What do you do when the winds are blowing a steady 20 knots out of the South West all day? Go sailing of course, and that's exactly what the fleet did today. After some discussion of cancelling the race due to high winds it was decided to proceed with a course of SAPDXCF. We unfortunately found ourselves shorthanded with only a crew of 3, so we knew we would be working very hard to keep the boat heading in the right direction tonight. There was a massive pin end favor to the line with everyone stacking up as close to the pin as they dare. We tried a luffing start right on the line just below the crowd but unfortunately got to within a couple feet of the line and did not leave enough room to accelerate prior to the gun. For the first 10 minutes or so of the race we were having speed issues. I just could not figure out why we were moving like a 4knot.s.b until I looked back and saw that we were still dragging our outboard through the water. What a rookie move! This helped tremendously and our speed went from about 6 to 9 knots in no time. We managed to close the gap on race leaders Ghost Rider, J, and Fitz and rounded the P mark 4th. We had a good beat in heavy air with the boat often overpowered on the way up to D. Just before reaching D mark we blew our jib halyard. Not a good time for this to happen. The bow was dragged downwind and it took a lot of time luffing into the wind to get it re hoisted and start sailing back in the right direction. The rest of the race was sailing relatively straight forward and we once again managed to shave off the distance to the next boat ahead of us, Fitz. I estimate it will be a battle for 3rd place between them and us on corrected time and should come down to only a few seconds difference. From way back were we were it looked like Ghost Rider and J sailed a great race and had their windward rails stacked with enough bodies to crew a small regatta. Well done everyone for weathering the high winds tonight without any apparent carnage.
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