Saturday, July 4, 2015

Two-up race/drift

Another good sail today. I learnt a lot more about Charlene today. Charlene Mkll is quiet a different beast to the old Charlene. She's 'smoother' through the water and the boat accelerates with the big black kite now rather than just laying over when running shy. The big black monster just isn't a monster anymore and is now very much my favourite now that it's behaving.
We had our 'chicken' kite up for most of the ride today because I just wanted to play it conservative and also not scare Donna. That went well because we could both get to know the boat (Donna hopefully loosing the fear, and me just getting to know how to trim her and what she did and didn't like).

We have sorted a lot of minor issues from last time out, including the keel fore/aft movement which has been fixed up with thicker shims. We also built a new engine mount for the new 4hp engine purchased last week. This has created a problem, the main sheet bridle keeps getting court on the engine. We should be able to fix this with a bit of shock cord tied to the bridle to keep it tight and not allow it to get near the engine when it would be otherwise loose.

Charlene Two-up Short video from today, not too exciting.

Today's weather was pleasant but we ended up abandoning the race after loosing pressure for a while after a fair amount of 2/3kt drifting. I had learnt enough for the day and Donna wasn't well so we got the sails down and turned on the nice new engine and headed for the boat ramp and trailer. The next race is in a couple of weeks which is now unimportant because we haven't finished 3 out the first 4 races.

Our next race should be with our new racing main which will be being made next week or the week after. The current race main, used today, has been fitted with track 'slugs' and is now our cruising main and is was really easy for Donna and I to manage to raise and lower while out on the water (the new more easily controlled and more torque engine also helped that).
 

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