The Wind

The story today continued to be the wind. A few folks took to the water early, but by 11:00 a.m. the river was empty and the fleet was either de-rigged or waiting for the breeze to stabilize. Giovanni claimed the breeze was twisting with little vortices: once he said he was sailing upwind on port and all of a sudden found that the boat was on starboard without a change in heading. He also claimed gusts of between 25 and 30, although the Stevenson iwindsurf gauge never had anything over 27 knts.



At any rate, around 5:00 the wind seemed to steady out, though it was still pretty strong. Rohan was the first to head out, sporting a solid glass rudder horizontal with a swallowtail planform.



After about 10 minutes he came back in to fix something on his vang. Shortly thereafter Bora and George headed out. Bear had only about a couple of minutes of sailing before his boat exploded. We saw a 180 degree pitchpole and perhaps that's what caused the bow fitting to rip out. At any rate his M2's forestay fitting, wand crank and a bit of carbon decided they didn't want to stay attached to the hull. The RIB rescue boat was summoned and he was towed back in. Bora stayed out a bit and wowed the crowd with his speed and boat handling. Finally around 6:00 p.m. the breeze moderated enough for about a dozen folks (me included) to join the fun. Unfortunately, my fun was short-lived as the new mainfoil pulled out of the strut. So tomorrow it's more boatwork, probably cutting back the tang to some solid material, discarding the 1/4" long Helicoil and instead drilling and tapping a new hole, and utilizing a bolt much longer that the 3/4" long 1/4-20 that John used originally.




Sorry about the toe shot; here are today's head shots. More tomorrow!










For today musical inclusion, I chose something with no vocals, just some masterful guitar work by Carlos Santana and Neil Schon, from Santana’s Album “Caravanserai” (1972.) The tune is titled Song of the Wind. Enjoy.