The taming of the demented beast

Yes, I think we have her on a leash now. This weekend saw the return of the demented beast but this time we had it licked. Not so much the 'demented' beast anymore but more like the 'Wild Goose' that is her name.

On Saturday we went out in a SE wind with a strength of about 17mph. Because this was an offshore direction it made for very gusty conditions but the sea was flat with only small waves, a recipy for fast and furious reaching.
No other Enterprises were out racing so Jo and I went out for some practice and demonstrated to ourselves that we can do it, we can handle her in those kind of winds. We spent a good bit of time just reaching up and down the shore, a close reach one way and broad the other. Then we got adventurous and went further out and beat back in, managing to keep the boat absolutely flat, depowering the rig with lots of kicker upwind and playing the main in the gusts. So different from our last experiance in these winds at Grafham in March.

The broad reaches where the best. with the jib poled out to leward, Jo sitting in on the leward side and I sitting out on the windward side, both right aft. When a gust hit we just took off bouncing across the water, spray shooting out from the under the boat, the bows right out and she was just moving sooooo fast!

By contrast Sundays racing was light winds, almost non-exisitant at times. I think we had a sea breeze opposing the wind and it made for very patchy wind strength.
We sailed one race, a simple triangle, 2 laps. I was first boat to the windward mark with a two boat length lead which quickly opened up and by the wing mark I was about a minute ahead. At the leward mark I struck out on port tack heading for a patch of wind that I could see some darts sailing in. I knew I was heading into tide but it was only just turning. The rest of the fleet all tacked on to starboard, the leebowed tack, I could see some wind there but it looked to be to far over. I got to the wind first, tacked and crossed everyone and made great gains increasing my lead and hanging on to it to finish 1st. I was up for another race but no one else was so we headed in. So I'm on to a good start for the June series points.

Next weekend is the Eastern Area Championships hosted by Snettisham Beach SC and it looks to be a good weather forecast so hopefully we will get a good number of visitors. I am trying to get Poppycock completed in time for this as one of the club members who currently sails a javlin is looking to join the Enterprise fleet and wants to borrow PoppyCock.

I'm nearly done with the fuitting out but I have a major problem: the rudder assembly doesn't fit. When I fitted out Wild Goose I swapped the rudder assemblies over because Poppy had the better Milanes blade with a one piece wishbone stock and tiller. Now I am trying to find another rudder assembly that will fit PoppyCock.