Day 2--Cheeseburgers Eating People...

As dictated from the days crew...

The wind piped up prior to the start, forcing a head sail change from the #2 to the #3 less than 5 minutes before the start. Bow men Matt & Mike were super happy about this.

Circling at the start we ran into fellow Lake Minnetonka sailors, Sammy Rogers and Dave West. Go Minnetonka

With Doctor at the helm for the start, we started out well-- near the committee boat. However we were overpowered and forced to bail to port about a third of the way up the beat , but we caught a nice shift and the next time we tacked we were in the top three boats. Then captain Tom took over at the helm and drove until we turned the corner on a reach and was relieved by Dave for more stellar wave driving.

We then tacked near the port layline and for a while we were in second place. We had to duck behind a Farr 65, which put us in fourth as we rounded the layline. Then we bore off on to a close reach, but struggled a bit in the large (7-8' feet at this point) waves. Then we rounded the mark on the south western tip of the island and tacked to port and sailed close hauled, but again we were over powered compared to most boats in our fleet.

Along the western shore of the island the waves got to be about 14 feet and we decided to take one reef in on the main, which improved the balance on the helm and increased our speed about a knot. This decreased our leeway on port tack.

When we rounded the north island buoy we shook out the reef and set the spinnaker on a dead run. After the jib was doused we noticed we had lost a batten on the #3. The steering was difficult in the large swell-- now up to about 12 feet. We had one major spin out. We watched two boats attempt to jibe and fail miserably so we decided to douse our kite and tack with just the main. With the spinnaker we were doing 10-12 knots.

After the jibe, we hoisted the #3 jib and we were doing 9.7 knots. With the weather looming behind us we decided to keep the spinnaker stowed and just reach with the jib only.

Near the southeastern buoy the squall we were watching hit us with a vengeance. Anyone with a spinnaker still up was in a serious broach situation. We were glad we didn't have our kite up at that time. The winds were gusting to 40 at this point.

We rounded the mark and sailed close hauled to the finish. After finishing, we sailed back towards the harbor and when we went to take down the main realized the halyard was jammed. So Jeff "Kookabura" Solum went up & released the shackle, sending the main sheet to the deck.

We came home to Tammy & Wendy having prepared a wonderful dinner. And now, the night is young and we're on our way to Kim Sha beach for the evening's party...

Pictures to (hopefully) follow. Kinda hard to snap shots in these breezes.

Tomorrow's winds are forecasted to be 22, gusts over 40. Bring it on!