strips of anti-chafe and replaced with a continuous length of sheaf, it runs much better now. We also noticed a hole in the mainsail just above our Stormhoek Wine decal, this had been caused by the reef 2 line. It must have been flogging while putting in and shaking out the only reef we have put in so far.
That’s not bad, over 1000 nautical miles and we have only had to put in one reef. Most yachts have a system for reducing the size of the mainsail in stronger winds, this prevents equipment and sails getting damaged and reduces the heeling of the boat. A flatter boat is a faster boat! It involves lowering the front (Luff) of the sail and securing it at the boom and then securing it also at the back of the sail (Leech). We can reduce the mainsail down to about a third of its normal size, once the wind gets that much then we need to start thinking about the storm tri-sail. This is a heavyweight orange sail that replaces the mainsail in a storm. It is designed not to make the boat go fast but to give it some stability in heavy weather, it is a survival tool if required.
We are sailing well now, our speed has increased and we should get some good mileage today, the Mission Performance Warriors are after third place, so see you in a bit Derry~Londonderry~Doire, put the kettle on Daniel Smith we will be there for a brew soon!
Mission Performance Warriors Out For Now