Too much wind!

My friend Patrick and I went down to Shadow for a sail yesterday. We'd had a storm come through late last week (though it didn't dump nearly enough rain), so I was expecting a 24-48 hour cold front to follow. Similar to what had happened the weekend before, when we were out racing on Bullet in 28 kts of wind, wet and miserable, this Saturday was howling as well. But I'd hoped that Sunday would be light air, like the previous Sunday had been. Turns out that was the case up in SB, but down in Oxnard we had NE 20 kt to gusting something fierce winds (according to the Pt Mugu station). The swell, on the other hand, was from the usual northwesterly direction, though admittedly not too bad. Either way, going out with inexperienced crew was not the smartest move on my part. I did have the foresight to put up the blade instead of the genoa right off. We raced downwind to get out the harbor, snuck out on the eastern side, and spent the rest of the time heading west to come back in from the western side. At some point it got gusty enough that I thought it might be best to take the blade down and head in under main, which Patrick did an admirable job of. Ideally we would have reefed and kept on going, but the blade's halyard wasn't nice and tight, so I didn't want to heave to under those conditions in order to reef the main. I was impressed with Patrick's cool, since Shadow's foredeck, with the lifelines sloping down just before they reach the bow pulpit, is not a friendly place sometimes. Anyway, I decided to motor into the channel, since it was dead upwind, and we would have had to take the jib back up to get a tight enough groove to make it (which, may I add, we never have, in that kind of conditions). All in all, interesting, and free of mishaps, but a disappointment.

Distractions

Foredeck babe
Originally uploaded by slampoud

I've been distracted with work and racing, and consequently Shadow hasn't seen enough play lately. She's sitting pretty at CIH and I've started stripping the deck paint in preparation for a paintjob. Though this pic is not from Shadow, but rather a race in Ventura, I thought it belonged here :-)