Monday, June 21, 2010

Buttery Silk

I got in another couple of hours again today, with a couple of trips across the harbor for probably 20 miles total distance. Slowly the biceps and hand grips are getting into sailing shape.  A slight boat mod following Bruce's suggestion was to lengthen and stiffen the wand, looking for more height. In a breeze of about 10 kts (no whitecaps) I pulled off my first "perfect" jibe -- everything happened just like it was supposed to: no extreme force changes, sail gently coming across, height maintained throughout the turn, and an exit with speed onto the new heading. Why can't it be like that all the time? It did give me something to shoot for -- a feeling of buttery silk.

This afternoon I'm changing out the wand pivot from the Fastacraft aluminum to a homemade plastic block trying to increase the bearing area and reduce wand chatter and vibration. How it works will be in tomorrow's report.

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