I went out sailing the other day, hoping to join a "beercan" race, which usually is every wednesday. The weather had been unsettled, and it had rained the last two nights, but then it was clearing up, so I got underway around 2 pm and headed over to the race course. No other boats were out, which wasn't a good sign, and so when I got to the start spot I decided to just continue on sailing. Initally I was sailing down wind to get to the race start spot, so I didn't really notice how windy it was, but then I rolled up the spinnaker and put up the jib and started going upwind, and then decided I needed to reef the mainsail pretty quickly, because the wind had come up. It was 15-18 kts to begin with, but now was 18-22. So I reefed the main and continued on. The wind came up some more, and I decided to turn a bit more downwind to keep the apparent wind lower, therefore reducing the power without needing to reef again.
Pretty soon I was on the other side of the bay, and so I turned around and headed back, but now I needed to point upwind a bit more, and the wind was really strong and so I started to add ballast to the tanks rather than reef again. I was hesitant to reef twice without putting up my smaller jib, and sadly I didn't have it ready to go and I didn't want to get it and put it up. So I ballasted up a lot and the boat got more steady. Instead of 30 degrees of heel, it came down to about 15-20 and the boat really powered up. Now I was doing a consistent 9.5 kts at about 80 degrees True Wind Angle. I took this video of the stern wave. Its pretty neat.
Also this one:
This one is looking down at the rudder wash. I love slo mo videos with water.
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